Mango, why mango?
New Mexico, 6 pm of a sunny day in 1998.
Two soldiers find a spacecraft in the middle of the desert. It looks very dangerous, with unknown materials in the inside.
They enter the spacecraft.
They can't believe their eyes when they find an Arbre Magique. And at some point they smell it and ask "Mango, why mango?".
If you want to see the video of this famous commercial from Arbre Magique, you can click on the below link. If you are interested to know why I'm talking about mango, well...read below.
In 2009 I took a trip to Antigua and I was astonished by the flavour of mangos and papayas grown over there. I thought it would have been fantastic to live there and grab a ripe mango directly from a tree, while a warm breeze is caressing my face. Mangos imported in Italy are not that good after all.
I then started to collect information and found out that mango trees can also be grown in Italy, especially in Sicily and Calabria they are slowly replacing citrus cultivations. Sicily and Calabria are the warmest parts of Italy, but there is a small area in Northern Italy that has a similar climate: this area is located west of Imperia, in Liguria, winters are a bit cooler than Sicily, but all in all they are comparable. Therefore, I thought that if mango trees can be grown on a commercial basis in Sicily, I could give it a try in Liguria on the coastline of Cipressa.
So, to make a long story short, during the first Covid-19 lockdown I bought a small mango tree (Kent cultivar) online and I got it delivered in a few days. It was April 2020.
I planted it (it was a lot of fun with my kids) and it made it through the summer with very little watering. I was so happy about it, that I also made a post on LinkedIn...
And it made it through the autumn. Then winter came and I could not take care of it: needless to say, winter 2020-2021 was not the mildest one with many rainy days and many days below 10 °C. To my surprise, and against all predictions, it survived...and it did it quite well.
It is now April 2020 and it is blooming.
This is probably one of the northernmost mango trees that is growing outside without winter protections.
Bonus track: link to the commercial of Arbre Magique
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