2022 September 26

Put all 28 Kei Apple seeds that came in the packet in a cup of warm water. 14 seeds didn’t sink.

2022 September 27

All the seeds had sunk by the morning.

I buried the bottom of rings made from aluminum cans and other beverage containers an inch or so in the soil, placed 2 or 3 seeds in each ring and then added about half an inch of potting mix on top of the seeds and watered them in. I spaced the rings 2 feet apart, and there are 12 rings. This will be very close spacing for these plants, but I don’t want to use up too much of my yard on a single species. I might remove some once I know the gender of each plant.

2022 October 10

There are sprouts starting to emerg in several of the cans. They seem to take a while to come up.

I applied SFA to the soil and watered it in.

2022 November 13

All but one can has at least one sprout.

2023 May 13

Most of these are still doing well. I covered them with a sheet on cold nights during the winter. One plant died from cold exposure.

2023 November 9

2023 November 18

Covered with frost cloth and put a string of C9 incandescent lights inside on a thermostat set to 45F. I also removed the cans from around the trees.

2024 Jan 3

I added a 3rd string of 25 C9 incandescent lights under the frost cloth. I also trimmed a lot of the low branches of several of the plants.

2024 Jan 10

Last night the fuse burnt out on the first string of lights under the frost cloth. I didn’t head the instructions to only have 2 strings daisy chained. I had the three strings heating the Kei Apple’s plus the one string heating the Guamuchil near by all strung together. Just after 10:30pm the fuse failed and all the lights went out. By the morning the temperature had reached 24.2F. The Kei Apple trees seem to have fared well enough with only damage to the very tip of the branches.