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Growing a mango tree from seed – one year time lapse [video]

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Re: Growing a mango tree from seed – one year time lapse [video]

#181

Post by ethbr0 »

brewdad wrote: post #146
rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if there's a market in the U.S. for luxury fruits. I always hear about these incredible fruits available abroad that are only available in certain seasons, in certain climates, that decay quickly and travel poorly. Presumably, you could grow god-tier mangoes year-round, right in the city, by simulating the right climate in fancy greenhouses - if you did it right, you wouldn't have an electric bill. If the ma…

I think there really is a market for special fruits but the problems that prevent them from being ubiquitous lead to them being extremely local. In my area, we have a specific type of strawberry that sells out as quickly as they can be harvested. They are unlike any other strawberry available. Super juicy and sweet. Bright red throughout. Extremely perishable and delicate. They are only available for about 3 weeks in…

I asked someone why local village wine in the south of France was better than 75% of the bottles I'd had.

They told me "The best grapes never make it out of the village. The next best grapes never make it out of the region. The next best grapes never make it out of the country."

Wine was probably a terrible example, being a less perishable good suited for transport, but the quip always stuck with me. No idea the origin.

We (city folk) assume that the best agricultural output is exported, but... why would it be?

The price differential for quality likely isn't very large, local consumption is relatively modest compared to output, and cap that off with the freshness timer.

The best wine I've ever had was in the French countryside. The best beef I've had was in a dirty road place in the middle of cow country. The best salmon I've had was in Seattle. The best sushi I've had was behind Tsukiji (when they still did wholesale fish there).

Eat local is as much about quality as it is other things.

Re: Growing a mango tree from seed – one year time lapse [video]

#182

Post by teakettle42 »

Alex3917 wrote: post #167
rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if there's a market in the U.S. for luxury fruits. I always hear about these incredible fruits available abroad that are only available in certain seasons, in certain climates, that decay quickly and travel poorly. Presumably, you could grow god-tier mangoes year-round, right in the city, by simulating the right climate in fancy greenhouses - if you did it right, you wouldn't have an electric bill. If the ma…

> I wonder if there's a market in the U.S. for luxury fruits As a hobbyist rare fruit grower and someone who spends a lot of time watching rare fruit YouTube, I would say that even though all the ingredients are there, it would be a huge uphill battle. First, let me say the amount of hype right now around rare fruit is completely insane. It's literally hundreds of times harder to get the top fruit cultivars than it i…

I know I’d easily pay at least a few hundred a month for at least one overnight shipment of fresh, in-season, rare/novel fruit.

Receiving a shipment like that would be a joyous monthly treat.

I can’t be the only one … can I?

Re: Growing a mango tree from seed – one year time lapse [video]

#183

Post by trickstra »

walrus01 wrote: post #155

If one wants to make a time lapse video of this very cheap, you can do it with as little as a raspberry pi zero w ($10, if you can get one?), a 4GB to 8GB sized microsd card for raspbian, a $5 USB-A to microUSB adapter, and any old USB webcam supported by Linux. When I did this the pi would acquire an image every N minutes, save it with a sequentially timestamped filename into a working directory. Then another system…

I have almost exactly the same setup. I can recommend motion-project on the Pi for taking the pictures and MotionEye android app for real-time watching. Works fine as a security cam too.

Re: Growing a mango tree from seed – one year time lapse [video]

#184

Post by fblp »

cwkoss wrote: post #95

I really want a solar powered time lapse camera that takes a photo around noon every day, saves to SD card. Would be great for plant time lapses. I haven't been able to find anyone who's done this already. It seems like there are trail cams and similar that have all the parts, so this should be possible to manufacture for a price point of around $50, and I think it would be an amazing product: I bet every gardening e…

I'd buy this!

Re: Growing a mango tree from seed – one year time lapse [video]

#185

Post by thaumasiotes »

ethbr0 wrote: post #181
brewdad wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there really is a market for special fruits but the problems that prevent them from being ubiquitous lead to them being extremely local. In my area, we have a specific type of strawberry that sells out as quickly as they can be harvested. They are unlike any other strawberry available. Super juicy and sweet. Bright red throughout. Extremely perishable and delicate. They are only available for about 3 weeks in…

I asked someone why local village wine in the south of France was better than 75% of the bottles I'd had. They told me "The best grapes never make it out of the village. The next best grapes never make it out of the region. The next best grapes never make it out of the country." Wine was probably a terrible example, being a less perishable good suited for transport, but the quip always stuck with me. No idea the orig…

> We (city folk) assume that the best agricultural output is exported, but... why would it be?

For the same reason everything else is exported. Its value somewhere else is higher than its local value.

Re: Growing a mango tree from seed – one year time lapse [video]

#186

Post by victor106 »

rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote: post #162
brewdad wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hood strawberries grown in the Willamette Valley of Oregon.

God, I had a mixed berry smoothie at a random spot in Eugene over a decade ago, and it blew my brain right out the back of my skull. Oregon's berries are no joke.

