10th October 2010: A day to think about Trees!

With 10.10.10 heading towards us fast, we at TREE AID are encouraging you to plant a tree to help cut your carbon emissions by 10% as part of the global 10:10 campaign. You can plant a tree anywhere: in your garden, in a pot or at your children's school.

But if you can't find the time, or the perfect spot, we can make it even easier for you, we can plant one for you! Check out our gift catalogue for a range of tree gifts which tackle poverty and provide environmental protection in the drylands of Africa. For only £10 you can help plant a tree in an area which really needs one, reducing your own carbon foot print as you go! It’s not just about planting trees though, its about making sure they live for hundreds of years!

We work with villagers to ensure the greatest chance of survival for the young trees. With TREE AID, villagers learn how to set up tree nurseries; to grow, care for and use their trees sustainably. They learn to decide which tree products will sell and how to add value to them to get a better price at the market. So, while money doesn’t grow on trees, TREE AID helps villagers make money from the things that do, like shea nuts used to make butter for cooking and cosmetics. With the income they can pay for food, schooling, healthcare and other essentials. We also support villagers to fight famine by growing tree foods and helping them improve crop yields, so families can thrive and not just survive.

Seeds' day out!

After a busy two weeks the seeds and seedlings had the bank holiday weekend out and about at the Sculptree festival at Westonbirt Arboretum.


18 of the latest batch of Baobab seeds had germinated, so I separated each one out into its own pot. The Baobab and Neems seeds had come in bags of quite large quantities, even for the biggest of windowsills, so I packaged up small bags of the seeds so that visitors could have a go at growing tree seeds too!

Despite the weather there were plenty of interested visitors, and it seems like there will be plenty of seedlings too soon as all of the seeds sold! If you bought some Baobab or Neem seedlings let us know how you get on. This blog has been all about experimenting with what works, and finding out what doesn't, so I'll be really interested to read any comments or find out any tricks and tips for success.

Where are the Shea seedlings?

It's been a couple of weeks now since the sprouted Shea seeds were potted up, and there's no sign of life as yet. It's difficult to tell sometimes if seeds are just taking a while to sprout or whether they've rotted off. It's even more difficult given that I'm still in the territory of the fairly unknown in terms of compost and water requirements with these exotic seeds. So the waiting game continues with the Shea for now.

In the meantime I've planted up some of the Dawadawa and Tamarind seeds that arrived from Africa with Philip. They were given about six hours to soak this time, as the germination of the last sets of seeds seemed to be most successful after 5 hours in hot water. When I opened the flask and poured out the seeds the Tamarind seeds had gone really slimy! They had quite a bit of stringly, clear slime with reddish bits in around some of the seeds. Now if they'd been in to soak for 24 hours or more it would be more understandable as the seeds would risk rotting and breaking down, but is that what's happened after just 6 hours? I guess the only way to find out its to plant them anyway and see what happens, which is exactly what I did. I've planted about 10 of each in total, so hopefully we'll see some shoots soon.

I also planted up a whole lot more Baobabs, hoping tp get plenty germinated to take to Sculptree, the festival of the tree held at Westonbirt Arboretum from the 23rd to 30th of August this year. The germination rate from the last batch was about 1/3, so I've planted 40 seeds and will see how they go in the run up to the festival.

New seeds!

This week new seed have arrived from Africa! TREE AID's new Chief Executive Philip Goodwin has just returned from a field visit to West Africa, and managed to pick up some different types of tree seeds. After finally getting arund to repotting the baobabs and neems into more cartons and larger plastic drinks bottle, it'll be good to go through the fun of the germination process again.

The baobabs are still looking pretty good, and the roots are certainly looking healthy, with fibrous tap roots developing well in most of them. The neems were interesting to repot, as their root network looked a lot more like a non desert plant - much more spread out with no distinct tap root. I've put them in cartons for now, but depending on what they look like next time I'll probably put them in you standard dimension pot.

On to the new seeds! I'd asked for some different seeds before Philip left for Africa, and he brought back two new types. I've got Dawadawa seeds (Parkia biglobosa) and Tamarind (Tamarindus indica) too. These trees are often grown in drylands Africa and have many uses as nutritious foods, bee forage and ultimately income generators. They will need the same treatment in hot water as the last batch of seeds, so I can't do anything with them today as I'll need to get them soaking the day before.

Interestingly though, Philip also brought back some Shea seeds (in the picture above) which weren't inteded for planting but just to show where shea butter comes from, which is a valuable product for earning cash to pay for healthcare and schooling. On the way back though, three sprouted in the bag! Seizing the opportunity they were whipped out, and potted up straight away so that they didn't dry out. There's no sign of green shoots yet, but it's early days so we'll see what happens there!

Why am I growing tree seeds?

