Hi my name is Sam and I am a guest blogger here on sanseilife. I am also Paula’s brother. My story?
Both our parents grew up on farms and definitely had green thumbs. My sister and I are city dwellers but we both like to watch plants grow.
Eating yummy cherries about a year ago I noticed the large pile of seeds I had accumulated and decided I would start my own grove of cherry trees. Out of about 100 seeds I tried to get to take root, only 3 took root and only these two survived. Just to get 3 seeds to root took about 3 months. I used a process known as “stratification”. First they lived in the freezer for about a month and then moved to the refrigerator for about two months.
Almost had given up on them until one day I noticed three of them were starting to crack their outer coverings….then a couple of days later I saw the roots starting to form….then I planted them in some soil and watched them carefully for about a week…. One did not make it, but these two did.
I am waiting for them to get about a foot tall and will use them for my first attempt at bonsai. They are already a year old and slow growing. I only use the most expensive and high tech containers. The one on the right is a won ton soup container from our favorite Chinese take out place.
These are lemon trees also from seeds from fruit bought at the grocery store. These were easier to start then the cherry trees. All I had to do was to remove the outer covering from the seeds and put them in between some wet paper towels in a plastic baggie. After about a week of leaving them in my kitchen storage closet (cool and dark) they started to take root….almost all of them….very easy.
I have heard that these will produce lemons when they to grow big enough. I’m going to see if I can get these to produce fruit for me.
If you look real close you can see a ghost in the picture on the left!
This is my apple tree that I started about two years ago. It was doing really well until I accidentally bought some soil that had some little flying insects in it which infected all my plants. The way to get rid of them was to let the soil in the plants dry out to stop the cycle of the laying eggs. Well, this plant was near death after that but it is starting to recover.
This is one of my fancier containers, notice the fancy design around the rim.
Since it is already miniaturized I am going to try bonsai with it too. I like the bend in the “trunk” near the bottom. This little guy already has character.
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