sprouting a mango clam

We had a mango whose ripeness was sadly miscalculated, and by the time we cut it open it was mostly brown and inedible. That seemed like such a tragic waste of a mango, so I turned to the internet, and apparently it's really easy to sprout a mango from the pit. (On some gardening sites, there were people in Mexico saying that mangoes were so easy to grow, they grew like weeds in their lawn. I know that Mexico has its share of problems, and there are any number of reasons why I wouldn't want to live there, but the idea of mango trees being so common that they are weeds sort of makes me sigh with longing.)

The first step was to pry open the pit (actually just a husk) to get the seed inside. The internet kept saying it would look like a giant lima bean, but mine was more mollusk-like.


The next step was to stick it in some dirt, keep it warm and moist, and wait a few weeks.

I heard some people say that overripe mangoes sprout more quickly, so I'm hoping that the fact that mine looks like a clam oozing out of its shell is a good thing.

I'm never going to get fruit or flowers off of it--not in Minnesota--and to be honest I don't even know what a mango tree/houseplant looks like, but that doesn't matter a whole lot. I just need to indulge my urge to stick stuff in dirt and see if it grows. I'll post more pictures if I get a sprout.