Baobab Friday... and all the other days

Saturday, December 24 (10 days old):


Sunday, December 25 (11 days)


Monday, December 26 (12 days)


Tuesday, December 27 (13 days)


I missed a day for some reason, then Thursday, December 29 (15 days), I didn't use the right white balance but in any case:



And today, Friday, December 30, at 16 days old:



Good progress so far. You can't really tell from the photos, but it's been getting taller and taller. It's taller than Za 1 ever was, but that might be just because of the lack of daylight. It's slowly turning green, and the first set of true leaves is getting started. I'm paranoid that it has too much water, or too little, or too something, but actually, it's not giving any sign of ill-health so far.

Inshallah...

More, more, more!

You know what's great about having your own baobab? Everyone who knows you will think of you every time they see a baobab, forever. People used to say to me "how is your dog?" or "I saw you walking your dog." Now they say "I saw a baobab on TV and I thought of you." Yay, people are thinking of me!

Also, when you have a baobab, people actually want to hear about your garden. Or at least about your baobab. People who don't know me well still ask about the dog; true friends ask about my baobab. (I suppose it would be nice if they'd ask how I am, but, you know. Baby steps.) And unlike the dog, I can go places without being asked where is my baobab. I see people at the grocery story and they ask "where is your dog?" As if dogs were allowed in the grocery store. But as I don't walk around with my baobab, people don't actually ask where it is.

Anyway.

The downside of having a baobab is, you have to have more baobabs. I suppose most of you don't know the saying "one is too many and a thousand is never enough," but it's true of baobabs, too. One baobab is too many, in that they're a lot of anxiety and way too big to keep as indoor plants. But then I was watching a documentary about Madagascar, again. That's what started this whole baobab mania in the first place. And if you watch baobab documentaries, you'll notice there is never a baobab. Baobabs are very gregarious; they form gigantic forests, further than the eye can see.

Not only that, but as you may recall, there are... I think 10 species of baobab: one in Africa, three in Australia, and six in Madagascar. A. digitata is the African one; A. za is one of the Madagascar ones. Those two are easy enough to source online, but then I discovered something else: the poster child of baobabs, the one everyone thinks of when they think of baobabs, is actually A. grandidieri. It's the tallest and "the most beautiful" of baobabs. And it's named after Grandidier, who also named Grandidier's vontsira.

This can only mean one thing: I must have a Grandidier's baobab.

A. grandidieri, however, is more difficult to source. I found a supplier, of course. I pretty much find whatever I want. It offered packs of five or bulk packs of... I don't know, 500 seeds? Or 50? I didn't look at it that closely, as I'm not after planting baobabs in bulk. I put one pack of five in my shopping cart, and then I thought better of it and put a second pack... and it told me there wasn't enough in stock.

What?

Are you suggesting that in the whole of the Intertubes, there are only five seeds of A. grandidieri to be had?

No there isn't. Not anymore, because I bought them.

But then, the supplier's minimum order is $15, and the A. grandidieri seeds are $4.90, so I added two more baobabs: A. madagascarensis and A. suarenzis. But at $4.90 each, that's still $0.30 short of the order limit. Yargh! Darn you to heck, baobabs!!!!!

I filled up my order with a cheap pack of black pepper seeds, formerly one of the most expensive commodities on earth.

My New Year's Resolution is, not to plant any more baobabs until I have a grow light for them.

What else baobabs need

Daylight. Everyone here is desperate for daylight. I think I've explained before that we're on the shore of a mighty lake which is supposed to freeze in the course of November. While the lake is open, it snows; once the lake is frozen, we get cold but clear weather which is very pleasant. Unfortunately, this fall has been hideously warm, so it's been overcast for three months. There have been a few sunny days; I remember that clearly. At least four of them. Five, even. But mostly, there is a general feeling that we haven't seen the sun in months. Everyone who has a SAD lamp is using it, and those who don't are trying to buy or borrow them.

And so with plants.

My flesh-eating aliens are now immensely tall, and one has a bud, but they're pale and I have to rotate them every day, because they lean towards the window. The monitor morning glories are all thin and pale and lying flat, though not dead. The lemon trees are dropping leaves; Hope, as always, is making a big drama of it, and Faith, as always, is stoic but nonetheless stressed.

