It occurs to me that I live in a tropical climate, my front yard gets a lot of sun (not all day but close), and I have a lot of mango pits that I usually throw out. It takes time, I understand, to go from a pit into a tree and more time for that tree to bear fruit, but if anyone has actually tried this, I’d be interested in hearing how it went. I’m thinking maybe I’ll try it with a lot of mango pits and see if one of them turns into anything tree-like.
I raised a mango tree in a pot from seed once. There are plenty of guides online.
Basically, you clean off the pit, let it dry a couple of days and cut a slit into it to allow you to pry open the outer shell to get to the seed, which is planted concave side down, leaving a bit of the top of the seed exposed.
Most mango cultivars are of monoembryonic type, meaning they won’t come true from seed.
Yes, I’ve seen a lot of online videos, some helpful, some not so much.
I’ve been practicing on Tommy mangos, which are monoembryonic, but I plan to buy a box of Ataulfo mangos, that are polyembryonic, next week. The Tommie seeds are encased in a brownish covering, which I’m assuming should be peeled off. The polyembryonic ones, I’m learning, should be split into separate seeds and planted separately.
What does “true to seed” mean? That no fruit will result? That the fruit will be different from the mango came from? If so, how exactly?
It took a couple of tries, but I’ve done it. Go for it; what do you have to lose?
Ataulfo is much better tasting than Tommy Atkins, so that gets my vote for what you want to actually make a tree. Or Alphonso.
True to seed means that the fruit from the tree you plant from seed will look and taste like the fruit you took the seed from. For instance, an apple. Apples are very much not true to seed. So you plant a seed from a green apple and the tree you get could get green, red, yellow or whatever fruits. To mantain the characteristics gardeners usually go for cuttings.
Tomatos, on the other hand, are often true to seed: the tomato you plant will usually look like the tomato you took the seed from. Red tomatos will give red tomatos, purple tomatos give purple tomatos, and so on.
My understanding is that many fruit trees are grafted to root stock of a different variety, and that if you plant the seed, it will be from the root stock variety, not the fruit variety.
I think you are broadly right: gardeners plant from seed trees that grow fast and are well adapted to the local conditions. When they reach the right size and have developed a nice root system they graft cuttings or buds of the variety they want to harvest to that rootstock and thereby can be sure what the resulting fruit will be like.
Back to the OP: This is what mango trees look like about ten months, seven months and six months after seeding.
The older one is in the centre, the younger ones are planted together in the pot to the right. The small one in front is a lemon tree. Or rather will become one when he grows up. They are all still in the phase where they have not developed any side branches. This is going to require patience.
If you want a usable fruit tree, buy a named, grafted sapling from a nursery. Or, read up on mango propagation – I know nothing about it myself – and find out the way it is done.
The reason not to grow mangos from seed is 1. It will take about 8 years to fruit, as opposed to less than half that from a nursery tree, and 2. very unpredictable as to fruit quality, disease resistance, ultimate height, etc.
I’ve sprouted mango seeds in my mulch pile. (Not on purpose, it just happens.) They are attractive when young trees. Sure, go for it.
If you want a named cultivar, you can try that later, or even try your hand at grafting after your seedling gets going.
fwiw, I know two people who lived in tropical areas who grew mangos from seed, and enjoyed the fruit.
Remeber that picture I posted in July? Well, now it is November:
It looks like they don’t like temperatures below 15°C/60F.
They are still alive, but barely. And the place is heated (you see the radiator on the bottom right), not very much, but not freezing at all. Well, mangos are really tropical.
Annual plants (ones that grow and die-off within a single year) are generally bred to be good for farming, in all the ways. They provide a good yield, they do so on a reliable schedule, the flavor is good, and the texture is good.
Tree fruit, traditionally, have taken years and years to even start producing fruit - let alone giving you a strong indication of their growing qualities. In general, humanity decided that it was easier to just graft good fruiting limbs onto root stock, rather than try to fully domesticate the trees.
In terms of apples, I’ve heard that the flavor and texture tends to suck, if you let it grow from seed. Apples tend towards sourness. In terms of avocados, I’ve heard that from-seed plants tend to have very large seeds with not much meat and a stringy, not very pleasant flesh.
For mangoes, I don’t think I recall people complaining about the fruit itself. I believe that the complaints tended to focus on reliability. You tend to get trees that will produce 1, 2 mangos a year, sometimes skip years, etc. But again, your particular mango could have texture issues, could have flavor issues, etc. Anything outside of a graft could be anything from an annoyance to the greatest fruit ever discovered by man.
If you have a big orchard, it might not matter so much and be fun to experiment. If you’ve only got one tree, you probably would do better to find a mango type that you like and that grows well in your climate, and go for a grafted specimen.
I’ve known two people who grew mangos from seed. One lived in Guyana, and the other in southern India. Both said they enjoyed the fruit of the resulting trees.
(One has selected especially good mangos and planted two. She had a problem with iguanas eating the fruit, but iguanas are apparently tasty, too. The other was a kid, and he and his cousins used to eat mangos in their grandparents’ yard at holidays, and throw the seeds on the ground. Eventually they had a thicket of mangos and they ate from those.)
I’m envious of your window & view.
I get to be the bit of a Debbie-Downer here. There are a lot of mature mango trees in my area and boy do they produce a lot of fruit. More than you will ever want. All that fruit attracts rats in addition to squirrels. Also, rotting mangos are ACRID and very unpleasant. And you WILL have rotting mangos on the ground, eventually.
If you are willing to put up with all that, then go for it. it’s cool having productive landscaping at ones house. And they are attractive trees when mature.
Not that I would complain, but the neighbours in the fourth floor (three above me) have sun all year long and plenty of light, perhaps the mangos would thrive better up there. But the eight months per year we have direct sunshine it is indeed gorgeous!