The question isn't one of despair (!) or philosophical musing, but one that seems to be more relevant as the seedlings get bigger. Having salvaged one of the seedlings that had been looking a bit off, with plans to try a repot on the other two, and with all of the plants still growing and in need of another repotting next week I figured it's about time I thought about why I'm growing and looking after the Baobabs and Neems.

Now it's been good to do some research and remind myself of words like cotyledon, and the novelty and entertainment value has been pretty good too; certainly if you're someone who enjoys seeing things grow. Novelty and entertainment on the other hand are most likely not the most important consideration of people living in rural, drylands Africa who use these trees and their products in every day life. People like Anna Noali, from Nagre in Burkina Faso, will be growing and caring for large batches of seelings. They will plant them around their villages and farm lands so that they and their children can develop long term sources of food, fuel, medicine and shelter as well as looking after their soils and land.

I, of course, have none of this sense of urgency. I suppose that in the same way as growing carrots in your garden or allotment, growing the tree Neems and Baobabs from seed has given me a better and more tangible understanding of what it might be like to take such practical steps to providing for your future. And more practical steps are urgently needed next week - namely sand, compost and another round of improvised pots!

Not enough water, or too much?

For maybe two weeks now three of the Baobab seedlings have been looking, to varying degrees, a bit under the weather. As you can see from the picture, some of the leaves have gone yellow, and are very soft and floppy. The rest of the plant has also stopped growing.

Now yellow leaves usually mean that something's wrong in the water department; either the plant is getting too much, or not enough. The only thing that has happened in the past couple of weeks water wise was that Morag, who is in the office all week and looks after the watering, was off on leave for a week. Now as we know, our seedlings are dryland plants, and so one might think that they would manage ok with missing a watering. The thing that is more strange is that only these three plants have been affected, whilst there are the five healthy Baobabs that I potted up last week, and two of the delicate looking Neems still going strong.

Two of the seedlings do look pretty much past saving, but the third might be salvageable. It'll be a case now of making sure that these do get enough water, seen as that seems to be the most likely thing to have changed, which could either be the kill or cure. What's really interesting to me is that plants that are ultimately treated in the same way have different success rates - a fantastic example of the 'survival of the fittest' principle and evolution in constant progress!

Bigger Baobabs and Blue Peter pots

It's been a good few weeks since the last repotting of the Baobabs, and they've been growing well, doubling in size really. Having seen last time that the roots went so deep relative to the height of the plant I thought it was time to give them a bit more space again.

Based on the roots I needed to make sure that the depth of the pot was prioritised over the width. Now very tall and narrow pots do exist, but they're not easy to find and not necessarily worth the outlay. Especially when people have wonderful ideas for reusing day to day items instead! The environmentally and financially considered idea of using empty juice and milk cartons seemed like the best and most colourful way forward.

After cutting the very tops off the cartons (carefully!) I made five holes in the bottom - just big enough to push a pea through. This round of repotting showed that the roots hadn't grown as much as I might have expected, and were just a bit longer than they had been before, and are now only half the size of the rest of the plant. There were also far more lateral roots, although they're very delicate and short.

I think the cartons look quite good in their different colours, and the Baobabs themselves are looking quite good too really, with new leaf growth. The Neems are doing well with leaf growth too, and I think look really pretty with their feathery leaves. We'll see how they go in the next few weeks, and maybe get them out in the sunshine!

On the importance of leaves

As promised last week I've done some looking into leaves, why they are different across diferent types of trees and plants, and what makes our Baobab and Neem leaves specially adapted to the hot dry conditions of countries like Burkina Faso and Ghana.

It would seem that something sticks in the mind from school days biology, as most of us know that the most important thing a leaf does is produce food for the rest of the tree through the process of photosynthesis. Importantly for us, in this they also produce oxygen and use up carbon dioxide. For plants like Neems, their leaves shown below, it's also important to know that because leaves have a large surface area for maximum reciept of carbon dioxide and sunlight, they also lose water through a process called transpiration.

For trees growing in drylands Africa, water is hard to come by and much of the year is spent with very little rainfall, whereas there is plenty of sunlight. This means that the leaves can generate lots of food, but also risk losing a lot of water. One thing that trees in such areas can do is lose their leaves during the dry season, which means that trees such as the Baobab can avoid losing too much precious water through transpiration. The leaves can also be shaped in a way to take advantage of all that sunshine, and so are flat and thin, unlike say pine needles.

Leaves are the food factories for our Baobab and Neem seedlings, but they can be used as food for people too. As we say at TREE AID, 'not just a tree'. I've got lots of fascinating facts on the things that people in Africa use our Baobabs and Neems for when they grow to full size in the wild, and will blog about them soon!

Neems!

Having been away for about a week I've come back to lots of fresh growth on the Baobabs and, more excitingly, two Neem germinations! This is really good stuff, as we hadn't seen any signs of life amongst so much Baobab activity, and I had been beginning to loose hope that any might germinate.

