Inside Florida’s Rare 1,000-Tree Organic Mango Orchard (Free Festival!)

Alright, this is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com, today we have another exciting episode for you. I'm here on Pine Island in Florida, and one of the cool things when I'm driving to Pine Island, as you're crossing one of the bridges it says, you are now on island time, and you know, things seem just to be a little bit slower here on Pine Island than in other parts of Florida. And Pine Island is a very unique place in Southwest Florida that literally is right off the gulf. And because they're literally pretty close to the ocean, it doesn't get too cold here like other parts of Florida, they can grow many tropical fruits. The place I'm at today is Gatherings Mango Grove and Honeybees. This is a community of the 12 tribes, which I got to learn about today. So 12 tribes has many different basically communities all over the world, right, over I think over 30 different communities, and they'll trade amongst each other. So like the ones up in New York will send basically the organic spelt grain down, and then they'll ship the mangoes from here to some of their communities, and they will trade, they have communities in like Brazil that make the Yerba Mate, and then they'll ship up and they make body care goods, and basically the whole reason a big part of the community is to keep their community members employed and working together in communities so they don't have to go off site. So that's what this farm is about, it's not about making money, it's about basically bringing in communities so that they can live together and provide work for community members, right. So that's a very important distinction I want to give because most mango farms are not there for love and community, they are out there for profit. So that's a very important thing, that's why this community actually every year in June they have a free mango festival, so mark your calendars now for the free mango festival. Not only are the attendees allowed to attend for free, and I think they had like 2000 people at their one in 2025, but also even vendors and local other farms are invited to come for free without a charge, right, so this makes even a bigger, larger gathering with their mango festival where you actually can taste mangoes and actually buy mangoes at what I would consider affordable prices, especially after being at other mango festivals on the other side of the state where they're charging a lot of money. So you know, to me I've only received nothing but love here today, and just really pleasant experience at the gatherings, and that's what I want to try to share a little bit of what they're doing here with you about this amazing farm here on Pine Island that has like around 1000 mango trees in the orchard right behind me, they are on about 8-9 acres. So I want to show you guys some of the ways they're growing the mango trees, also processing the mango trees, able to ship you a little slice, literally, of Florida, as well as helping the local community eat more organically, naturally grown food. They're not currently organic certified, but they are going through the process now, but all the processes that I've seen here and they've explained to me are totally organic and actually these are the ways that I grow myself. So let's go ahead and take you guys around the orchard and show you guys more about gathering, and how gatherings grow. Alright guys, so we are currently here in January, I don't know when this video will be released, but basically it's not mango season. Mango season is in like June, around June, maybe a little bit earlier in May, June, July, August. Some varieties are earlier, some are later, and you can see basically they have all kinds of trees at different ages, and that's really cool that they have trees at different ages. So they have new modern trees that they're planting, their goal is to keep all their trees really short and small and grow them wide out so that they can produce a lot of fruit lower without having to, you know, use pickers or get big ladders to harvest the trees when they're really tall. The cool thing about this farm is that they have some, like I would call it, old growth mangoes. Some of these mangoes were planted here in the 1930s and 40s, like that's like almost a hundred years ago now. And you can see, like the one right behind me is actually called Bailey's Marble. After the Bailey brothers who had this property, they basically planted a seedling, and then that's the Bailey's Marble, many of you guys may have tasted. This is where it originally originated, and I'm confident that they have a few other unique varieties of mangoes. You're not going to taste other places on this property that are basically seedling trees that have been kept. I know there's like a unique green mango that you eat green that's probably not found other places like from the same time period, planted in the 30s and the 40s. And that to me is really amazing, and like this has gone through many hurricanes. The last hurricane actually got it tipped over, then they actually had to cut it back a lot and then tip it back up and replant it, and then they basically cut all the trees to be real short so that they'd be more resilient to hurricanes, because they wouldn't have all the top growth up there, and you can see the trees this year have come back and now they're flowering with a vengeance. So you know it is expected that it's going to be definitely a good year for the mangoes, and yeah over about a thousand trees, 60 to 70 different varieties of mangoes here on the farm. So let's go ahead and take a look at some of the varieties that are actually planted and named. Alright guys, so now I want to show you guys some of the orchard here at Gatherings Grove. A lot of these trees were basically planted in the 70s and 80s or maybe the 90s, and of course I think the front grove was planted as early as the 30s or 40s, and then of course they're always planting new trees as some trees get damaged from the hurricane or whatnot, and replace it with new and current cultivars. So what I want to do, they have them labeled really well down the road so we know what kind they are. I'm going to show you guys some of the varieties of the mangoes they have here down the road. This orchard is kept really nice. They even have goats that will do some of the weeding or some of the cutting back of the grass at some points. Of course some other times they actually do end up mowing it, but we'll start at this row is the Tom Kai Canned Kerry. We go down here, they got the Golden Wise Nugget. Next we got the Mun Ki Si Tom Kai Canned. They got the Mun Ku Si. They got the Falon. As I'm jogging, they got the Kiyo Savoy, a nice green mango, you can eat crunchy. Glen Valencia's Pride. They got the Kiyo Savoy Mix. They got the Mun Ki Su Tom Dom. The Ryan Palmer Dot. The Kerry and the Beverly. They got the Kents. I'm getting a nice workout here. They got the Keats, a nice late mango that you eat green. They got the Kiyo Savoys. They got the Chakanons. They got the Falons. They got the Oran Tom Pie Kai Thai Mix. Different mangoes in there. Pum Sing Mun, Kiyo Savoy and Ping Sing Mun. They got the Tom Don Kiyo Savoys in that row. The Brom Kai Mew. The Nom Dog Mai, one of my favorite mangoes. Don't miss that one. More Nom Dog Mais. Three Nom Dog Mais, guys. You should grow that one. Another Nom Dog Mai. And at the end, besides just the mangoes, they have other fruit trees. Lots of sour stuff. It's good for anti-cancer as well as other things. Now I want to share with you guys actually how they feed all these mangoes so that they can be lush, vibrant and produce lots of fruit every year for you. Alright guys, so basically to grow the mangoes here, they use only organic methods to control some of the pests and disease like, you know, sooty mold and whatnot. They'll spray things like neem oil, things like copper. You know, these are all very basically horticultural oils. So these are all organic certified. So there are ways you can grow mangoes successfully. All the trees look amazing. The other part of their program is that actually they do fertigation. So they basically drip out the water to the trees so the trees can get water as needed. And basically their community, a different community in a different part of the country basically makes the fish emulsion.