Sowing cherry seeds

Part I here ( where I eat my way through tons of cherry to get the cherry nut and then crack those open to get the seeds )

Ok so I finally got the seeds in the part one. A batch of 31 seeds ready to be sowed. I discarded the bad seeds.


I used old egg boxes to plant the seeds. I keep those just for those occasions. I usually place 6 seeds per box and its frosted and blocks most of the hard sun from the seeds, so its just right for me.


I used a knife to make six small drainage holes at the bottom.



I used my latest bonsai mix to sow the seeds into the "pots" and place six cherry seeds per box.
Then covered the cherry seeds with a thin layer of the same bonsai mix and closed the whole setup.








I placed the remaining of the seeds into their own package ( the one from where the cherry was sold ).
My only issue with the box was that it had huge holes at the bottom. I used a tissue paper folder several times and placed it at the bottom to prevent my bonsai mix from being washed away.




And that's it for now!
I'll have to cross fingers and hope that it does sprout.
I think I skipped totally on the cold stratification process, but the cherries have been in the fridge since 17th Dec 2014 or so. That's roughly 1 month alternating between the fridge and the freezer.

Attempting to grow some Cherry from seed

I've wanted to get hold of a cherry tree for ages, I heard there was a place in beau-bassin that has cherry trees, but I've not yet seen it. I saw some cherry on sale at the supermarket and decided to give them a try, to grow some cherry from seed.






I did a basic test to check valid seeds
Basically floating seed = bad seed, sinking seeds = good seeds.



Cracking the "bad" seeds to check anyway
I decided to give the "bad" seeds a go, not so much to check on it, but more to get some practice before trying to open the valid seeds.

In this method I used the seed wrapped in a cloth and hit it with a hammer, until I heard a cracking noise. 1~3 hits gets the job done. But the seeds were not viable as expected, they were all shrivelled up.







Ok time to give the valid seeds a go!
Took a batch of six seeds by six seeds.



First attempt was a mess, I used the same method as for the "bad" seeds, wrapping the seed in cloth and hitting.
End result : The seed was crushed.
For the second and third seed I changed my method and was rewarded with two undamaged seed :D





The method that worked for me was surprisingly pretty simple.
Hitting the middle of the seed along the crack gave much better result and not damage to the seed :D







And here is the finished batch, 5 bad seeds and several valid seed just waiting to be planted!




Part II here ( where I sow the cherry seeds )

Cuphea han-kengai attempt

Progression of a mame cuphea material.
Ideally I wanted to make a han-kengai ( semi-cascade ) with it.

 The material was originally from a bigger cuphea plant, but got detached during a repotting.
 I was planning to throw it away but then got that han-kengai shape lurking around it so I gave it a try.

Still in training but the shape I had in mind is starting to take form finally.

Parent tree:

Starter material

White Pine seedlings tryout

I got a little white pine seedling from a friend last year.
Well at least that's what he bought and so we are expecting this to be a white pine but its rapid growth is kind of a surprise.
White pine are known within the bonsai community to 5 needles per fascicles (bundles) and also to be a slow grower ( 1 growth per year ) compared to other japanese pine species used ( Japanese Black Pine and Japanese Red Pine)

Like I said above we are not yet sure which type of pine this is but we are hoping this turns out to be a white pine seedling.

July 2014


August 2014

You can see new needles just starting to appear at the center.

October 2014

The new growth has elongated. I was expecting it to stay put until next year, but...

Janurary 2015



Late December it was already starting to pull new growth and by January I'm starting to see some candle formation.
That's pretty fast for a plant who's supposed to be a slow grower. I just hope this quick growth won't weaken and kill the sapling.



Around December I got another batch of seeds that were already cold stratified in the fridge for several months.









Repotting the seedlings
I've got two batch, one batch of 4 seedlings from the big seeds and one batch of 2 seedlings from the small seeds.

The seedling from the bigs seeds batch are more vigourous and with more developped roots, so I too the chance to root prune the tap root.







But the seedlings from the small seeds batch are les vigourous so I won't take the risk of cutting the tap root on them.