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.
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