Tropical Fruit Sprouts

I'm attempting to start some tropical fruit trees this winter for something to do, growing wise. I have a number of citrus seeds as well as cacao and a couple others that I don't want to bother looking up at the moment.
I'll be posting more about the citrus in detail on the citraphile blog.

Starting Pineapples

We've all been told if we've bothered to ask, to twist the top off of a pineapple and plant it if we want to have another pineapple plant. That's great if al you want is one. I don't like to settle with the status quo usually so I looked for the seeds. They had to be somewhere in that fruit otherwise we would never have more pineapples. Seriously, how many tops have any of us really gotten to grow?
The seeds are a litle smaller than apple seeds and they are just under the eyes on the outside of the fruit. When cutting one up they are usually thrown away. here are just a few of the seeds out of my last pineapple. I haven't gotten around to planting them either but they should last a little longer than the top before having to be planted.
This is of course talking about your standard pineapple you get at the store. If you have plants then you already know that they send out runners and make new pineapples without any hassle.

Japanese Maple

I got back to work yesterday to find a small pile of seeds sitting on my desk. I'm well known for trying to plant just about anything and one of my coworkers decided to see if I could get them to sprout.
At first I thought they were black pine seeds since they had the wings on them but upon asking if that was what they were, I really hoped they were, he told me they were Japanese Maple seeds.
I looked up exactly what they looked like and expected to see some sort of pod that would release them but instead found that the seeds grow in pairs on the end of twigs. He confirmed this and said that all he did was reach up and pluck a few from the tree that grew between his house and his neighbor's house.
I have yet to plant them but I'm sure I have quite a while before I have to worry about them loosing viability.

Surviving the Cold

The onion bed has sprouted quite a few onions this fall. I expect them to do pretty well since the mirror is in place and will keep them pretty warm during the day. Some of them might be leeks by the looks of it but we'll eat those too.

An unfortunate arrival is this litle squash, the first on this year to actually show up. I don't have much hope for him surviving but who knows. I still think we're going to have a pretty mild winter this year and he just might get big enough to eat.