Gotta grow them all: baobab edition

LittleDingus

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The king of baobabs in S.A. grows all his trees in the most rubbish sand imaginable....
rocky soil - but his results speak for themselves....
Who is this king of baobabs of which you speak...and are his trees on the internet somewhere?

I like the thread here on yours, but there's otherwise not a lot of information on growing them in pots long term. Or, I should say there is a lot of information that is mostly parroting the same general advice that applies to most succulents: not a drop of water in the winter. Since I lost several trees last winter to obvious dehydration, I'm looking for a little more detail so I can try to adapt it to my out-of-the-ordinary growing conditions ;)
 

LittleDingus

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?? SHOWTIME :D

...sigh...I wish!

We had a cold spring followed by lots of wet. The past week was rain every day. Most of them are alive...kinda...but they're only just started to leaf out:

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I should stop being lazy and keep better records, but this is way later than expected :( Some I've yet to see any green on even now :(

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Even the leafless ones don't feel dead though. A few have root rot issues from the winter...but most of those are showing green and active growth. The two that are still leafless feel nice and firm just below the soil line and the trunks look "alive"...the branches look a little desiccated though.

I left them outside all last week in the rains which was probably a mistake. Since some had green, I decided it was better in the rain/heat/occasional sun than in the cooler/darker house. The rains weren't constant...a few hours every day but heat and sun inbetween the rain drops. And warm rains...not like early spring rains.

Weatherman says mostly sun the next week...averages near 90F. Lets see what they do with that :)

On a happy note...for me anyway...I found a source for suarazensis seed! That's the one species I've yet to germinate successfully and I was down to my last 2 seeds. Now I have a decent enough supply to continue trying:

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If I can't get one to germinate from those...I may have to give up.

I now have a decent amount of seed for all 8 recognized adansonia species! I've had as many as 6 species growing at the same time. I went into this last winter with 5 living species. We'll see what survives this year...but my plan is to start trying to fill in the species I've lost next spring. I'm still one a quest to have one specimen of all 8 :D

...if I can sort out how to reliable winter in the mean time, I'd be golden ;)
 

LittleDingus

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Most of my babs were devastated over the winter and wet spring :(

Some never woke up at all. I had moved a couple outside when the temps got high enough but then we got a lot of rain. When one finally fell over in the wind because it had no root ball left at all, I dug up all the ones that hadn't woken up. They roots of every one of them were rotted away to nothing.

I still had 2 that I had kept inside and hadn't gotten water at all yet since last fall. When I dug them up, they had no root tuber left either! None! Just barely a skin of a husk. I didn't even bother taking pictures.

My guess is that my basement can be cool and a bit damp at times during the winter. I'm wondering if some fungus got in and, with the tree dormant, it had no defense...but the fungus had a rich supply of stored moisture.

5 trees did start to wake up. 2 of them have died. They clearly died from too much spring rain. Their roots were still there...unlike the ones that didn't wake up...but they were rotted and squishy from all the rains we had.

3 trees, however, did wake up and are mostly doing fine. Not as vigorous as I'm used to...but healthy looking.

One of them is a baby adansonia za

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It's the one I'm holding in my hand in this post:


The other 2 are both adansonia grandidieri

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Remarkably, there were three in this bag as discussed in this post


One had died...but NOT the one that had the interesting root rot situation discussed in that post. In fact, that is the one that appears to be doing the best

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Clearly, I need a more reliable wintering procedure :(

I now have a decent amount of seed for all 8 species. I don't now yet if I have enough space to start anything this fall...I'm hoping to try the new supply of suarezensis since I have yet to ever successfully germinate one. The rest I may wait until next year to start again...we'll see. I've got 3 left to try and get through a winter!
 
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