February Meeting - Chris Wenzel - All About Mangos

Join us Monday, February 13th, 2023 at 7pm

Harlee Building/County Fairgrounds, 1303 17th St W, Palmetto, FL 34221

Speaker: Chris Wenzel

Title: All About Mangos

From the Program Committee

Our February speaker will be Chris Wenzel, native Floridan and founder of Truly Tropical in 1999. On this 5-acre property in residential Delray Beach, she has over 200 fruit trees including over 90 varieties of mangos. Truly Tropical sells fruit and trees, mostly mangos but also avocados, carambola, sapodilla, jakfruit, sugar apple, custard apple, black sapote, jaboticaba, canistel, caimito, pitomba, and miracle fruit.

Chris will discuss how she made her dream of growing mangos a reality. This will include the history of the farm and her efforts to plant, graft and grow over 90 varieties of mangos. Chris will also talk about how new varieties of mangos are developed, and her own efforts to develop superior mango varieties. Mango varieties that originated at Truly Tropical include ‘Best’, ‘Big Jim’, Kaeli-K’, ‘Carpe Diem’ and ‘Marko’. 

Be sure to check out Chris’s YouTube channel, with many videos about all aspects of mangos and their horticulture. 

January 2023 Meeting at Palma Sola Botanical Park - MRFC’s partners: the Master Gardeners, Transition Sarasota, and Palma Sola Botanical Park

What: MRFC Monthly Meeting - MRFC Partners

When: Monday January 9th, 2023 at 7pm

Where: Palma Sola Botanical Park, 9800 17th Ave NW, Bradenton, FL 34209

At our January monthly meeting at Palma Sola Botanical Park, we’ll
have a chance to learn more about three of the MRFC’s partners: the
Master Gardeners, Transition Sarasota, and Palma Sola Botanical Park
itself. Each of them is providing a representative to tell us about
their organization:

--- Extension Master Gardener Programs now exist in all 50 states and
the District of Columbia, several Canadian provinces, and South Korea.
We will learn more about these remarkable programs from MRFC member
and Florida Master Gardener John Dawson.

--- Transition Sarasota is a local food and community-building
non-profit that is very active in harvesting otherwise-wasted produce
for local food banks and pantries. In particular, its Suncoast Fruit
Rescue project organizes volunteers to harvest fruit from commercial
or home trees in Sarasota or Manatee Counties, with the owner, the
volunteer harvesters, and local food banks sharing the bounty.
Executive Director Joyce Norris will represent Transition Sarasota.

--- Palma Sola Botanical Park, a longtime friend of the MRFC and the
location of our rare fruit tree collection, will be represented by
Executive Director Beverly Burdette.

After the representatives give brief presentations, we’ll have a
question-and-answer session with the full panel. We hope to see you
there for this unusual opportunity to meet some of the MRFC’s
partners.