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.

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.

Fall Tomatoes

I have to wonder what tomato I got these seeds out of.  I thought they were more round than these.  All of the ones here are kind of pointy and long.

I guess the cross pollination came into play here.  This happens a lot in producing fruit.  Apples particularly are planted in areas with varieties that you eat and varieties you plant because they give off a lot of pollen. This makes it unlikely that the seed you get out of an apple will produce a tree that will give you the same kind of apple.

At any rate they look good and are a decent size.  The one in the back should be good to eat tomorrow and the two in front there in a day or two after that. Several green tomatoes are here and there and I expect it to continue through early fall.

Another seed I got recently is a pine seed from a hotel pine tree I was near.  The tree was trimmed a lot and not too tall but it looked nice.  Thinking about planting it at the edge of the HOA lot where the drainage goes.  Pine trees usually have a pretty good root system and there near the lake will keep it in good shape through the hot summers we get here.

Spring Fig Growth

As you can tell the fig is finally growing this season.  There are currently 5 shoots and if you look closely at the image you can see a sixth possible location at the base of the freeze damaged area.  The temperatures got super low over the winter and severely damaged most of the plant.  Fortunately though I was able to get it acclimated to the soil and it was able to root well and settle in.

The cold damage is clearly visible here as the bark can be seen split up the sides.  These branches are dead but the root system is still good.  You can also see a mint plant growing right up there around the base of the tree.  Wasn't sure how hardy it was going to be but it's spread quite a bit.  There are 2 kinds that we planted but I really couldn't tell you what they were.

Something I learned while at the previous house in Arlington was to encourage growth to pick the lower leaves.  Will try this later today to see if it helps on such a small plant.  It doesn't have much to work with at the moment so I'm going to go slowly with only 1 leaf on 1 shoot.  Probably this front one in the picture since it has some nice leaves growing in already.  That back one i think might be in trouble if I did it to him.  Of course if this works like I'm hoping it does then they will probably all have a bit of trimming before it's all done.  I will want to remove the dead limbs before too long as well so bugs don't start thinking it's a dead tree to break down.  Also limit access to the more tender insides.

The fig tree is just the beginning of what we have growing in the yard though.  There's more in pots and up front that will be shown shortly.

Plumeria Winter

There are a lot of sites discouraging keeping Frangipani, or Plumeria plants in the house.  They usually state how, even though it's a lower toxicity than its relatives, it's related to many much more poisonous plants and they wouldn't risk it being in the same area just in case.

This seems a bit of a stretch since tomatoes and deadly nightshade are also in the same group but no one is worried when they eat a salad. 

I'm more worried for the plant.  This is our plumeria plant after our cat decided that its leaves were perfect toys to bat around.  It had one more leaf but it was chewed on so much that it fell off.  This half leaf is all that's currently left but it being winter I half expected it to be losing leaves anyway.

As you can see from the stem though it had a nice summer even though I can attest that it only had a short summer at that.  I planted it a bit late in the season.

He currently lives at the office with a couple of the cacao trees that I have kept alive for some time now.  I will keep him here until the threat of frost is gone and I can put him back outside in the backyard where it seems to thrive.  In the mean time he gets to hang out here.

This specific plumeria was brought back from Hawaii when my wife and some friends went to visit for a couple weeks.  Originally it was supposed to be for one of their moms but it was left at our house for so long that I decided it needed planting and was told to just keep it.  The passionfruit seeds on the other hand never did sprout.  Not sure what's up there.

The loss of all of its leaves is not a bad sign.  In this area it will overwinter this way and keep just fine until spring when it will leaf back out and hopefully double or more in size.  Some other friends of ours had a couple dozen of these which they would put in the garage every year.  Sometimes they would lose one but usually they all came back bigger than ever.

Lovely New Fig

My new fig tree is doing well.  It originally came with figs already on it.  A couple of them have fallen off but for the most part the figs have hung on.

To plant it I of course dug a hole.  I've done work with landscapers so I have a good idea of how big.  Typically you want a hole at least twice as big as the pot it came in.  I dug out a little more than that because our soil is clay.  If you don't know anything about clay, it doesn't do well with water and drainage.  It's also hard to dig in.  So, the dirt (mostly clay) I dug out, I mixed with a bag of potting soil.  In the end it was still a bit hard since clay will dominate a mixture down to around 20 percent.

