Reply to Simon_grow's question. Nearly all fruit trees that are grown from seed go through a juvenile stage before they fruit for the first time. Out of about 5,000 mango seedlings that I have grown to maturity, the earliest time to maturity has been about five years, most take double that time. We fruited three mango trees last year in 2013, that were planted as seeds in 1994 and 1995. These included the Parrot mango that we showed pictures of the fruit last year in a post on the forum. If you graft a piece of budwood from a seedling onto a mature tree, the hormones for maturity in the adult tree will transfer to the budwood and you can induce early blooming and fruit bearing. The big problem is the statistics are working against you. Out of every 1,000 seeds we planted in our breeding program, only about 1 out of 100 would grow and tolerate mildew and frost. Out of the 5,000 seeds we planted, we now have about a dozen that bear fruit in quantity and the fruit also taste good. One of last years first time fruiting mango trees that had passed all the other tests we have for a new mango variety, failed the final test. When our 5 person tasting panel sampled the fruit, each of our tasters had the same reaction: yuk!
Growing a mango tree from seed is like hoping to win the lottery. You can't win the lottery if you don't buy a ticket. If you are lucky and plant a mango seed, you might just grow a blue ribbon mango winner. Our advice: Go for it!
Mango Professor
Yuup go for it, not just Mango but every fruit out there, in a thousand years if we all participate in cold selection, Frozen Mango will become a common fruit tree in every Alaskan household courtyard. And certainly my sister who live in Homer Alaska, her great-great...gradnchildren wont be needing to steal my great...great...grand.children fruit in Florida. Hell look who thought I be growing apple & blue berries in South Florida just three centuries ago!
