How to Grow Mangos

After eating a mango, instead of throwing away the seed, try planting it to make a beautiful, fruitful houseplant or replant it outside to grow a fruitful mango tree in your yard. The following steps will show you how to grow mangos from a regular mango seed.

Things You'll Need

• Mango
• Butter knife
• Flower pot
• Potting soil

Instructions

1. Purchase a very ripe mango and eat it.

2. Scrape off the extra fruit from the husk in the middle of the mango, which holds the seed.

3. Pry open the husk very carefully with a butter knife. This is difficult and will require patience and a little elbow grease.

4. Find the dried seed inside the husk that is shaped like a huge lima bean with a light-colored area on the top of it (called the eye). Remove the seed from the husk.

5. Use a medium-sized pot with drainage holes for your seed and fill the pot with a good quality potting soil.

6. Dampen the soil and place the seed with its eye up. Cover the seed with about half an inch of the soil. Let the seed germinate for a few weeks.

7. Water the soil with lukewarm water when the surface starts to feel dry, which will be in a few days after planting. Water the soil whenever it starts to look dry.

Tips & Warnings

• Mango trees grow smaller in pots. It is possible that a mango houseplant may never produce fruit. If you live in a warm environment all year, you will have to replant your tree outside once you've got a good sized plant to get the best results.

• Feed your mango tree once a week with liquid plant food that you would use for tomato plants.

• Mango trees will not grow well outside in cold environments. If you live in a climate that gets cold, you'll have to leave your mango tree indoors.

• Be careful not to damage the bean-shaped seed when prying off the husk. It is difficult to pry the husk off the seed, so be patient.