Then I put it back in the hole until it was about deep enough for the plant with the soil ball to sit a little above the previous ground elevation.  Then I back filled the rest of the dirt mixture on top making a mound and watered it for nearly an hour, saturating the dirt so it would settle in.

I have since added even more dirt from an old pot to further give it nutrients and ability to absorb water and retain it.  I water it daily dissolving the bits of clay that I wasn't patient enough to mix in.  The resulting water slurry I'm sure it filling in the gaps that remained in the hole.

After visiting some friends a little south of us we got some mint that I planted on top of the dirt around the fig tree.  At first it was still wilting but now there are new leaves popping in on some of the stems.

View of Maui from Big Island

We visited Big Island back when Mauna Loa erupted in December.  One of our friends took this picture of Maui for us from the top of a coconut tree. 

Fortunately all of his friends and family over there were safe.

When we were on Big Island we were able to go see the eruption at night from a rest stop on Saddle Road.  The one thing we were told about only after we were there and so close was the presence of fine threads of glass that eruptions kick up.  It was brought up so casually too.  Like, "Oh, look I have a cut. Must be Pele's hair (the aforementioned threads of glass floating in the air).

It really is a beautiful place to visit though.  I would love to have been able to climb a tree myself for this view.  Even on the ground though, we had a great time.  There is so much fruit just driving or walking down the road I still don't know how people are going hungry there.  Folks in Texas would be picking up all the fruit and preserving it.  And the goat and chicken overpopulation would be under control in a matter of months.  The goats are so rampant I nearly hit one three separate times while driving down a road.  There's nearly a chicken on every corner.  The hogs too are everywhere.  We stayed at a macadamia farm and you could hear them running around and munching on the nuts on the ground.

I brought some fresh nuts home and planted one.  He sprouted and currently his name is Mac.  He grows in the study in a little pot.  Probably should repot him soon.

Papaya Leaves

One of the most interesting leaves I've seen on a plant. The water beads on the leaves fairly easily after the rain we just had.  This has to be one of the more easily identified plants out there.  sometimes it can be difficult to tell what the plant is by the leaf if it is more generic but the structure here is pretty specific.

Other specific leaves I can think of are maple, burr oak, onion, fig, and pine.  These are of course probably because of the widespread knowledge of what these plants look like due to either how common they are or, as in the case of the maple, how famous.

In contrast, it can be hard to tell some trees just from a leaf shape. Although the size is different, if you looked at the shape alone of basil, live oak, thyme, and pepper plants, they all look about the same shape. Kind of what makes this leaf so striking and not easily confused with something else

Claude Continues to Grow

Claude continues to grow.

Shortly after repotting I decided to take him outside for some sun.  The sun wasn't so bad but the wind kicked up and took out a lot of leaves.  he just wasn't prepared for it.

He's since bounced back nicely with all of these leaves being new.  He's also sprouted a new branch down low which is what I'd been hoping for for some time now. He needs some good branching so that he can produce fruit eventually.  I spoke with a chocolate grower who told me to make sure he's got good branching and eventually I'll need to cut the top off to encourage more outward growth.  That's going to be a stressful event.

Cacao Tree Survival

In a presentation by Ben Rasmussen over at Potomic Chocolate, he gave a nice overview of what they do there and what got him into chocolate.  It's a story you will probably hear from most every craft chocolate maker if you talk to them long enough.  Craft chocolate is a passionate business and you don't stay in it simply for the money.

One of the things he brought out was his tree.  You could see it in the background of the video and it was a nice looking tree.  At one point though it had lost all of its leaves and was merely a twig sticking out of the ground.  Someone said that it wasn't necessarily lost though and to just keep it watered.  It may well grow back, and it did.

That's the same thing I have done with some of my trees.  They've had a rough beginning to some of them and, as you can see on this little guy, if you keep them watered they can indeed grow back.  He's even better looking now but this picture really shows how resilient a cacao tree can be.  Of course not all of the trees had this outcome.  Some of them really did die, shrivel up, fall over, and sink into a swamp.  We won't talk about those any further though.  This little guy is the bright spot in the whole tree growing process.  Of course he doesn't come close to Claude (my wife decided the largest and most healthy of the trees needed a name) who is now nearly as tall as I am.  Some day though, with proper care, he will be just as big.

