Them J Dudes

The two J's are quite different when it comes to personality.

Being the oldest, Joseph seems more calm and calculated, more mature. He seems to be doing everything by the book. And by everything I mean grow, because that's what plants do.

Jose on the other hand seems more impulsive and stubborn. It's true, being the youngest of the (initial) bunch, I've spoiled him a bit - I haven't trimmed his leaves as early as I had Joseph's, and he has seem to take this as a sign of 'I'm allowed to do whatever the hell I want, grow as tall as I like and have no branches. Because!'

Both seem to have suffered a bit from the hot days a few weeks back, because some early leaves look burned from the hot wind or direct sun light. You can even see the effect this had on Jose's leaves: the tips are round and not pointy.

I'm treating them to some cool time for now and I hope this will improve Jose's appearance and he'll grow some more shoots/leaves on that long stem of his :)

Joseph & Jose

Yes, that means exactly what you think it means: Jolene & Ramon didn't make it. I'm glad I've decided to get back-ups though, otherwise today I would have shown you a very lonely avocado plant.

Instead, today I can show you two well behaved avocado plants :)

And look! they even got their own pots. No more water glass accommodation for them, they went big.

So this is Joseph

You can see he already looks like a plant-plant now. I'll give him a few days to get used with the new environment and then he's up for another pruning. I do hope I got the whole soil thing right, I'm not quite happy with the quality of it (speaking from past years and past plants experience).

And last but not least, Joseph little protégé, Jose:

Oh my! check out the artistic tilt ;)

I know it's not much but he's doing quite well in there and I hope to see those tips opening up in about a week or so.

See you next time! with good news I hope :)

Joseph, Jolene, Jose ... & Ramon

an update post

Joseph - my firstborn, the apple avocado of my eye

I think in a few days he'll be ready for the first trimming, as soon as those two upper leaves get more developed. He's also been upgraded to a taller glass, since he's getting quite crazy creative with those roots.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with him.

Jolene - dead as a bat, I'm afraid it's not going to work, but I'm not giving up on her yet. Maybe she's a late bloomer...

The gay bunch (cause, you know? they're gay and full of joy and happiness and laughter and bad, bad jokes in a mexi-english voice)

Ramon - I believe he's taking after Jolene, although he's not even 1 month old so I'll just cut him some slack, for the time being

and Jose, who is taking after Joseph, obviously

So there you go! The quest goes on.

Joseph update

Uh Uh Wooooooo! Look who has got his first tooth! Or root... It's baby avocado Joseph!

Hurray! This is quite the success, you know?! Let's hope things get as better from here.

And since I've been reading a bit on growing avocado plants from pits I've found out it's terribly lonely for a single plant, especially when it comes to pollination (not that I imagine I'll ever get [avocado] fruits from my own crop) so I've decided ...

Jolene!

...to try my luck with yet another pit! Look at baby Jolene being all artsy and stuff! You can see she likes to pose :) Let's hope she follows on her friend's footsteps.

Doing shits

That's what it is about these days. Trying to do stuff, get shit done, be creative. It's pretty difficult, obviously, and sometimes you just have to push it a bit and change the angle to fill in the quota.

I think most of you don't see growing plants as doing something (creative), but to me it is a great way to spend the time and receive as much satisfaction doing as little as possible.

These past months have been a real success for me, with my potted plants thriving beyond imagination. Yes, they really just took off this year and I'm very happy about their current state. My wild flowers garden didn't go as well (well, it did if you count having knee high weeds a success - I don't really trust supermarket bought seeds any more!) but there's always something to learn and improve for the next time.

So this year I've decided to add to my potted flowers collection. I'll try to grow some avocado plants.  I really like the idea of having a little tree, as opposed to delicate flowers, to care for.

Enter the first candidate:

Joseph!

Yeah, so this is baby seed pit Joseph* and his very first photo session. I guess I should have photographed his mother too, but someone was too hungry of an ogre and I didn't have time.

That's it! I'll keep you posted as soon as anything happens :)

* yes, I did want to call it Petrică - yet another, yet again! - but as with Fredrik, I wanted to avoid it having the same fate as its predecessors :)