The two Neem seedlings have germinated in pots marked 1 and 3, which would suggest that they are equally happy being soaked for 24 hours, or 15 minutes prior to sowing, or in fact anything in between. They've also gone from seeds to seedlings with a full set of 'true' leaves and another one on the way in what feels like quite a short space of time, certainly relative to the Baobabs anyway.

As you can see, the Neems have very different leaves to the Baobabs. Rather than having large, oval leaves with their pointed tips and smooth edges, they have three or four smaller, serrated leaves branching from a central point to make up a more feathery looking leaf. Also, whereas the cotyledon and 'true' leaves of the Baobab looked quite similar in the end, the difference between the two on the Neem could hardly be greater. The cotyledon leaves look very much like half a green peanut; small, thick, and with none of the serration or featheriness that you can see in their 'true' leaves.

I'm intrigued as to why the leaves of the two plants are so different. Tony Hill, our Programmes Director and general tree knowledge man, says that even young leaves that aren't cotyledons can look quite different to adult leaves, and so the Neem leaves will end up being larger and a bit more sturdy. It will be interesting to see if I can find out how these leaves are best adapted and suited to the conditions of drylands Africa.

More space for Baobab roots

The four Baobabs in the one pot that had been most successful so far have been looking a bit crowded as of late, and so it seemed about time that they got their own homes.

Using the same winning combination of paper on the kitchen floor and sharp sand/compost mix I set about taking the seedlings out of the one pot and repotting them in their own pots; a process known in the gardening trade as pricking out.

I upturned their pot, making sure I could support the compost from beneath without squashing or damaging the seedlings, and gently squeezed the sides of the pot to loosen the soil from the pot. The seedlings and their compost slid out onto the paper, and with the compost being such a gritty, loose mix there was no need for prising it apart to separate the seedlings.


As you might expect, the roots were already quite deep, being about the same length down as the leaves are high. Interestingly there were no side roots at all, but they were sturdy seedlings, and not as fragile or delicate as I was expecting. In Africa these characteristics would serve them well in reducing the likelihood of damage, and in giving each seedling the best chance of being the one that survived amongst competition from other seedlings that might have germinated nearby; all fighting for water, nutrients and space.

Now each of the four seedlings has more room, with two having their own individual pots of a similar size to the one they've just been moved out of, and the other two sharing a slightly larger and notably deeper pot. I thought it wise, given how deep the roots are already, to have a go at seeing what that extra roots space will do for them. It will be interesting to watch their progression over the next few weeks to see if any problems arise, and at what rate the new leaves develop.

Almost a forest

I haven't been disappointed - in the last week another two Baobabs have germinated, and one pot in particular is looking rather densely canopied!

One seedling has arrived in one of the pots marked '3' in the propagator, and I found the seed case actually lying on top of the soil next to it. When the seeds sprout it seems that they put down a root, and then push up the stalk with the cotyledon leaves and the seed case still around them, which is shed as they unfurl.

Most of the action however is still in the pot marked '2' that the first seedling germinated in. Four out of the five seeds I planted in the pot have now germinated, and the big cotyledon leaves are making it look quite crowded. In a couple of the seedlings you can just see the first pair of 'true' leaves, which is quite exciting. They are quite hard to photograph at such close range, so I've done a sketch to try and give a clearer picture of what's going on.

I think the next task will be to separate out the seedlings in this pot. As dryland trees I would imagine their roots will go down, rather than out, to search out the deep water reserves that they would survive from in the desert plains of Africa. So whilst I'm not too worried about their roots becoming tightly tangled together at this stage, I am interested to see how deep they are relative to the height of the seedline, and to make sure they have enough room to keep going!

More shoots, and leaves too!

It's been about another week, and there are three more shoots, and the first one has leaves now. The new shoots are both Baobabs as far as I can tell, and two are in the same pot as the first shoot, but surprise surprise, the other one has germinated outside of the propagator.

When I planted the seeds I ended up with ten pots in all, only eight of which would fit in the propagator, so I left two just out on the windowsill to see how they'd get on. This new shoot is also from the batch that was soaked for the longest; that is about 24 hours. So I wasn't necessarily expecting one of them to have germinated so soon, if at all - especially seen as the building certainly isn't over heated. Perhaps the heat from the sun in the past week has been enough to keep the soil temperature suitably high.

It's also really interesting seeing the first leaves of the Baobab shoot, which are called cotyledons. The cotyledons are not 'true' leaves, but are formed from part of the seed of the plant. This means that they often look quite different from the leaves that develop afterwards, and can cause havoc in pots and gardens when it comes to identifying intended seedlings and weed seedlings, and knowing which to remove! The Baobab shoot has two of these 'leaves', each about the sixe of a two pence piece, which means they are called dicotyledenous.

