Post by: Adegbola, Bukola Suliyat – bukola@farmkonnectng.com – 08093016914

Growing mangoes from seed is actually quite easy. (All the seeds of the mangoes we eat, dry and freeze are thrown out in the garden as mulch, and they all grow...)
The most important step is the seed selection! If you take any old shop bought seed it may not grow true to type. The seed needs to come from what is called a "polyembryonic" variety.
What that means is that the seed will sprout several identical trees. And those seedling trees will be identical to the parent tree. They are clones.
Ideally you know the parent tree, it's from your area, grows really well and gets a bumper crop every year! If not, oh well. Get seed from a polyembryonic variety and at least you know that the fruit you harvest will taste the same.
(The most common commercial variety in Australia, the Kensington Pride—also known as Bowen-—is polyembryonic. It's also a vigorous tree and usually fruits reliably, so it is well suited for seed growing.
The best time to grow mangoes from seed is the beginning of the wet season (beginning of summer).
Eat a nice mango, remove as much flesh from the seed as possible and then let it dry for a day or two.
To germinate the mango seed you could just put the whole thing in a warm, moist place and wait for it to sprout. Then cut off all the seedlings except for one. (The smallest supposedly gives you the best fruit.)
Or, if you prefer to fuss over them (or if you have only one seed but want half a dozen trees) then you can carefully cut a corner of the fibrous big seed. Cut only just deep enough so you can see the two halves of the seed, and then break it open.
Inside you find several small bean shaped seeds. Hopefully they are white and not all grey or brown and shriveled...
You can plant those mango seeds individually. They should take about ten days to sprout. If you are worried about the little thing getting eaten, uprooted or trampled you can always put a barrier around it.
If you prefer to first grow your mango tree in a pot, follow the instructions for nursery trees when it comes to planting time:

Planting a Mango Tree
You plant a mango tree just like you plant any other fruit tree.

The best time to plant your mango tree is the beginning of the wet season (summer).
Make sure you select a place in full sun. (And make triple sure you really want a big tree there!)
The tree needs to be sun hardened. If your mango tree was grown in a shade house, gradually get it used to the sun first. Then dig a big enough hole. Carefully separate tree and pot without disturbing the roots. Put tree in hole, fill in, water.

Caring For a Mango Tree
Young mango trees do benefit from regular watering and a little fertilizing until they are established. But don't love your mango tree to death. Overwatering can kill it, especially if your soil is a bit heavy. And too much nitrogen fertilizer will make it weak and sappy, all leaves and little fruit, susceptible to bugs and diseases.
The older the tree gets, the less nitrogen it needs. Phosphorus and potassium are more important.
Mulch your mango tree heavily and spread a bit of compost every now and then. If your soil is reasonable that should be all the tree needs.
If the compost is made with wood ash, all the better. (Wood ash supplies potassium which will encourage fruiting and make the fruit taste better.) For mulch use only rough stuff like hay or lucerne, nothing that may mat down and become all soggy like grass clippings.
Fertilize mango trees in spring and summer only, and only a little at a time.
A good way of helping the tree is foliar spraying with fish fertilizer or seaweed solution. It provides trace elements and avoids deficiencies, but it doesn't overfeed.
But your best bet, even on very poor soil, is still lots of organic matter by way of compost and mulch.

When the tree is one metre high, cut it back by a third so it branches.
When those branches get to a metre, cut the tips off again.
That should give you a nice shaped tree.

Pruning a Mango Tree
Mangoes respond very well to pruning. And they are forgiving. Whatever you mess up, it will grow back...
Mangoes grow terminal flowers (they flower at the tip of a branch), so the more branches you have the better the crop. You can encourage lateral branching with tip pruning. (Only taking off the tips of branches.)
You should also aim for an open crown, taking out whole branches if the centre becomes too crowded, so that air and light can penetrate.
You can use pruning to keep your tree a manageable size and a nice shape. Mango tree growing too tall? Cut it down. Too wide? Cut it back.
Pruning mangoes is not a science. In fact, some commercial growers hire a big, scary machine with a long arm with three huge rotating blades.
The machine drives along the rows and gives the trees a good hair cut so they all end up exactly the same height and width... You can do something similar by hand if you want to keep your tree a certain size.
Usually mango pruning is done after harvest, though in some cooler areas the preferred time is just before flowering.
Ideally you prune only a little bit every year. If you let a mango tree grow much too big first, and then cut it back to a third of its size, the tree will likely skip the next crop... (Cut it back to a stump and it will take two years or more. But amazingly they will grow back even from that!)
Having said all that, after the initial cuts to encourage branching as mentioned in the previous section, you don't have to prune a mango tree. If you don't mind having a real big tree, mangoes grow and fruit very well without pruning!

Flowering, Fruit Set And Harvesting Mangoes
Mangoes flower profusely and self-pollinate very well.

The flowering is triggered by cool nights. In the true tropics a severe cold snap will bring out masses of flowers. For us a severe cold snap is a night below 15°C. In years where it doesn't get so cold we end up with poor crops.
In colder climates it can easily be too cold for mango flowers to be viable. Selecting cold hardier varieties is important for you. (Nam Doc Mai would be a suitable variety in Australia.)
Initially you may see masses of tiny mangoes on your flower panicles, but the tree will shed a lot of them and keep only what it can handle. So don't worry if you see a lot of them drop off.
The mangoes will grow bigger and plumper, and eventually they will start to change colour. How long that takes depends on your climate. The hotter the weather the faster the mangoes ripen.
Usually your mangoes will be ready by the beginning of the wet season (late spring/early summer).
If your mangoes get eaten (wild birds, bats, possums, the neighbour's kids...) you can pick them half green. They will ripen at room temperature. When they say room temperature they mean 18-22°C.)
Be careful when harvesting mangoes; don't get any of the sap on you. The sap can spurt from the fruit stem when it snaps off and can cause burns, allergies and dermatitis.
It also burns the skin of the mango, which will go rotten at that spot.
(Doesn't matter if you eat it straight away, but it does when you pick them half green.)
The best way to harvest mangoes is to cut them off with a long section of stem still attached, and to handle them carefully so that the stem does not snap off.

Mango Pests and Diseases
The most serious mango disease is anthracnose, a fungus that can cause the flowers to go black and fall off. It also causes black spots on stem and small fruit, leaves may go brown...
Some varieties are more susceptible to it than others and it's worse in wet weather. It is worst in areas where it rains during flowering and fruit set. In areas with dry winters anthracnose can often be seen only once the fruit ripens. It develops black patches that go rotten...
Unless you want to spray nasty stuff, like copper solution or fungicides, you may have to live with anthracnose and accept some losses. A healthy tree with strong cell walls will show less infections than a weak one. So keep piling on that compost and spraying that seaweed...
There are many newer mango varieties that show good resistance to anthracnose. Get one of those if you live in a climate with winter rains!
Any other mango pests and diseases, like fruit spotting bugs and borers and whatever else is around, should be kept in check if you have a diverse permaculture garden that encourages beneficial insects.
One more hint is to forsake neatness and leave your lower mango tree branches drooping onto the ground. When everything else has been stung, sucked and eaten, there are usually still mangoes hiding under there...

Can You Grow Mangoes Indoors?
Nope. But you can grow mangoes in pots! So if it is just a little bit too cold in winter where you are, you can buy a dwarf variety and grow it in a tub and bring it inside during the coldest time of the year.
However, even a mango tree growing in a pot still needs lots and lots of heat and sun in summer. Growing mangoes indoors won't do!

Source: www.tropicalpermaculture.com/growing-mangoes.html

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