I grow up with fruit trees in our yard and so when we bought our house over 2 decades ago, I searched and learned tropical trees will do well. So I got ambitious planting grapefruit, lemons, banana (though not technically a tree) guava, avocado, lychee (a seedling gift) and mango tree but only my mango "survived". Well everything except for the mango and lychee were killed by the frost. The graft of the mango froze and died but the rootstock survived.



This is my third year that this mango tree has produced fruits for me and the most fruit ever and has doubled in size and height.

I was at first disappointed that it is not the same as the golden yellow mango 🥭 that I was hoping for. But after talking to a few of my neighbors, I was surprised how excited they were about the green mango. One neighbor uses it like a salad and another uses it to sautée and online search have other uses which is for a yummy banana green mango shake (I have to try this).

So I have harvested quite a few and shared green mangoes with my neighbors.

Now I am on a mission to add avocado tree.. again and hoping my lychee will have fruits and I added star fruit too.

Fruit salad at Gigi's.
I am surprised your grapefruit did not make it they are commonly grown in SC, right up to the midlands. Perhaps you had a particularly tender variety.

maybe I should try it again.

Lots of people grow Mangos around here, and lots get frozen, same with bananas, but they seem to always come back. I still see orange, lemon and grapefruit trees growing. I had a wonderful orange tree for probably 15 years, the best oranges ever. Survived many freezes, but then it just started dying, took it a few years to completely die...I have a fire pit patio there now.

My dad had three avocado trees, he just had them taken down last year, since hurricane uprooted them. The biggest problem with avocados is the squirrels eat them when they were just starting to fruit, would really tick him off.

A bit late seeing this thread, but I do have a wonderful mango tree that's been here since we bought this house 15 years ago. I've had to prune it quite a lot lately, the last two years in the fall, especially broken branches after Hurricane Ian thrashed it. But it has the best crop of mangoes in many years this year.

I also have a lychee tree, which I planted the year we moved here as well. Only one year have I had any lychee to harvest. Apparently they bear heavily in alternate years - one year lots, next year hardly any - and it seems that the birds and squirrels like the fruit while it's still green, so unless I remember to set out my motion-detector sprinkler at the right time, the fruit is all gone before I ever see it. Very frustrating, because I just love lychee fruit. No fruit again this year because we were away for 2 weeks at the critical time . . . ARgghh.

What I came here to say is, planting fruit trees is like setting out the "Welcome" mat for every bird and critter in your vicinity. Birds, raccoons, rats, squirrels and yes, random people as well will steal your fruit (we caught a neighbor on our doorbell cam). The squirrels I've sort of figured out, since they're active only in the daytime - I just set my watch and walk out every hour or so with the hose, and 'flush' them out of the tree. Pretty soon they hear me coming and run. But the nocturnal visitors, raccoons and rats are much harder to discourage. I lose a lot of fruit each year. Again, the motion-detector sprinkler is the best deterrent, because it can "see" at night. But I only have one, and the motion of the wind moving the foliage sets it off so it uses a lot of water under the tree.

My mangoes have the best number of fruits this year too and I have a lychee but seed grown so it will not bear fruit for years. We have Star fruit too and we tried to transfer it to the ground but it is not doing well.

Our mango is the fibrous when ripe kind so we have been eating them semi-ripe. We and Our neighbors like them green.☹️

Lots of mangoes, are actually yummy if they are not over ripe

Nice crop Gigi. When we would vacation in Sanibel Island, people would put free mangos at their curbs, they'd have so many they couldn't eat them all.

sunkissed said: Nice crop Gigi. When we would vacation in Sanibel Island, people would put free mangos at their curbs, they'd have so many they couldn't eat them all.

Oh wow, must be nice to visit the Sanibel island this season. This is the rootstock that survived so the fruit is better tasting when not too ripe or it gets really fibrous. A neighbor of mine is diabetic so she prefers the not too ripe since it has less sugar.

A friend whose mom has a place on Sanibel says they are still re-building. Lots of places do not have roofs yet.

I take bags of mangoes around to my neighbors, and give them away to all my friends. I'd imagine a lot of the mango trees down in Sanibel got pretty much flattened by the storm, too. They do grow back, though. My neighbor down the block cut his mango tree off at knee height one year, and by a couple of years later it was 12ft. tall and wide, bushy and beautiful again.