And my new baobab is pale like an endive, and taller at two weeks of age than Digitata 1 was at three months. It must have light. And I don't have a grow light.

Luckily, I got a raise just before Christmas, so I will soon have a budget for grow lights and such things, but not until my January 13 paycheque. Then by the time I place the order and they ship me a large parcel in the mail... and hopefully it all gets here in one piece... I'm thinking this baobab needs to make it another six to eight weeks with no light.

Sigh...

Mind you, the lake could freeze in the next six to eight weeks. By the time I get the light, I might not be needing it. Who knows.

Anyway, my baobab needs light, so I put it on the desk under the desk lamp. It's not a grow light, but it's all we have for now, and plants do respond to artificial light to some extent. If I stay up quite late, by the time I go to bed, the more flexible plants are leaning towards the floor lamp I use. So, I put the baobab under the desk lamp. Hopefully that will help.

Water for baobabs

I have developed a cunning strategy for keeping Za 7 alive: give it exactly what it wants. I don't negotiate with terrorists, but I obey baobabs.

This raises the question: what do baobabs want?

I googled it. Sadly, no one seems to have posted a precipitation graph specifically for A. za, nor can I find with any certainty where exactly A. za is most successful. In fact, I couldn't even find any specific information as to where it grows at all, except I know it's in Madagascar, and it's got to be on the west side, since that's the arid part of Madagascar.

On that note, observe what interesting things one learns from gardening. If I didn't have an interest in baobabs, I might never have learned that there is a mountain range down the length of Madagascar, the east side being exposed to the Indian Ocean monsoon, and the west side being the rainshadow side and therefore arid. But anyway.

What I did find by googling is a handful of climate graphs for a handful of cities on the island, which I then located using Google Maps. The driest one was Toliara, somewhere close to the west coast in the southern part. And the precipitation graph for Toliara is as follows:


Hmmm... Question: is this per day, or per month? I'm guessing per month, but I'd better find out for sure, so I don't misjudge my watering by a factor of 30 one way or the other.

Then I converted it into the number of milliliters of water for a 4" planter, where Za 7 is currently. It comes to about 300 mL for the dry months, up to 3 L for the three wet months. So actually, it's not really that dry. In fact, putting 3 L of water into a 4" planter in just a month seems perfectly impossible to me, unless the tree is drinking like an Irishman.

And the next question is, what part of the cycle is right now? Obviously not "December" since we're in the opposite hemisphere, but not "June" either, or at least I would think not. You'd think plants would start in the rainy season, not in the dry one. But I don't actually know. In captivity, baobab seeds tend to germinate rather randomly, and they don't like wet conditions.

Then again, does the amount of light drive the drinking? That would seem logical, in which case they need the extra daylight to use the extra water. Or not, because they're spongy; they don't really drink the water, just store it for the dry season.

Hmmmm...

I guess the moral is, I still don't know any better, except that at some point, I need to make it drink half a cup of water a day. And that's certainly not what it needs right now.

Baobab Friday rides again!

This is Adansonia za #7. It's kicking arses and taking names.

Bansai, little tree!

No pressure, little tree

You may or may not know that I currently work as a driver for people with disabilities. It's a nice job, but the downside is, my clients are somewhat more likely to die than the average construction worker or truck driver. (Though as to that, when I was driving in Alberta, there were drivers dying every week. It's a real bloodbath down there.)

Accordingly, one of my favourite clients died last Wednesday, December 14. She was 87 years old and had been widowed only five months, after 69 years of marriage. If you're into TV, you may be interested to know that she was the mother of Joe from Ice Pilots NWT. Because my life is that cool.

Why am I telling you this? Because the same day, my Adansonia za seed sprouted, after three other seeds failed and this one had been in the soil for two months.

As you know, I only consider a plant "sprouted" once it has broken the surface. This seed, however, was planted way too shallow, so it broke the surface when it had not even half an inch of root. And this is lucky, because it had white mold all over its shell. Because it broke the ground early, I was able to see it, wipe off the mold, remove the contaminated soil, and bury it again. But as the root kept growing, it kept pushing out of the soil, so I kept having to heap more soil over it. I though it would die for sure. As of today, though, it's still growing, and now the shell is split and you can see the baby leaves getting ready to emerge. In a few more days, it should be able to right itself and become a bona fide "sprout" rather than just a seed with a root.