Lacewing Eggs

Little hanging things with what seem to be eggs on the end.  It reminded me of a spider nest I saw once on a show in a rainforest.  These however are lacewing eggs.  They are not some mysterious spider that can eat your face.  The spider really wasn't a face eater either but the irrational fears people have are just that, irrational.

Lacewings are actually beneficial bugs and I'm so going to leave these guys alone so they can take care of other bugs that I really don't want on the porch.

Speaking of the porch, it will soon be the temporary home of a dozen cacao trees in pots until I can find a more permanent solution to where they will live.

Many of them are now doing much better than expected.  They've been hanging out in very low light and a few of them lost most if not all of their leaves.  This isn't necessarily a problem though.  Apparently cacao trees can do this and still come back months later and be just fine.  They can adapt much more than some people give them credit for.  The big tree has been wrapped up with plastic wrap and is ready for the move.  In a few days we will know the results and keep at it.

Cacao Tree March 2020

Moved the big guy up front so the smaller plants could get a little more light.  He's still producing pretty big leaves though.  The one right in the middle is nearly done growing and will pop up soon but every time he makes a new leaf I'm amazed at how much bigger it is than last time.  You can easily tell the progressive size of the leaves as well.  The leaves near the bottom of the trunk are the original leaves as seen in it's earliest pictures.  Eventually they'll turn brown and fall off but hasn't happened yet.

It's already looking like it needs a bigger pot but I'm going to hold off a little until it makes a few more leaves.  Probably May or June before I repot.

The vanilla on the other hand seems to have stopped growing quite as fast.  Still a little growth here and there but it's slowed dramatically.  The other cacao trees have slowed as well.  probably more a note on how I need to water more regularly and in easy to use quantities.  They definitely do like the more light areas in the office.  Some places need bulbs to be replaced and the plants near those areas are less happy with their location. Still have hope though.  Put one outside today with the nice weather.  Hopefully a little bit brighter day will kick it into growth mode.

Cacao Repotted

We finally repotted the cacao tree into its own pot as well as several of the new saplings about ten days ago. Finally getting around to posting it's progress though and it has also topped three feet tall!  This little guy has really taken off compared to the other trees.

Another couple of inches and I'll remove the box it's sitting on so it can have more room above it and it will still be fairly close to the overhead light.  I want to keep that as constant as I can as it grows up.

I think I see a small side leaf poking out about seven leaves from the top.  Hopefully this is the first sign of it branching out.  This should be happening about now, if not sooner.  Two of the other trees already have side branches and are much smaller than this one so I wan't sure what to expect.

It's still a long way off until we can expect any pods though. A minimum of four more years I would expect.  Before that time comes I should have already repotted this guy again in something twice as wide and at least a foot and a half tall if not two feet. Still thinking on that one. Aesthetics vs. root space.  We'll see which one wins out.  A shorter pot is usually more common in an office environment and would give it more room to grow up but a taller pot would give it more room for root support for the grownt I hope it gets.  Hard to decide until I see how it goes.

On the side there you can see the vanilla plants.  They've gotten so long I've draped one of them over the cubicle wall and the other one you can see the pot.  They're now nearly ten times the size from the time I got them.  Faster growing than expected for such a sub par environment.  I have been misting them with water though so maybe that's helped more than I thought it would.

Mysterious Bugs

Found these little guys clinging to the underside of a branch of a crepe myrtle tree.  At first I thought they might be a kind of butterfly but, as I watched and came back later to check on, the never moved.  Pretty sure they're dead already.  Not sure what could have killed a small group like this but I'm suspecting the torrential rain we had a week or so ago may be the culprit. They were obviously trying to find shelter and all had the same idea but the rain was pretty hard and may well have still drowned them or at least made conditions not suitable to live.  Again still not sure what they even are.

One coworker said she found out what they were and had told someone but apparently quickly forgot and still can't remember what she said or even where she got the information.

The closest thing I can find that even resembles them is lady bugs.  Yeah, not so sure but that's my closest guess. If you know or have a guess of  your own, please feel free to leave a comment.

Apple Sprout

It's been some time now since I've tried to sprout an apple seed (about 21 years).  The last time I did so, we decided to go camping and left for the weekend. When we came back it had rained and the poor little tree was underwater and dead.

It only had around ten leaves when that happened.  Of course apple trees seem to grown leaves faster than cacao.  The whole tree was no more than six inches tall.

My problem then was that I had put it in a glass bowl with dirt to grow in and left it outside. In southeast Texas it rains so often I should have known better.

