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!