A long overdue update on my experiments in growing seeds-harvested-from-food.

Some random gardening experts on the InformationSuperhighway say this sort of thing isn’t worth the trouble – that if you want to grow a tree, you should go out and buy a sapling.

I say pish to that! Because:

1. Saplings are expensive
2. Saplings are often not-easily obtainable where I am
3. Experiments!

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Experiment 1: seeds from a Xmas lunch 2019 pomegranate

25cm

Quite the slow grower. I always think it is dead when it loses leaves in April. Living in the semi-tropics, I totally forget trees can do this.

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Experiment 2: mangoes planted from summer feasting in 2019/20!

35cm

Growth has been pretty rapid despite the soil being pretty anaerobic. The soil came from the very under-performing “compost” bin which needs a Reckoning. Entirely my fault for not coddling it.

Could do with a repot and some better soil.

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Experiment 3: Ginger planted mid-this-year from dried out bits. Nothing happened for ages and I’d pretty much given up hope. Then – boom!

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Experiment 4: We use quite a lot of lemons in ThePalace(OfLove). We had several small delicious local lemons late last year which were simply jam-packed with seeds, so of course there was nothing for it but to chuck them in some soil.

Hopefully I have learned my over-watering lesson and these will grow a little better than my past efforts.

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Experiment 5: I cold stratified some muscat grape seeds in the fridge at the end of last year – and to be honest, forgot about them.

I pulled the pot out of the depths of the fridge a couple of weeks ago and they sat on a shelf doing nothing for a good while.

I was contemplating tossing them, but a couple of days ago noticed growth!

This is exciting!

I haven’t seen a grape vine for sale anywhere in my travels to plant stores. I have no hope at all of getting any tasty grapes, but a vine would be amazing!