Mango
Mangifera indica
A dry spell before flowering and a cool rest through winter — the fruit follows the stress, not the coddling.
- Type
- Fruit · Perennial
- Botanical family
- Mixed / other
- Foliage color
- Green
- Flower color
- Orange
- Sunlight
- Full sun, and the brightest position under heated glass.
- Watering
- Freely through summer, though a dry spell before flowering does it good.
- Feeding
- A balanced feed every two weeks, switching to high-potash at flowering.
- Frost tolerant
- Yes
- Flowering
- February
- Pruning
- Prune once the fruit is off, to control size and clear dead wood.
- Overwintering
- Heated glass above 12°C; a cool dry rest helps bring on the flowers.
- Feb–Mar Flowering
- Mar–May Fruit Set
- May–Sep Harvest
- Sep–Dec Growing
- Jan–Feb Growing
- Plant spacing
- 23 ft
- In-row spacing
- 23 ft
- Between rows
- 26 ft 3 in
- Square-foot density
- Not suited to SFG
- Root system
- Woody, with a taproot it keeps
- Working depth
- 24 in–5 ft
- Can reach
- 10 ft down where the soil allows
- Spread
- 25–41 ft across, about 1.5–2.5× the width of the plant
It anchors downwards as well as sideways, which is what lets it stand in a gale and what makes it hate being moved. Plant it small: past a few years in the ground a taprooted tree transplants badly, and often not at all.
The habit is Mango’s own; the figures are what that habit usually comes to at this size, not a measurement of this species. Roots follow the soil either way: a compacted pan, a high water table or heavy clay stops them well short of any of it, and deep open ground lets them go further.
- Mealybugs Mealybug in white cottony clusters
- Scale insects Scale insects — brown bumps, and the sticky honeydew that gives them away
- Spider mites Red spider mite, fine webbing and stippled leaves
- Anthracnose Anthracnose, dark sunken spots on fruit and leaves
- Powdery mildew Powdery mildew over the flower panicles
Beneficial predators that hunt this plant's pests — grow their favourite flowers nearby to recruit them. companion plant
- Ladybird (lady beetle) Coccinellidae
The gardener’s favorite ally: adults and their alligator-shaped larvae each eat thousands of aphids, plus scale, mealybugs, and other soft-bodied sap-suckers. Grow flat, open flowers for the adults and never spray a colony that ladybird larvae are already working.
- Green lacewing Chrysoperla carnea
Its bristly larvae — "aphid lions" — impale aphids, mealybugs, thrips, and mite colonies, eating hundreds a week. Adults feed on nectar and pollen from small open flowers and overwinter in hollow stems left standing.
- Hoverfly Syrphidae
Bee-mimicking flies whose legless larvae graze aphid colonies clean while the adults pollinate. A ribbon of shallow, nectar-rich flowers kept in bloom all season recruits wave after wave of them.
- Big-eyed bug Geocoris spp.Hunts Spider mites
A stubby 3 mm bug with enormous wrap-around eyes, working the soil surface and the low foliage for aphids, mites, thrips and insect eggs. It is the main natural check on chinch bugs in a lawn and it is killed outright by insecticide.
- Minute pirate bug Orius spp.Hunts Spider mites
A pinhead-sized true bug that is the best natural check on thrips, and happily spears aphids, mites, and insect eggs too. It needs pollen when prey is scarce, so keep something flowering nearby.
- Predatory mites Phytoseiulus & AmblyseiusHunts Spider mites
Fast orange mites that hunt spider mites egg-by-egg, and cousins that clear thrips and fungus-gnat larvae. Sold as a biological control for greenhouses; outdoors they follow humidity — mist and mulch, don’t dust with sulfur.
- Rove beetle StaphylinidaeHunts Spider mites
Slim, quick beetles with short wing cases that hunt in soil and litter, taking root-fly eggs and larvae, fungus-gnat larvae, and mites. Mulch and undisturbed ground keep them resident year-round.
Green-leaved fruit, like this one.
The Cottage Garden Companion — the gardener's herbarium at cottagegardencompanion.com