Ryan's Chocolate Tree Grow

shit i'll be sixty by the time you get a bean out of it. good thing gardeners are a patient bunch

dannyboy602 said:

shit i'll be sixty by the time you get a bean out of it. good thing gardeners are a patient bunch

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If your 59 it take about 1-1.5 years for them to start flowering. they would be about 4 foot tall by then. hopfully

SO I decided to give them more light because that one window wasn't cutting it anymore . Hate all you want because I built a ghetto ass box to help with humidity and heat for the winter months to come.

Its ghetto because it was FREE. cost me $0.00 just stuff I had lying around. And Mylar plotter scrapes from work. This is not the same reflective Mylar you get from grow shops. Its thicker, more plastic-y and semi-transparent. We use it to print/plot heavily used records because they will last for decades and endure all the slobs who spill coffee. I cant tell you how many time we had to make reprints due to some of our careless employees. (end rant) It will be functional but not very pretty

Also felt the need to build a box because of all the spider dust floating around. The white you see on the pots is just dust and wipes right off. It scared me because I thought it was mold at first since the humidity is high.



89 days and man these are still what I would consider small. Oh well im not that upset since I did basically kill all of the seedlings, but got them to re-sprout with their hardy cotyledons

Hopefully weak cfls far away will be closer to optimum light then a window. I thought about bringing them outside, but I feel it was the suns strong UV that killed them as sprouts. At least the light will be consistent now. Some days with high UV warnings cause the
baby leafs to burn up. Even through the window!

Da ghetto box



Still look rather healthy they are ready for some compost tea. I neglected the seedling in the cup and it got spots and sickly imagine that .


True color

i'm cheering for you ryan. i want to see it work. i think your plants are in capable hands. even if it doesn't produce for a while it still is a cool tropical plant to have around. if it pushes out a flower just concider that a bonus. ima do some of my own googling and if i find something worth contributing i'll let ya know.

Inspired by your grow I have ordered some Theobroma cacao seeds. I am expecting them to arrive in the next 7-10 days. Hopefully it isn't too late in the year to start the germination process.
If you have tips as I hear they are harder to grow than weed or chillies which I currently grow.

ta

hey i was wandering if you ever tried to grow any of them miracle fruit plants? i tried several times and they always die.

tuffles said:

Inspired by your grow I have ordered some Theobroma cacao seeds. I am expecting them to arrive in the next 7-10 days. Hopefully it isn't too late in the year to start the germination process.
If you have tips as I hear they are harder to grow than weed or chillies which I currently grow.

ta

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well #1 do not plat the seeds to deep. I did and later found out that the very tip of the top end of the seed should be sticking out of the soil. If you cant tell what end is the roots vs the top just plant it on its side, with about 1/2 in of dirt.

KEEP seedlings out of direct sunlight!!!! They are under-story plants/trees that grow beneath the rain forest canopy, so they only need low light.


In order of importance climate wise i would say.

1. Make sure the soil is always at least damp. They are drought intolerant and 1 day without water will leave you an ugly brown stick. Dont let this scare you into over watering but be careful to keep an eye on it.

2. Keep the humidity high as close to 100% as you can. the leafs are paper thin and very large. they can dry out quickly.

3. Correct lighting, Strong light will burn leafs again they are paper thin and did not evolve in direct sunlight. You can try to keep them by a window but be careful and check the uv warnings, even though windows plants can get burned.

4. heat/temp. temperature must always be between 55f - 100f It will die in cold, and burn up in excessive heat.



The perfect climate for these plants should be a little to warm for your comfort & humid enough to make you sweat by just standing there.

slayer6669 said:

hey i was wandering if you ever tried to grow any of them miracle fruit plants? i tried several times and they always die.

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Naw this is my first exotic species grow...... well "cough" 2nd

Nice Trees man. I've been wanting to grow some indoor bananas

SO they are still growing new leafs but now they have picked up the pace to 2 new leafs at a time. Ill post pic's when the baby leafs mature

The brown leaf tips are normal from what I read. The plant slowly eats older leafs while it produces new growth. I think it's their way to compensate for energy since they are natural to lower light environments. Bet being grown out of their zone wont help either. I'm kinda at a loss here, I feel like it's a sign to add more nutrients but the other half of me feels the plants aren't actually cannibalizing the leafs for the alkaloids but to use the stored sugars as another source of energy.

I can easily say these are not your ordinary plants. They behave differently, and show signs that common plants have but they mean different things. I mean they are still, plants but just an odd bunch.

An example you can see the plant 5 ( the one I neglected ) is showing signs of over fertilization. Dark green leafs, yellow spots with most of the damage at the tips. But I'm leaning towards a ph problem because the only variable that was different was that it contained more lava rock by volume. Im not to sure but I think lava rock is slightly acidic.

can you grind some up and test it in a solution?

Sorry to hijack your thread. I Couldn't find how to attach photos in a private message.

I have received my chocolate seeds and they are looking like this. Can you reassure me and tell me if this is normal?

Regards

Kev

tuffles said:

Sorry to hijack your thread. I Couldn't find how to attach photos in a private message.

I have received my chocolate seeds and they are looking like this. Can you reassure me and tell me if this is normal?

Regards


Kev

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yea looks like a sprout. that will split open and baby leafs will start growing. don't force it open

thanks mate

Yes a laughable update , man these things are not as easy to grow as I thought. Still growing but so slow,they actually all pushed out a set of new growth overnight hopefully they start another spurt. maybe my expectations were to high because mj grown this long would be a monster.

ill keep chipping away, TREES GROW SLOW

So lets have a recap because man i really don't see any significant growth in the past month maybe they need more nutes.

Yep I am confident they need nutes now, watching their green luster wash away. Ill do that tomorrow

jesu ryan, they are some super slow growers.. i think i would be getting frustrated at this point, lol.. they look pretty good other then just being on the small side.. i guess i'm just used to how cannabis grows and not used to seeing things take so long to grow is all..

quick question though.. just how big can you realistically expect them to get when they're adults? i've never seen one in person and was just curious about their size..

I can keep them under 10 feet. when you prune the top it will split off into branches that grow mostly horizontal for some reason?

*cough* ^^?