Mango Festival

While most of the country gardens in the summer and enjoys the bounty of their local farmer's market, here in FL we lay low.   The growing season is opposite of most places so you only grow easy heat loving stuff like okra and the farmer's market is closed in the summer.  We do have the occasional tropical fruit event like this weekend's Mango Festival at Colorfield Farms.

The highlight of the day was the mango tasting.  The whole family thought the best variety was Lemon Zest.  Our friends we went with really liked the Kent. 

We spent some time cruising through the nursery's fruit tree stock as well.  We saw a ripe wax jambu.  I've heard of this tree but never seen one or the fruit so that was neat.  The Lancitella mango provided the biggest wow.  It was tasty enough but out on the tree it was huge.  They get up to 5 pounds each.

Another neat find was a baby preying mantis.  We don't see them that often so the toads were excited about their find.

Our only purchase was along the bug theme as well.  We have a couple milkweeds but no monarchs are visiting them currently.  The ones at the farm were covered so we brought home some new pets.

The event was supposed to have a food truck rally too.  There were only two food trucks.  We weren't sure how many you needed to be able to call it a rally but we figured at least three was a minimum.  We were glad we brought snacks.




We've been wanting to get a Longan tree and our friends gave us one.  It kept dying back in their freezes every winter and our place is a little warmer than theirs so we're going to give it a try.  This photo is from the festival not our new little tree.

We followed up the festival with a dip in the kiddie pool and BBQ with our friends so it was a lovely day.  If you'd like to learn more about tropical fruits check out this post or the book below.