Still no news on the Neem seeds then, but really good progress with the Boababs; good to be seeing leaves, and watching how they're developing. It is certainly a learning curve, a return to basic biology, and after the last two weeks I'm expecting big things over the next one!

The first green shoot

I arrived a couple of mornings ago, and found a note on my desk, which said 'Don't sit down! Check on your trees!'. So I didn't, and I did. In the days I'd been away since planting the seeds, germination had happened!

I had a look, and one green shoot was just beginning to push through the soil. It was one of the baobabs, in one of the pots marked '2' in the propagator. This means that after five hours of soaking in hot water before planting, this baobab seed has taken about a week and a half to sprout. It also suggests that the sharp sand and compost mix, combined with just a good soaking after sowing and one light watering since then has provided tolerable conditions for germination, for the Baobab seeds at least.

Now I think this is pretty amazing stuff, and it has happened a lot quicker than I expected it to, although those expectations had no basis other than caution. More than anything I'm just relieved that something has happened! Now granted, this is one seed of the 30 I planted, and the Neems are now one point down so to speak, but it's great to see signs of life. It's also great to see that seeds from a climate so different to our own can be nurtured into leaf given some fairly basic right conditions.

Hopefully there will be more Baobabs sprouting over the next week or so, and maybe some Neem seeds too, although we shall have to wait and see to find out if, and how long, they take to germinate. It's exciting stuff though, and to someone who's not an experienced seed grower or gardener really quite amazing to see.

Seeds in soil

This afternoon I have been planting tree seeds! As I mentioned, the seeds are very hard and woody, so their dormancy had to be broken. This can be done by soaking in hot water, nicking the seed coating, or using acid (to mimic a passage through an animal's intestinal tract). With acid seeming a bit much, and the ready availability of a kettle on hand, I went for the soaking option. I've soaked three batches of the seeds for three different lengths of time; one that I put to soak yesterday, one this morning, and one just before sowing, so about 24 hours, 5 hours, and 15 minutes. I marked each batch, and I've marked up each pot, so I'll be able to see which are more successful.

I commandeered the kitchen floor, put a layer of old paper down, and got on with the business of sowing seeds. First things first was to mix my soil and sharp sand to make sure that the seeds are in a soil that drains well. I decided to use small pots, rather than a seeds tray, as these are dryland plants and so might need more space for roots to grow down, rather than across. I've put 5 seeds in per pot, covered them over, and given them a soak. I've also borrowed a propagator, so they are now settled in that on one of our sunny windowsills, and hopefully will get enough warmth with the wonderful rise in temperatures we've seen in the past couple of weeks.

I'm feeling a little bit apprehensive now, mixed with excitement. I really hope to get at least a few of each, Baobab and Neem, germinated, and will be so disappointed if nothing happens! I've sown thirty seeds in total, fifteen of each, so it's fingers crossed for the next few weeks!

The seeds are in the building

The seeds have arrived! I have a bag of Neem (Azadirachta indica) seeds , and a bag of the Baobab (Adansonia digitata) seeds I was hoping for. There are plenty of both to give them a good chance of germinating and growing on. The Baobab seeds look a little bit like beans, and the Neem seeds look very woody, so it's no suprise they're going to need a bit of soaking.

Michael Arbonnier's book on the Trees, shrubs and lianas of West African dry zones says that both trees grow on any type of soil. Given that 'dry' is the main characteristic though, I've bought compost (no mean feat in city centre Bristol) and will be adding grit or sharp sand to create a more free draining mix.

So next week I will finally be planting the seeds, and I'm looking forward to it - it feels like a long time since the idea was sown. Let's hope no-one makes a mistake and tries eating them in the mean time!

Perparing for seeds from Africa

It's about a week now until Tony Hill, our Programmes Director, gets back from his visit to our offices in Burkina Faso, and I'm beginning to get quite excited! Hopefully he will be bringing with him (after checking the biological customs restrictions with the very friendly government agency fera at http://www.blogger.com/www.fera.defra.gov.uk ) tree seeds from some of the species we work with in Africa.

It is all going to be a bit of surprise as to which species I get, so I'm expecting to have to do some cramming on the trees and their conditions in the wild, just so that I can make them as happy as I can in their pots. I'm hoping Tony will have found me some Mango (Mangifera indica), and Baobab (Adansonia digitata), mostly because they're the most familiar and iconic for me, and also useful, amongst the trees of West Africa.

For now though I'm asking around gardening colleagues and friends for trays and pots to reuse, and considering compost sourcing. Because the seeds are non native I'm expecting quite a high failure rate in germination and before the seedlings get a bit more established, so I'll be sowing lots to start with in the hope that I can nurture some of them beyond and into happy plants. Speaking of which, I must make sure everyone is happy with me staking a claim to their windowsills!