Almost every weekend, my husband and the kids share a little tradition. The glorious EATING OF THE MANGOES.

Yeah, I know, that's kinda weird. Here's the thing. My husband is from Florida. Apparently mangoes abound there.

I am convinced that he was raised on mango juice rather than milk... At any rate, he loves the things!

I have a confession for you guys. I do not like them. I KNOW, I KNOW! Horrible right?! I can totally understand if you wish to unfollow me now...
It's just that the taste and the texture is pretty blech to me...

He has, however, passed this afinity for mangoes on to his spawn. That's right, the kids are mango monsters.

One weekend, once upon a time, I bought a few mangoes for them. Of course, they wanted to eat the darn things. I told the kids, 'wait for Dad to get home, he can cut them up and you all can feast on them.' (I'll be honest, I just didn't feel like doing it.) They did this, and naturally, LOVED it! It was special, Daddy-mango time. Good for them.

You know how sometimes, when you do something once with kids, just once, it magically becomes an essential tradition?

This, apparently, was one of those things. Now we NEED to get mangoes especially to eat with Daddy on the weekends. He cuts them up a special way and they all have a sticky, drippy feast, complete with the obligatory 'ragging on Mom for not liking mangoes' comments. It's glorious.

Well, about a month ago, they did the usual mango madness.

They didn't have the regular green/red mangoes at the store, but they DID have these smaller, bright yellow ones. Of course, we got them. The kids were happy that the fruits were of a good size to each get their own mango, rather than sharing.

Apparently these were especially delicious mangoes, because after they finished up, they all got to talking about how great it would be if we could GROW them!

One thing led to another, and they ended up saving the seeds. I asked WHO would be planting these seeds, and the answer I got was pretty wishy-washy with lots of mumbling...

Well, three or four weeks later, they were still sitting on my counter, looking pretty dry.

I decided to go ahead and plant them. I mean, it's spring, there are giant seeds on my counter, and I have soil and pots! I couldn't resist any longer. (Part of the kids' dastardly plans, I'm sure...)


I did a little research, and found on this site that some kinds of mangoes are polyembrionic, meaning they have multiple seeds in each pod! I decided to cut them open and find out!





After carefully snipping off the end of the seed with a pair of pruning shears, I cracked it open to see this:



They are a little difficult to open, considering you have to be careful not to squash the seed inside. After pulling it out, I found what looked like a giant bean!

Only one.

I went ahead and opened up the next pod. I discovered another, single bean inside. This one had decided to go ahead and start growing. Why bother waiting on being planted?!

Since mangoes are perfectly capable of sprouting inside their hard cases, I decided to leave the last two seeds intact. I just snipped off the end of each pod to make sprouting quicker.

After this I headed out to the greenhouse to plant these guys!

Yes, I used pre-made peat pots. I know. I am ashamed. I had all these plans for making these cool folded-paper sprouting pots from reused paper, but I never had time for that, and these peat pots are SO convenient! I love how you just plant them in a bigger pot come transplanting time! No messing with roots or stressing the plant!


The two on the right are the ones in the pods, the lefties are the beans. I am pretty sure the beans will come up quicker, but time will tell.

I ALSO planted some mystery seeds! No, they are not a mystery to me, but I thought, how fun would a guessing game be?!

Here's the deal. If you made it all the way down here through my rather windy post, you deserve a prize! The first person to guess what I planted gets one SBD!

Here are some clues:

• First, the photo of the seeds before I poked them into the soil:
  
• Second clue: I am growing these specifically with my goats in mind. This would be fantastic forage for them!
• Third clue, this is NOT something people normally TRY to grow. Quite the opposite!
  
  

I think Ill leave it at that. If no one can guess it, Ill add more clues later on.

Good luck! As always, thanks for reading!

♥

I added some additional clues in the comment section!

Editing to add that @minismallholding has made the only guess, which happened to be the correct guess!

The answer was KUDZU! Thanks for guessing, @minismallholding! You've been sent 1 SBD! ♥

badges courtesy of @daddykirbs