Ha! I should live long enough to see pods. But thanks for your optimism. I'm just hoping they survive the dry house, the short hours of daylight (now improving), and the chill of the early spring. The leaves have doubled or more in size and are greening up a bit:
It's fun watching them grow even though they may never produce fruit. I have a mango seedling that's at least two decades old; it has yet to produce flowers let alone fruit but its trunk is now 8 cm in diameter at the base; if it ever happens it'll simply be icing on the cake.
Even though it can start out as "just for fun", sometimes they will surprise you....... This is a mango that grew on my little 3ft tree a number of years ago, And this in my papaya that continues to produce fruit AND it easy to propagate from cuttings (last years cuttings even started producing fruit by the end of summer) Good luck, and have fun!!
All my exotics spend late April to early September outside where they really seem to enjoy it, and then are moved inside for the winter. I have to admit that the papaya was a 2ft cutting when I acquired it but still took a couple of years for it to produce fruit for the first time - now I have to keeping cutting it back so it will fit in the house and searching for homes for the new cuttings. But the mango was grown from a fresh seed we brought back from St. Vincent. It took it about 6 months for it to think about sprouting but after that it grew nicely in my hot house but slowed down during the winter months when it was moved inside. It was several years old but not very tall - stunted - when it decided to produce flowers. Unfortunately I lost the mango after we harvested and ate the mango - it started getting really sickly as the fruit matured and just didn't make it in the end....just too much stress I guess. Although I have found that some smaller trees that seem much too young to produce anything will actually flower and/or fruit before dying - not sure it this is a last ditch survival effort on the plant's part or not but I've had it happen with a number of young trees including pawpaw (this tree was only about 3ft tall when it flowered) and yellowhorn (which was even smaller when it suddenly developed its flowers). Needless to say neither tree survived.
Unfortunately not all of us are lucky enough to have the option to move plants outdoors for the growing season so we have to make do. The upside is not having to worry about bugs that hitch a ride back indoors. I think it's true that plants bloom shortly before dying; it happened with my calamondin just before it expired.
