I do not have a green thumb. I have never been able to grow stuff. But through trial and error, I have some mostly successful plants in our house, and a variety of trees and shrubs in the yard. These have come alongside many failures.
For instance, right now I have several pears growing out on the pear tree I planted in 2021. But we got 4 different apple trees that died one at a time (there have to be two for them to cross-pollinate) until after a few years, we gave up.
I also have a fig tree, Texas chaste tree, and mountain laurel that all seem to be thriving. However, the lavender that was doing so great in the pot that I needed to move it just did not like being planted in the ground. Same with a different really pretty purple plant that refused to root in the yard. Who nows why.
My philosophy is "If you can make it, great. If you require too much input from me, you're not the plant for this environment."
I have grown everything so far from sapling. I also killed a tiny pecan tree I put in the ground, and have never been able to get lantana to take. But my neighbor gave me honeysuckle that I expect to more than double in size every few months, just based on how it's been going since it warmed up.
This is my first foray into seed-sprouting. I have so many seeds in my freezer, waiting until the "right" time to plant them. One is my favorite pride of Barbados, but I'm so scared I'll mess it up that I haven't yet made an attempt.
However, we were recently out and about the Hill Country and I saw a beautiful Goldenball Leadtree that had an embarrassment of dry seed pods hanging off of it. I took one and brought it home.
James did a lot of internet sleuthing for me, and we decided that the best way to set up for success was scuffing the seeds a bit in one area to thin out the shell, soaking them on a damp sponge in a plastic bag over night, then planting them one per trough in a cardboard egg carton.
I put 9 seeds in on Monday afternoon, and by Tuesday morning, we had a sprout! I got overly-eager and put that sprout in a pot, but it stopped growing and I accidentally broke it so we'll count that as a successful sprout that got deaded due to human error.
Yesterday, Wednesday, four more had come up.
Having learned my lesson, I left those alone and this is what they looked like this morning, Thursday.
I'm going to leave these until they grow "true" leaves and then just cut the trough off and plant the whole thing in a pot instead of trying to extricate the sprout. At that point, we'll leave it outside at night to get it used to nature. Then we'll see how it goes from there.
Later, I'll put them in pretty big pots and leave them outside to plant in the ground early next spring. This is what I did with the Texas chaste tree my neighbor gave me, and it worked a lot better than putting such a small tree into the ground like I did with the pecan.
I'm hoping to get one good tree in the ground from these seeds, and I'm pretty hopeful at least one will survive. What James read online was that we could expect 1/4 to sprout, but for us, 6/9 sprouted! (And, yes, we have 5/9 now because of me.)
I've learned to ask online before I try to buy pots, because lots of people have pots sitting around they're willing to part with. Can't wait to see what happens with our babies!