The top of my mango was pretty thrashed after Hurricane Ian, as well. I cut it back fairly drastically in early November anyway, to keep it lower so I can harvest the fruit easier, and so it doesn't shade my hoop house area in winter. But it's loaded with fruit and growing bunches of new leaves now, too.

My new gadget for scaring the critters off, Hah! It's a bobble-head owl with a motion detector, and it hoots when it 'sees' motion. Yeah, it hoots at me but the bunny sits 5ft away from him and eats the mangoes on the ground, and the squirrel goes right by him on the top of the fence, not fazed in the least. Humph!

Elaine that owl is a hoot. LOL

Gigi, I haven't been to Sanibel since the hurricane wiped it out. We used to camp at Periwinkle campground there many times before last year. I don't think my heart could handle seeing the devastation now, such lush tropical plants, which I'm sure will never grow back in my lifetime.

Oh no I forgot they got devastated by the hurricane. I haven't been to Sanibel and Anna Maria in over a decade!

Elaine that owl is adorable, I would probably like seeing it on top of my mango tree just to prank my neighbors. Elaine glad to know they bear fruit even after they have been pruned. I was wondering about that. My mango tree is loaded right now but I don't like how tall and bushy it is getting so I told hubby that I want him to prune it shorter. I also want to try to air layer a branch so I can give rooted cuttings to a few of my neighbors who love my "green or semi-yellow" mangoes. (They are not great as ripe since they are fibrous.).

My hoyas absolutely love this tree I couldn't make my Hoyas bloom under my oak tree but it is blooming now under the mango tree.



And I use this to shade some of my potted neglected plumerias from hurricane season and I was pleasantly surprised that a confetti cutting is blooming with just the partial sun through the mango.



And here is my y harvest that I gave away to my neighbors. It is nice to see happy faces:

A friend of mine has a mango farm. I wish I am close by, she has 50 varieties of mango and has it on her website what are the mangoes that are available.
https://www.themangoplace.com/

Pretty Plumeria, I have a cutting off a friends of that coloring, still hasn't bloomed, got set back pretty good from the freezing nights.
I like Mangos but I tire of them real fast. I'm always surprised how pricey they are in the grocery store considering how abundant they are in Florida. Not many grow them here due to the colder winters.

Mango are abundant producers, but their season is relatively short in Florida, except maybe down in the Keys, I think.

I have a deluge of mangoes (16 today alone) at this time of year, and into about the middle of July, but then they're gone. They don't freeze well, lose their flavor even if I put them in the fridge so the only way to preserve them that I've found keeps the flavor is to dehydrate them. That, of course, involves using a dehydrator that heats up the house at the hottest time of year, so it's really kind of counter-productive. But I do some anyway, just so I can have them when the grandkids come to visit, or I can easily transport them to Utah in my suitcase without paying overweight charges.

One year I had about 20lb of fresh mangoes in my suitcase and it was 2lb overweight. They were going to charge me $100 so I took 3 nice mangoes out of there, gave them to the ticket agents and everyone was happy. Sheesh, considering all the weight people carry on (baggage and personal items) as well as personal weight, you wouldn't think they'd be that strict about it . . .

Elaine, do you have a covered area outside? We have run small appliances on our covered patio. It would keep the heat out of your kitchen. Garage would work also.

Yes, we have two garages and the pool cage, part of which is covered. Trouble is it's so humid outside that the mango slices never get dry enough. They get to the tacky stage and no further.

My current method has been to run the dehydrators overnight in the guest bathroom with the door closed and the window open. Then I just bring them into the a/c (drier air) house for about the last hour or so to complete drying. I also try to choose the days to run the dehydrators when the humidity is a bit lower (like today). Getting a batch ready to run tonight.

If you don't get them dry enough they go moldy.

Have you tried vacuum packed and frozen?

These mangoes of mine lose their flavor completely when they get cold. Even putting a whole fruit in the fridge, it loses that lovely aromatic flavor and just tastes sweet and bland when it comes out.

For years we've made mango sorbet, but always had to add, lemon, lime or passionfruit juice to it to make it taste any good. Otherwise just sweet and blah. Drying concentrates the flavor, and the dried pieces or fruit leather are delicious.

The other drawback to the sorbet was that it only used 3 or 4 mangoes, and when you have 20 or more sitting ripe on the kitchen counter, that's not enough. I'll be up to my elbows in gooey mango this afternoon to dry a batch tonight.