Exactly my experience too. I stopped by a random farm and picked some up and they were just so delicious.

Re: Growing a mango tree from seed – one year time lapse [video]

#187

Post by LorenPechtel »

ornornor wrote: post #122
gumby wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of tropical fruit is uninteresting in the USA: bananas, pineapple, mangoes etc have little flavor and typically one variety is available at most. I sometimes have 50 year old memories in dreams of eating fresh fruit and they are so different in form and flavor I wonder if they are hallucinations. But as you point out, they require a climate unavailable on the continent so have to be harvested unripe and transpo…

I’ve wondered a lot about that as well and I think this is not only the product of picking unripe fruits so that they can be harvested sooner and not go bad in transit, but also because of the hybridization of crops. There are companies working very hard at developing new variants of fruits and vegetables that grow faster, are less susceptible to pests, don’t get damaged as much in transit, look like what consumers e…

Yup--what you buy in the store is selected first for it's ability to survive transport. If it doesn't pass that test you're not going to see it no matter how tasty.

I'm thinking back almost 50 years ago, the Kilimanjaro base camp. Our group (traveling Johannesburg to London overland, Kilimanjaro was simply a stop along the way) bought an entire stalk of bananas. It sat there for some days as we ate the tiny but oh-so-tasty bananas. It wasn't finished when it was time to head out. When we stopped for lunch it was thrown away as it was an inedible mess. Admittedly, it had simply been sitting on a seat in a truck and the roads were bad, but bananas are pretty hard to protect. (And anyone trying to ship them out of there would have had to use the same roads.)

I used to like bananas, but after that experience grocery store bananas hold little interest for me.

Re: Growing a mango tree from seed – one year time lapse [video]

#188

Post by LorenPechtel »

SamBam wrote: post #46
akudha wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a general rule, fruits and vegetables don’t taste good in the U.S, compared to countries like India. They last much longer here though. I don’t know the reason, but I can speculate - too many chemicals probably? Every time I am in India, I pig out. Yet, I rarely put on weight. I eat way less (like 50% less) in the U.S, and put on weight easily unless I am super careful. This is not to say all foods are awesome in…

The main difference is fruits and vegetables in the US are bred for storage and transport, and not for flavor. This is starting to swing back, with people appreciating flavor, but this will require people to accept that there are seasons to fruits and vegetables, which is hard when you're used to year-round supply. But if you want a tomato in January or an apple in June, those just aren't going to taste as good.

Our back yard is entirely planted with fruit trees. My wife considers our harvest far superior to what the stores have and they would probably be even better if she left them on the trees for a few more days. Most of them do not stand up to even local transport well at all, though.

(Unfortunately, she has to pick them a bit early if she wants to eat them at all. Left on the tree to their peak they would be lost to the birds.)

Re: Growing a mango tree from seed – one year time lapse [video]

#189

Post by LorenPechtel »

pseudostem wrote: post #99
Ozzie_osman wrote: post #34

I grew up in Egypt, my dad is from a town on the Suez Canal called Ismailia, famous for its mangoes. We would wait the whole year for mango season (August/September). As kids, our clothes would all get mango stains. Our parents would make us take our shirts off before we eat them to avoid that. I moved to the US, and I haven't had a good mango here. When friends visit Egypt, I tell them to get mangoes (in season, aro…

I run an agri commodity trading startup (mostly bananas) in India. A few mango exporters I know complain about US import rules for mangoes. Apparently by regulation mangoes have to be immersed in hot water for 20 minutes. This destroys taste.

I don't know the specifics but I'm not surprised. The Old World has a lot of pests the New World doesn't. Things which may harbor a pest we do not have get strict scrutiny or complete non-admittance here.

Re: Growing a mango tree from seed – one year time lapse [video]

#190

Post by contingencies »

Alex3917 wrote: post #167
rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if there's a market in the U.S. for luxury fruits. I always hear about these incredible fruits available abroad that are only available in certain seasons, in certain climates, that decay quickly and travel poorly. Presumably, you could grow god-tier mangoes year-round, right in the city, by simulating the right climate in fancy greenhouses - if you did it right, you wouldn't have an electric bill. If the ma…

> I wonder if there's a market in the U.S. for luxury fruits As a hobbyist rare fruit grower and someone who spends a lot of time watching rare fruit YouTube, I would say that even though all the ingredients are there, it would be a huge uphill battle. First, let me say the amount of hype right now around rare fruit is completely insane. It's literally hundreds of times harder to get the top fruit cultivars than it i…

Even if you were successful, VCs would just give hundreds of millions of dollars to some Adam Neumann type who would put you out of business by selling the same things at a massive loss.

I don't think it's VCs per se. For example, Amazon is actively trying to get in to fresh food logistics of late with their stores and various acquisitions, and they are public.

It's the 21st century object sales fallacy. Significant returns only exist at scale and you can't compete with capital, so what's the point of starting a venture in object sales today? It's default-dead in the face of its eventual competition, unless you have some angle like lockdown on the object sourcing through extremely complex objects, unassailable distribution or some alternative revenue model.

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