Trees Grown from Seed

Visitors express their amazement: "Chris! You're a genius", and I hate to disappoint my visitors.

But the truth is that I am lazy; I dislike work.

For the past two years I have set up a wooden tray, about twelve inches by eight inches, holding about two dozen cans (corned beef, tomato paste and the like) loosely filled with soil.

Each apple core or pear core is pressed into a tin, and the whole lot just sits outside alongside the shed, right through fall, winter and spring.

About one month after the last snow has melted, each tin boasts anything from ten to sixteen seedlings.

That means that I need anything from 250 to 350 large cans or pots or jugs.

There is no way that I can get through 300 cans of coffee, or jugs of laundry detergent, or windshield-washer fluid or ...

So I have instituted a penalty (!) for taking away a free tree - you have to bring me an equivalent number of empty pots next time you are here.

This year I instituted "a two-for-one special", which always gets their attention. Yes. This year you have to bring me two pots for every one pot that you take away.

I am desperate!

(photos to follow)

Maple Trees

Apple Trees

Red-Berry Shrub

Wednesday, February 01, 2023

I maintain a 25-litre pail of soil skimmed from the top of my vegetable beds after harvest last fall. This layer was compost at the start of the hear, and must still be rich.

I use cut-down detergent bottles as soil scoops.

The seed tray is an off cut of Masonite, about one square foot, with remnants of old skirting board tacked to that base and then girdled with a strand of soft picture-wire.

Thirteen cores is tricky to place, but I am going for numbers here, so I do the classical 4x3 array and plop a spare core anywhere away from the edge.

A few pips had fallen out, so I scatter them across the soil.

Note that the soil is about one inch shy of the top of the frame.

I have scooped in enough soil to cover the cores and tamped it down a bit so as to partially seal the corners of the tray. One of my plant sticks is labeled with “APPLE” (because they are a mix of varieties) and with today’s date.

Thursday, December 14, 2023

Lemon Trees

Citrus trees in general are beautiful plants. Whether or not you can wait ten or twelve years for fruit is irrelevant; citrus trees provide a delightful variation in green leaf colour through the six-month winter.

The web abounds in pages advising this and that. Some say to dry and then peel the husks from the seeds, some say soak in water for 24 hours, or until the root appears,

I am lazy and hate work.

To compromise I have taken six lemon seeds and not peeled them, as much as peeled back a bit of the husk.

I reason that the husk inhibits entry of water, and so inhibits the trigger that tells the seed to germinate and start a new plant.

The six partly-peeled seeds will be grown apart from those seeds left in their husks. Let’s see who comes first!

Two corned beef tins with cold soil suffice. One tin will hold the six peeled seeds, the other will hold the seeds-in-husk.

Here we are. The “husks” are augmented by the bits of husk that came away from the seeds.

Top up the tins with a bit more soil, spray with water, and leave to drain in the sink. Then onto my study window-sill so that I can keep an eye on them.

And here we are, ready to bask in the warmth of the morning sun.

I have pushed two paper scraps on top of the soil to reduce the evaporation over the next two days.

Here is a citrus tree in my living-room. It sits in a green plastic bottle on the floor, about six feet from where I read books.

The darker leaves, lower down, are leaves from previous years.

The lighter leaves towards the top are leaves that grew this past summer when I took the plant outside for six months.

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