Growing a Mango Seedling in a Tube for 6 Months

This video is a compilation of the first 5 episodes of my plant growing series entitled, “Growing a Mango Seedling in a Tube,” covering the first 181 days of progress. This video series is still ongoing as of late 2019, and I will continue to release new episodes in the future, as well as the occassional compilation after certain milestones in growth are hit.

I germinated a very healthy-looking mango seed indoors, buried about half an inch (1 inch = 2.54 centimeters) deep in the top end of a 3-foot long plastic tube filled with a 50% sand, 50% clay soil mixture and sealed on the bottom with layers of thick plastic and packaging tape. As soon as the seed germinated and a shoot sprung forth I moved the tube to the outdoors onto my balcony, and later tied it to a metal wire rack for stability and to align the tube better with gravity so as to ensure my mango seedling would grow as straight as possible. I poked holes with a pin into the plastic layers taped to the bottom for drainage after I took it outside, then acquired a small 6-inch hard plastic watering tray to rest the bottom of the tube on.

I sprayed distilled water onto the leaves every few days, on both sides of every leaf from different angles, to wash off parasitic bugs and dust; this also helped raise the humidity around the leaves at night for many hours and also helped mimic the tropical environment that mangoes originated from. Many flying insect parasites landed on my mango leaves throughout the entire first 6 months to feed, but all of them perished and were unable to reproduce or deal real damage because I had treated the soil mixture with dissolved imidacloprid several times. I diced up various species of plants and sprinkled the chopped up leaves and stems on top of the sand and soil mixture, then watered from the top to accelerate the rate of decay for that organic material and to aid the mycorrhizal fungus in decomposing and absorbing nutrients on top of the surface and bringing that nutrition to the root system of the seedling.

If I could do this all over again, I would choose to up the percentage of sand in the mixture to allow for greater permeability for air and water. Sand is about one-third airspace and very porous, whereas fine clay particles will block up the airspaces and prevent water and air from penetrating into the soil. The clay soil I used from the surrounding hills must have a very high clay content, as even a 50/50 mix absorbs water very slowly.