How to grow mango at home, even on a rooftop
14 August 2026 · 7 min read
A grafted mango in a 24-inch container can crop in three seasons. Here is the pot, soil and pruning routine that gets you there.
Start with a grafted plant, never a seed
A mango grown from a seed takes eight to twelve years to fruit and rarely matches the parent fruit. A grafted plant carries wood from a proven mother tree, so it fruits in two to three seasons and the fruit tastes exactly like the variety on the label.
Check that the graft union — the swollen joint low on the stem — is clean and firmly healed, and keep it above the soil line for the whole life of the plant.
The pot and the mix
Begin in an 18-inch pot and move up to 24 inches in the second year. Drainage matters more than volume: mango roots rot fast in dense soil.
Use roughly half garden loam, a third compost, and the rest coarse sand, plus a handful of bone meal. Refresh the top few inches of the mix every February.
Water, feed, prune
Water deeply twice a week in summer and once every ten days in winter. Stop feeding nitrogen by late summer so the plant hardens off and sets flower buds instead of leaves.
Prune immediately after harvest. Open the centre of the canopy so light reaches inside branches — that is where next year's crop forms.