Updates: Loquats, Pears, Apples

We have good news on 2 of the plants and bad news on one of them.


Apples
I'll save the best for last so I'm starting off with the bad news, we have to redo all our apple plants. This only applies to plants, not seeds. Our Granny Smith seeds are still in the picture. One by one they just started dying. We think they might have died from a combination of root rot and fungus. Apparently living in the greenhouse was the perfect place for fungus to grow and we forgot to give them their weekly spray of fungicide.

Pears
Learning our lesson from the apples, we decided not to give the pears the greenhouse, and they are doing quite well. So far, 5 out of the 6 plants have sprouted.





Loquats
2 of the 6 loquat pits have sprouted. You can also see roots at the bottom of the clear container so more to come soon. So far what I have seen from the loquats are that they are slow growers.

Update: Strawberries, Apples, Lemons

Strawberry
They said it would take 7 to 28 days for the strawberries to germinate. Well it's been 9 days and upon inspection, I found 2 seeds that have germinated. They still have their seeds attached so they don't have their leaves yet, but this looks very promising. We'll see in the next 19 days how many of the remaining strawberry seeds germinate.

Fuji Apples
The Fuji apples are doing exceptionally well. The one in the middle already has 7 leaves while the one next to it has 5. Before long the plants are going to be too big for the minature greenhouse and are going to need to be potted.


Fuji Apple Plants



Gala Apples
So far only one seed has a root but it's still early.

Lemon
The lemon plant now has 2 visible leaves. We also found a bump in one of the other compartments which appears to be a seed so hopefully we will have another lemon plant real soon.



Lemon Plant's First Leaves


Plants To Listen For Soon
Blueberries, Honey Tangerines, Nectarines, Peaches.
In a previous post I mentioned that after we find out with the Gala apples that if apple seeds can grow in room temperature we'll do a comparison with the Granny Smiths. I have now realized that we have about half a dozen Gala apples but only 3 Granny Smith so well be conducting the experiment with the Gala apples. Just like the pineapples I will be comparing days of growth.

Growing Gala Apples From Seed

We bought some Gala apples a few days ago and were able to get some seeds. Today we decided to plant them. We are using a similar procedure as we did with the Fuji apples but with some changes.

The seeds are between a folded moist paper towel in a plastic bag, but this time we have decided to see if the seeds will germinate at room temperature. This is mostly due to the fact that the seeds started sprouting much quicker once they were in the soil and exposed to heat. Due to the mold problem that we had with the Fuji apples, the paper towels are moist with our homemade fungicide. The fungicide is 99% water but hopefully this time it will mean no mold.

The next apple on our list is Granny Smith. If the seeds germinate at room temperature for the Gala, we will probably run a comparison with the Granny Smith. Does the cold have any effect on the germination of apple seeds?

Kiwis and Apples

Kiwis
Last week I was quite surprised on how many of the kiwis have sprouted. Well this week, most of the seeds had their first leaves.




Germinated kiwi seeds

They will continue to grow inside the greenhouse seed tray until the roots get too crowded or the plants get too big.

Apples (Fuji)
The apple seed that already sprouted is starting to grow it's third and forth leaves. In another compartment another seed has sprouted and is in the beginning stages of growing more leaves. Apparently it is the compartment where we placed 2 seeds. Upon closer inspection we noticed that the other seed is also growing.


Apple seeds growing


The next apple seeds we will be planting are Gala apples. This time they will not be place fridge. They will be placed between wet paper towels in a plastic bag but at room temperature.

Growing Apples From Seeds

A few weeks ago we started our attempt to grow apple trees from seeds. Using a 12 compartment seed tray Trevor and I are going to plant 3 of 4 different types of apples: Fuji, Gala, Granny Smith, and Arkansas Black.
A few weeks ago we bought some Fuji apples and took out the seeds. One seed in the apple already had a pretty long root coming out of it so we planted it in one of the compartments with seed starter. After doing some research online we decided to place the seeds in a wet, folded paper towel, in a plastic bag, in the refrigerator. It would take about 4 to 6 weeks before the seeds would germinate. Apple seeds also have a germination rate of 30% so we needed at least 10, luckily we were able to get 15. The seed that was already planted was also placed in the fridge.

Well 3 days ago we came across a problem, mold. There were little black spots of mold growing all over the paper towel. Apparently we hadn't washed all the sugar and apple parts off the seeds. We doused the paper towel in fungicide and sprayed some more in the bag. Since the already planted seed had shown no progress, we decided to remove the already planted seed from the fridge to a sunny window. A greenhouse was also placed on top.

Today the mold problem was worse than before. Luckily 3 of the seeds had already shown promising growth. One had a significant root, another showed the beginnings of a root, while a third showed the beginnings of a root and leaves. As we went to get the apple seed tray we noticed that the seed had already sprouted leaves. Quite a bit of growth after 3 days.





Apple plant

The seed that had a significant root was placed in a compartment while the other 2 were put in the same compartment. If both seeds grow one will be pulled out.

Today we also decided to start some pear seeds. Pears are in the same category as apples so they will be planted the same way. We did make one modification. Instead of soaking the paper towel in water, we soaked the paper towel in our homemade fungicide. The fungicide is 99% water anyway. Hopefully this time we won't have a mold problem.




Native Apple Tree 20 Seeds - Be Johnny Appleseed -Malus