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Growing a mango tree from seed – one year time lapse [video]

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Re: Growing a mango tree from seed – one year time lapse [video]

#81

Post by andrew_ »

culi wrote: post #65
andrew_ wrote: post #8

For growing mango from seed, or really anything from seed, you cannot beat a small plastic container (like what cottage cheese, sour cream, or green yogurt might come in) filled halfway with coconut coir. It's absolutely the best medium for germinating seed. Fill halfway with coir and water once a week. Coconut coir keeps water evenly distributed and I've never had a seed or seedling mold over using it. I personally…

Peat moss is a good alternative as well and has most of the same properties you pointed out

from what I understand, it doesn't have the same anti-pathogen properties as coir.

Re: Growing a mango tree from seed – one year time lapse [video]

#82

Post by mikro2nd »

samwillis wrote: post #10
joshuaissac wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I eat mango (10 per year?), but I never opened the shell of the seed. I thought it was the seed. The seed can be planted with the husk, but removing it speeds up the germination because the embryo can access light and water more easily.

I assume they evolved to have the inedible husk to prevent damage while being eaten and increase the distance from the original tree, effectively delaying germination. (If you can describe evolution as having an intention…)

Many seeds need a dormancy period before germinating, and frequently a husk or germination-inhibiting coating (Tomatoes) surrounds the seed as a delay mechanism: the coating/husk has to rot before the seed gets contact with soil and water. For many it's way of ensuring that seeds don't germinate at the start of Winter. For others there's a (sometimes long!) maturation process that happens within the seed (Macadamias) before they're ready to sprout. Other times the husk is there to protect the seed while it goes through the gut of some animal (often birds) so that it gets transported well away from the parent plant.

Nature is pretty clever, imho.

Re: Growing a mango tree from seed – one year time lapse [video]

#83

Post by inglor_cz »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #62
gumby wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of tropical fruit is uninteresting in the USA: bananas, pineapple, mangoes etc have little flavor and typically one variety is available at most. I sometimes have 50 year old memories in dreams of eating fresh fruit and they are so different in form and flavor I wonder if they are hallucinations. But as you point out, they require a climate unavailable on the continent so have to be harvested unripe and transpo…

> I should be amazed they exist at all. Exactly this. Go back a century and the idea of eating exotic fruits like these was the only available to the wealthiest. It's a shame in a way that bananas and the like have become ubiquitous, to the detriment of fruits which were locally available.

Bananas were actually already sold fairly widely in the US in 1922. United Fruit Company et al. imported them by the boatload.

In fact, there was a crisis of supply caused by the Panama disease infesting the plantations, and people were very unhappy with that, because they got so used to the fruit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yes!_We_Have_No_Bananas

Re: Growing a mango tree from seed – one year time lapse [video]

#84

Post by bookofjoe »

atulatul wrote: post #32

If interested in plants/ trees, I highly recommend (not a pure science book) Hidden Life Of Trees https://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Life-Trees-Communicate_Discove...

Also Richard Powers' 2019 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel "The Overstory." It's superb.

Re: Growing a mango tree from seed – one year time lapse [video]

#85

Post by andrew_ »

barathr wrote: post #74
andrew_ wrote: post #8

For growing mango from seed, or really anything from seed, you cannot beat a small plastic container (like what cottage cheese, sour cream, or green yogurt might come in) filled halfway with coconut coir. It's absolutely the best medium for germinating seed. Fill halfway with coir and water once a week. Coconut coir keeps water evenly distributed and I've never had a seed or seedling mold over using it. I personally…

I've found that if you don't transplant out of such containers very early, the root system is stunted. Instead, you can take two cardboard 1/2 gallon milk containers, cut the bottom off of one and stack them to make a tall tube pot. Fruit tree seedlings can survive in that kind of pot for 6 months to a year and then can be planted in the ground without disturbing the roots (you just dig the hole, cut the bottom of th…

that's a great idea. The same cab probably be done with two plastic containers, with large holes in the bottom, cutting away the bottom for the roots. I like to reuse those containers whenever possible, especially since recycling in my area is pretty much ceremonial. I find that if you transplant out of the taller container by the time the shoots reach the lid, you're in good shape for the roots to take to a pot.

Re: Growing a mango tree from seed – one year time lapse [video]

#86

Post by hourislate »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #62
gumby wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of tropical fruit is uninteresting in the USA: bananas, pineapple, mangoes etc have little flavor and typically one variety is available at most. I sometimes have 50 year old memories in dreams of eating fresh fruit and they are so different in form and flavor I wonder if they are hallucinations. But as you point out, they require a climate unavailable on the continent so have to be harvested unripe and transpo…

> I should be amazed they exist at all. Exactly this. Go back a century and the idea of eating exotic fruits like these was the only available to the wealthiest. It's a shame in a way that bananas and the like have become ubiquitous, to the detriment of fruits which were locally available.

