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.
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.
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