This time around well, it's still in a container without drainage but it's inside the office and will probably stay there for a while until it gets big enough to plant in the ground.  At the new place we've moved to there are plenty of places I can plant it, I think.

If I had planted that tree 21 years ago I'm pretty sure it would be producing pretty good by now.

Gardener's Watch is Sprouting Again

Restarting this blog feels just like this, a little twig growing out of a once seemingly dead tree.  I forget exactly why this blog became inactive for so long but I'm hoping people will start to come back, If nothing else to see the plants growing.  Really, is there any other reason to come see?

This picture reminds me of when we had a house and we were trying to kill off the crepe myrtle bushes/trees.  They wouldn't die.  They just kept coming back like this little guy but with much more gusto.

I still don't have time, much less anything really neat to show or say, to put up a post every day, but I'm at least going to try to keep the posts interesting and make sure I'm not just rambling on about nothing.  Of course there should always be a picture, like this one, even if I didn't necessarily take it myself.

Cacao Tree Progress (Indoors)

Of course the cacao trees are indoors, I'm in Texas and there really is no other way to grow them successfully.  The first time I saw one of these trees was at the Fort Worth Botanic Gardens. I was assisting as a docent for the Butterflies in the Garden exhibit they had one winter and one of the trees there was a cacao tree. It had no fruit on it so really it was less impressive than the second time I saw one of these trees in it's natural habitat with fruit hanging from its trunk in the Dominican Republic.

After tasting the fruit straight from the tree I decided I had to grow them for myself. I have already been told that this is a hugely improbable undertaking and that the chances of success aren't very good but I'm stubborn and went ahead anyway.

Currently the biggest, and until recently newest, leaf is about the size of my hand and more are coming out. One of the little stubs that had been trying to grow is making another go at it with a little fuzz (the beginnings of a leaf). Soon I hope to have a larger pot, I know I've been saying this for a while, and the tree will have a lot more room for it's roots. I'm looking for a tall (2' minimum) pot but not necessarily very wide.  It has deep roots and the Dixie cup I have it in is probably going to kill it soon if I don't do something.

I still have four of the five cacao trees at work and they're doing pretty well. They seem to like a little competition but not a lot. I have various plants in with them and the more crowded the pot the less the cacao trees like it. They still grow though so I don't think they are being choked out. I did thin the most crowded one last week hoping for a little growth spurt. We'll see what happens.

Cacao Tree

The cacao trees seem to like the office environment pretty well. Here is the largest and only tree not planted in an actual pot. I transplanted two almost just like it from solo cups to pots and the roots were already starting to wrap around the bottom a week ago.  They really like it near windows where they can get a decent amount of light but not necessarily full sun.

This little guy sits by a south facing window in a "V" shape. It gets morning and afternoon sun through a window that has pretty good UV protection, keeps the office cooler in the summer. At mid day it's in the shadow of the support for the windows as if it's hiding behind another tree which is just about perfect for him.

The leaves were initially a very thin and translucent which worried me for a little while but as they matured they took on this nice healthy green look. The tops look like they might start to produce more leaves soon but so far that's just a guess. There are also two stubs on the side under the leaves that might also be possibilities for leaves/branches or may be the beginnings of the flower pads that will hopefully produce the lovely cacao pods I so hope will produce before too long.  Either way they will have to be repotted well before that happens. I'm thinking a 5-10 gallon pot should suffice, especially if I keep them pruned to stay inside with max ceiling height of 8 feet.

For more progress see the update post.

Kaffir Lime Tree Update

I had been worried about the poor thing since it had been sitting in the plant hutch for so long and had started loosing more leaves than it was putting out.  Since I moved it to the piano where it's closer to a window it's put forth more leaves and bigger even than it had before. I probably still need to put it in a bigger pot but that's for some other day.  For now I'm happy it's recovering.  I'll have to get the wife to make me some curry soon...

In the Hutch

The fairytale castle cactus is getting bigger. It still looks like just a tower, almost an inch tall, but at least it's growing. It's not meant to be an outside plant except in the spring and fall. Likes water, but not too much, and mild temperatures.

The plumeria and kaffir lime tree are also in the hutch and recuperating from the heat. I'll put them back outside at the end of the month or possibly next month depending on the heat. I've kept them alive this long and really don't want to kill them off by being in too much of a hurry. Kaffir lime seeds aren't that easy to come by.