>Go back a century and the idea of eating exotic fruits like these was the only available to the wealthiest.

My father told me he was 27 years old when he ate his first banana. This was in Canada in 1950.

Re: Growing a mango tree from seed – one year time lapse [video]

#87

Post by dopidopHN »

gumby wrote: post #47
Ozzie_osman wrote: post #34

I grew up in Egypt, my dad is from a town on the Suez Canal called Ismailia, famous for its mangoes. We would wait the whole year for mango season (August/September). As kids, our clothes would all get mango stains. Our parents would make us take our shirts off before we eat them to avoid that. I moved to the US, and I haven't had a good mango here. When friends visit Egypt, I tell them to get mangoes (in season, aro…

A lot of tropical fruit is uninteresting in the USA: bananas, pineapple, mangoes etc have little flavor and typically one variety is available at most. I sometimes have 50 year old memories in dreams of eating fresh fruit and they are so different in form and flavor I wonder if they are hallucinations. But as you point out, they require a climate unavailable on the continent so have to be harvested unripe and transpo…

As a whole, food quality is the us is not great. Specially fresh produce. The lack of affordable farmer market is my take on it. And I don’t mean fancy farmer market for bourgeois bohème type.

Where I grew up poor folks go to the market because it’s cheaper than a supermarket.

Re: Growing a mango tree from seed – one year time lapse [video]

#88

Post by rrrrrrrrrrrryan »

gumby wrote: post #47
Ozzie_osman wrote: post #34

I grew up in Egypt, my dad is from a town on the Suez Canal called Ismailia, famous for its mangoes. We would wait the whole year for mango season (August/September). As kids, our clothes would all get mango stains. Our parents would make us take our shirts off before we eat them to avoid that. I moved to the US, and I haven't had a good mango here. When friends visit Egypt, I tell them to get mangoes (in season, aro…

A lot of tropical fruit is uninteresting in the USA: bananas, pineapple, mangoes etc have little flavor and typically one variety is available at most. I sometimes have 50 year old memories in dreams of eating fresh fruit and they are so different in form and flavor I wonder if they are hallucinations. But as you point out, they require a climate unavailable on the continent so have to be harvested unripe and transpo…

I wonder if there's a market in the U.S. for luxury fruits. I always hear about these incredible fruits available abroad that are only available in certain seasons, in certain climates, that decay quickly and travel poorly.

Presumably, you could grow god-tier mangoes year-round, right in the city, by simulating the right climate in fancy greenhouses - if you did it right, you wouldn't have an electric bill. If the mangoes really are as great as I've heard them described, I can imagine people would pay a huge premium for them. You could sell them to fancy restaurants, make ultra-luxury fruit baskets (I understand these are a big deal for Asians & Asian Americans), and eventually scale up to selling them to upscale grocery stores.

Re: Growing a mango tree from seed – one year time lapse [video]

#89

Post by hedora »

gumby wrote: post #71
VBprogrammer wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I should be amazed they exist at all. Exactly this. Go back a century and the idea of eating exotic fruits like these was the only available to the wealthiest. It's a shame in a way that bananas and the like have become ubiquitous, to the detriment of fruits which were locally available.

> It's a shame in a way that bananas and the like have become ubiquitous… I’m happy to be able to eat a banana; merely sorry that the ubiquitous one is such a boring variety. The consequences of the industrial monocrop banana will be solved soon one way or another: the cavendish is under attack and either it will be replaced or all bananas will go extinct. I suppose Hegel would have appreciated this example.

Bananas went (commercially) extinct decades ago. The things sold in stores today are a different fruit.

Re: Growing a mango tree from seed – one year time lapse [video]

#90

Post by binarynate »

gumby wrote: post #47
Ozzie_osman wrote: post #34

I grew up in Egypt, my dad is from a town on the Suez Canal called Ismailia, famous for its mangoes. We would wait the whole year for mango season (August/September). As kids, our clothes would all get mango stains. Our parents would make us take our shirts off before we eat them to avoid that. I moved to the US, and I haven't had a good mango here. When friends visit Egypt, I tell them to get mangoes (in season, aro…

A lot of tropical fruit is uninteresting in the USA: bananas, pineapple, mangoes etc have little flavor and typically one variety is available at most. I sometimes have 50 year old memories in dreams of eating fresh fruit and they are so different in form and flavor I wonder if they are hallucinations. But as you point out, they require a climate unavailable on the continent so have to be harvested unripe and transpo…

There's a tasty fruit native to the midwest US called pawpaw (aka Indiana banana) that's like a mix between a banana and a mango:

https://www.seriouseats.com/what-are-pawpaws-wild-fruit-midw...

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