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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Thank you for carrying the Strange and Unusual, February 23, 2008
Very hardy seeds! :) No shipping protection! :(
I only planted two of the seeds in ordinary potting soil (which came with "6 months" fertilizer already in it), and in about a week one of the seeds has stuck out a fat white shoot and started digging.
You will not receive instructions, and unfortunately your seeds will not arrive with any protection from the cold or from crushing injury during shipment. HIRTS, please at least wrap the little guys in bubble wrap, the receipt does not protect from harm. I ordered the baobabs, phantom miracle tree, and eucalyptus. The baobabs made it fine because the seeds are big and hard, and the eucalyptus seeds are smaller than mustard seeds so they use quantum tunnelling to escape harm, but one of the phantom miracle seeds was crushed almost to dust.
That's a sad sight to see because I think of them all as babies. All seeds arrived in tiny zip lock baggies wrapped in a folded receipt. Somebody please update if they change this practice because I am thankful somebody is offering these interesting plant seeds.
The growing baobab is a healthy little guy, very thick shoot, and I have a feeling it's going to take over the world in a few more weeks.
I'm naive about plants in general and very much a beginner with bonsais, so this is a surprise. This is my first seedling ever, and I'd never even heard of a 'baobab' before stumbling into it here on Amazon while digging for unusual fruit trees.
The pictures melted my heart in an instant and I had to try.
After ordering, I researched what I was getting into and took the advice of others for planting: With a pair of large scissors I scraped at the side of both seeds to make a light notch, about 1.5 mm wide. NOT deep through the shell, but mostly just getting the gunk off the exterior and making a weak spot. There's a different color underneath and I was disturbed when I saw it, thinking maybe I'd killed the poor things by cutting too deep.
I filled up a coffee mug with water and heated it in a microwave for about a minute. I made sure the water was only hot to the touch, not scalding. If I couldn't stand to keep my finger in it deep for too long, I wasn't dropping a seed in it. Bathwater hot.
I took a half-sheet of a paper towel and stuffed it down to the bottom of my coffee mug to keep the seeds off the bottom, dropped the seeds in on top, and put the mug of water & seeds on my coffee warmer for a timed hour. It's a cheap warmer and coffee is always lukewarm even when the warmer is on high.
After an hour of "cooking," I dug a little hole about an inch deep in the soil they were headed for, and carefully stuck both seeds in the hole and covered them over. Then I poured the hot water from the mug over the soil to give them a running start. I have not watered them since because the soil stayed wet all week, nothing else in the soil to dry it out.
This Friday, about a week from planting, I gently shifted the soil to see if anything was afoot down there, and I found a baby baobab!
I'm currently replanting the guy in a bigger pot. The first pot was a standby empty pot but small, I didn't expect success, and I figure it's a big tree naturally and even as a bonsai it probably needs some respect. For the replanting I'm going to try a 50/50 "desert sand" mixed with the original rich potting soil. If you research it, you'll find that they do not need a "dry season"... people have found that they keep growing year-round as long as your "rainy season" (artificial or not) keeps going.
Other growers prefer the natural approach and are so rough they throw the poor thing in the basement under a table on its side for half the year to simulate a dry season. Supposedly that abused/natural baobab picks up and carries on the next year when righted and watered and given sun again. This tree is a survivor, and I'm glad it's one I'm trying for.
If it helps: The pot with baobab seeds has been in a cold office all week. This is destined to be an office bonsai, it's the only "property" I have, and I can't help my own environment. It's winter time (Virginia), it's chilly, and the building turns the heat off at night and over the weekends.
I placed the pot with seeds under a 24/7 fluorescent desk lamp, and that's where it's been all week. Even with the chill, and even though it's normal rich potting soil which is still wet, and even though I'm an idiot with plants, I've got a happy little seedling trying to take off! With only a first time ever 2-seed try, YAY!
Thank you Hirts for a chance at something unusual, shipping methods aside.
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Technically it's Baobab/Adansonia but perhaps spellings are interchangeable:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baobab
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