How to harvest urban mangoes

In the past week, I’ve seen three people trying to harvest mangoes in an urban setting.  As in many tropical places, mango trees grow along many Dili streets.  They provide welcome shade and – bonus – free food.

The trees here have not been pruned, as they would be in an orchard.  So many are 50 or 60 feet tall, and their canopies are about 30 or 40 feet wide.  The fruit grows on the periphery. It might grow in the interior; I haven’t looked that closely.

So, the most crude way of harvesting is with a long bamboo stick.  Just poke the branch, and encourage the fruit to fall.  This was the first way I saw some kids try to get some mangoes.  They had a 25 foot bamboo pole, and awkwardly prodded the tree. Fruit fell. Delight all round.

Then, a few days later at Ba Futuru, some guys decided to get some fruit from the tree that sits between three buildings.  They too had a long bamboo pole. They also had the luxury of a sunshade between two of the buildings, which served as a wonderful capture net.  No bruised fruit here.

The fancy tool, however, was used by someone close to my homestay.  He stood on top of a  carport with his 30 foot bamboo pole.  At the tree end of his pole, he had attached an empty one litre water bottle that had a hole cut out of one side (see the photo of the innovative planter outside the room where I watched American election results.  A post soon after “all hail the Donald”.  

This guy prodded the fruit more gently, trying to get it to fall into his container.  I found the exercise to be rather impressive.