But the thing is, because it sprouted the day Bertha died, I have formed a mental association between the two. Now it's like the baobab is a reincarnation of Bertha, or a memorial, or somehow a continuation of her spirit in baobab form. Now if it dies, I'm gonna feel like I let Bertha down. And it's rather likely to die, I should think, seeing as it's a tropical tree hatching in 60 N latitude on or around the winter solstice.

Nope, no pressure at all...

Darn you, CryoVat!

Today, I destratified my holly seeds, after they had spent 60 days in warm stratification and 61 days in cold stratification.

The good news is, they didn't dry out.

The bad news is, they got mold.

Hmmm...

In the beginning, I think there were about 30 seeds. Some got buried, some stayed on the surface of the CryoVat. The mold is of a type that seems to operate only on the surface. Therefore, it is possible that there may still be live seeds in there somewhere.

Whatever.

I planted them in #18, previously a lychee / baobab nursery which never seemed to stay moist. I'm pretty sure everything in there is dead; on the other hand, it never got moldy, either. So I remoisturized it, dumped in the CryoVat, and raked it in.

When I think about it, the CryoVat was scalded soil, which may account for the mold being only on the surface. Or not. Whatever.

Then, I threw a few of my harvested morning glory seeds on top of the holly nursery. Partly because I'm not having any luck with sprouting lately and morning glories are easy to sprout, but more importantly, because I have trouble maintaining suitable conditions in my nursery planters. The little geranium pots with the coffee, kwyjibo, baobabs and cherries are always either too dry or too wet. (Good news though, no mold, except one of the kwyjibo seeds rotted completely. I'm guessing it wasn't clean to begin with, seeing as none of the other pasteurized soil has any issues.) And the thing with seeds is, you can't tell if it's too wet or too dry until they're dead. So I figure, morning glories will let me know whenever it's too dry, and absorb excess water quickly when it's too wet.

That being said, if you're gonna try the same thing at home, don't go too crazy with them. Morning glories are jungle plants, they can tolerate disgustingly wet conditions that favour mold. In fact, jungles are pretty much built on mold. So just because your morning glories are happy, doesn't mean everyone else is ok. It's just a guideline, really.

To get back to my poor holly seeds, now that they've spent four months in stratification, they're still supposed to take "16 months to three years" to sprout. That is to say, we should get something some time between February 2013 and October 2014.

Um...

That's not gonna work. I can't say for certain that there are any mold-free seeds now, but I'm pretty sure there won't be in three years.

Thus the moral is, I must try again. But this time, I'll seed them outside in a large container. That seems to work much better for stratification than messing with small containers in the fridge. If I seed them at the end of June, they'll have two warm months and two increasingly cold months, and then come inside just as the ground is freezing outside. That's a much better approximation of natural conditions.

Better yet, I'll make two batches. One will come inside at the end of October, one will stay out on the balcony. The more methods you try, the more you might succeed.

Also, I need to identify the perfect monitor plant. It has to be fairly shallow-rooted, to monitor conditions near the surface, where the seeds are; and it has to be fussy about moisture levels, and have a clear way of communicating when it's unhappy, and whether the problem is too much or too little water.

Hmmmm... I'm thinking nemophilas.

Ah well. As I always say, there's always next year.

I like you, plants

Yesterday, I moved the aliens from under the piano to a "sunnier" spot. Of course there is still no sun and the lake is still open so there will not be sun for a long time. Anyway, I moved them to a better spot. I also measured the leader. It was 8" tall yesterday, but it was leaning towards the lack of sun. I rotated it, and now it's looking straighter and taller. They have still made no attempt to devour the dog and me. I'm hoping that by establishing a good rapport with them now, I can sic them after my enemies come summer.

Later that day, I watered... I don't remember what, but I know it's in my log.

Today, I watered Deng Xiaoping. It's more than doubled in size since it started leafing out. It's got lots of pretty, small, pale leaves. And it's still a rebel, obviously.

Sometimes I check on my hard-to-hatch seeds that never hatch. They can't win forever. There is plenty more where they came from.

Do I have a point?

Probably not. But plants are good company, in a way. They don't talk much, but they're always up to something interesting. (Except sometimes they die, but then, so do people. Plants are better company while they're alive.)