Winter Garden

Getting the gardening going in the winter this year.  We purchased two raised garden bags which have eight - one cubic foot areas each in a 2x4 grid.  The packets are laid out in the order in which we planted them.

The seeds are a bit old but something should still sprout.  We purchased these seeds back in 2013 and most of them have at least an 85% viability rating.  A few even higher.

My wife asked if that means they are all done for now since it's been 12 years.  The percent viability is at the time they expect you to be planting these seeds.  It's more like a half life though.  Every year less seeds will probably be viable and sure eventually they will probably all be useless and not sprout but even 12 years isn't so long for seeds.

There are records of seeds remaining viable for over a hundred years.  Some of the oldest seeds to germinate did so over a thousand years.  One source claims a seed was over ten-thousand years old and was still able to be grown into a flowering specimen.  Not sure how they dated that one but that's what they are claiming.  Personally I can easily believe the hundred year old seeds but past that I think it's more of a guess how long the seed has been around.

Claudette2 Hanging In There

So far she hasn't died yet.  There is still some limberness and some of the tips are still green.  I trimmed back all of the leaves since they were dry and brittle anyway.  The leaf stems fell off but so far the branches haven't followed suit.  

There is a little thinness to some of the branches and they might not all survive the ordeal but I'm still hopeful that she'll pull through.  All I can do now is water and wait and see.  I have to keep the ground from drying out and killing the root.

Clautedde1 however is still doing pretty good.  There are a couple leaves that have turned but that always happens anyway and isn't necessarily a sign that there is a problem.  What I'm watching now is the new leaf growth.  There are a couple new leaves popping in and I just want to make sure they continue growing.  If that happens then we're all good.

I did plant some tomato plants in that pot and they've already sprouted.  I expect them to die though and add nutrients to the soil.  Also the English ivy I put in is still green after a couple weeks.  Waiting to see how this affects things if at all.  Usually there is a little root but English ivy tends to sprawl and cling to things, possibly the outside of the pot.  If on the off chance Claudette2 doesn't make it, I have some other tree seeds waiting in the wings to swoop in for the pot.

Cactus Bush, For Real?

 

I had thought about taking a picture of this bush myself on my way home from work.  Currently you see more bush than cactus.  In fact you can only see about 5 of the paddles sticking out of a much larger bush than you can see here.  This is actually a street view image copied and posted as a jpg.

About a year ago there was no bush and it was just a cactus on the side of the road.

If you had seen this as an image on social media would you have expected it to be AI?  We watched a video recently on how to tell if an image is AI or not and this one might at first hit some of those alerts if you don't realize what you're looking at.  For instance the shadows on the inlet protection walls look a little  off except for the fact that the wall is vertical that the shadow is falling on.  This was probably taken around 8:00 in the morning in the late spring, looking at the grass and angle of the sun. The grass has been recently mown but the bush is obviously growing well.  The sun shadow is also mostly to the East and is high enough in the sky for a fairly steep shadow in the inlet so this is well past winter.

Do you have any pictures that at first seem like they would be AI but are pictures that you took yourself?

Claudette2 Stressed

So at the office I have had 2 smaller cacao trees growing in the same pot.  It was about time for them to be in their own pots but this really puts stress on them.  The larger one is doing fine but this smaller one that was continually living in the shadow of the other is struggling.  There are a couple new leaves pushing out but for the most part i think it will loose ALL of its other leaves.

I trimmed some of them back in an effort to reduce what it was trying to keep going but I think it may have been too little too late for them.  This is after a week of repotting and is better than losing all of the leaves on day 1 or 2.  It has always struggled though to even put out the smallest of leaves in the other pot, the leaves being 1/4 the size of the other tree.

The soil is still moist but not wet and draining out.  Added a little today to make sure there was enough moisture but it's hard to tell exactly what is needed at this point.  I guess I'll just have to be patient and see how things go.  Probably stop by here tomorrow as well to see how many leaves are left and assess the progress and state of the little tree.  There is still plenty of hope though.  I've heard of cacao trees that have come back even after a year of losing all of their leaves.  They really are resilient trees.