Zuchini

The zucchini plant has been growing fairly well. So far there has only been one female flower to speak of. When I saw it open one morning I made sure it got pollinated and voila it started to grow. now if only it would make more female flowers we could have a nice side dish with dinner, or maybe a baked zucchini dish. At any rate, only one will not do for anything but a quick snack, but oh what a snack that would be.

Tomatoes

Tomatoes are doing well so far this year. These first ones are large cherry tomatoes. There are several plants and three of them so far have tomatoes developing to some degree or another. These are the largest of the group and were the first ones to make an appearance in the garden. That is of course not counting the other vegetables.

The next tomato here is an unknown variety and was the runt of a litter. I really didn't expect it to live where I put it but it surprised me and took off better than any of the other plants planted so far. I guess the pot it's sitting in was just the thing it wanted. Although the tomato shown started well past the large cherry tomatoes, it is at least twice the size of one of them. It is also the only pot on the side of the house that currently has plants I intended to plant there. There are a couple more but they only have weeds.

In with this plant there are also other tomato plants as well as an onion plant and what I believe is either a pumpkin or other squash type vining plant.  It doesn't seem to mind the company and it has kept any other weeds from growing in the pot with it. There are also several other newly forming tomatoes on this plant. Although I'm not expecting a bumper crop, this is already turning out to be a much better start to a year than last year.

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.

Cacao (Chocolate) Sprouts

Quite a few of the cacao seeds have sprouted and are doing well. Most of the healthier ones started in solo cups, go figure.
I have several in larger pots and they're putting down some good roots. Hopefully in a few years I can get some fresh cacao pods.
It will have to keep them pretty short though since they can get upwards of 25 feet high or more. They're understory trees though and thus they will do well indoors in indirect light. The big problem will be is if we keep them inside the house and the cats want to eat the leaves.  Not sure how this might affect them but they will chew on anything.

The reason I really want fresh pods is because I tried getting them shipped in but by the time they got here the pulp was already drying out and not nearly as juicy as I had hoped. I've had a fresh pod before and the pulp was dripping rather than just moist.  It looked like the outer layer had been absorbing the moisture and getting softer. Not sure but this is probably it's natural way of decomposing and spreading it's seeds.