How to make your desert rose produce seed

Hi Melissa, you can change them into individual pot but this have to be small pot, to big a pot will hold to much moisture for to long for them a they may rot, 3" pot are good for starting them off, let them grow in the same pot until caudex is about 1' from the edge, from there you just pot on to one or two size bigger pots, If you what to get that bonsai look, all you have to do is every time you re-pot you expose some of the top root by filling the pot 1/4 to 1/3 with potting mix before placing your plant in it, remove the soil from the upper part of the caudex, with this the caudex is more exposed every time you re-pot, don't worry about exposing some roots at the top, plant will continual to produce more roots at to bottom.

Melissa, I've notice that one of your seedling looks like its a albino plant, unfortunate they tend to die in a few days, I'm going to have to send you more seeds when I have some available so you can have more babies to take care of.

Doris, happy to hear you got a third set of seed pod, really glad at least one person has been successful with what I've tried to show them, please post a new photo of the pods on your plant to encourage others to keep trying. Would like to know if this the first time you ever got pods on your plant.

Jim, how is your seed planting comming out, remember to post photos when they start to germinate. Don't give up trying to pollinate your Adenium Desert Rose plants, sooner or later you'll succeed

Would like to know if anyone else has tried my method for pollinating Adenium Desert Rose and has succeeded in doing so.

Wilfred

OK update, they are growing fast.

No 2

And I think this is also a pod.

Wilfred I had a seedpod on last year when I had my plant outside but it did not mature, so this will be my first chance to see seeds, I HOPE

Good morning to all, Wilfred, the first two seeds I recieved from that young lady have been in about a week, so far nothing! Those I recieved from you I don't expect to sprout for at least another week. Again you give a wealth of information, wish you had mentioned the potting instructions just a bit sooner. I just dug out of the ground two D.R.'s and now I think I've got them in too big a pot, to late now, maybe I will just make sure that they are completly dry b-4 I water them, at least I know now what to be very careful of, and to not over water. I think it would be to much of a shock to again repot them into smaller pots. Oh, I did take some pictures of that wevel and will D-mail it to you shortly, I have to locate the gizmo that connects from the camera to the computer. And also, I think I have to eat some crow now, I've checked my orange tree three days after spraying with neem oil, I could find only one weavel on it compared to 15 or so on a neighbors orange tree, it's a little early to say, but maybe neem works. Jim

Hooray for Neem! Glad to hear that.

Here is the sri lanken weavel, hope it can be seen, it's a very small critter.

Wow, the weavel looks like a ghost!

If anyone has any extra seeds, I would love to trade. I just picked some Pink Mimosa seed pods.

Good morning all, hope everyone is having a great weekend, yesterday was glorious, the heat let up just a tad and for the first time in months it was breezy. Wilfred, I don't want to get too excited yet, but I believe at least three of my seeds have sprouted, I have to use a magnifying glass to see them, tomorrow I will be certain, I want this to succeed sooo much that I will have a difficult time sleeping tonight in anticipation of seeing the whole tray sprouting.

Good moprning all, lucky if you had a nice day yesterday, it rained her almost all day, doesn't look to good for today either.
My buds are still growing, BIG QUESTION I have not seen anyone post how long it takes for seeds to be ready, when mine are I will have plenty of seeds to share.

Kareoke, are you speaking of seeds or seed pods? I'm sure the seeds should be planted as soon as possible aber the pod opens, if your talking seed pods, they have to be wraped up with ties (like the tie you get on a loaf of bread) because they will open and seeds scattered to the winds, wait till you see that it's opening and then the pod is ready and so is the seeds. I'm sure that if I'm wrong others will correct me, good luck.

kareoke, it takes about 150 years for the seed pods to mature.


(I am joking!!!)

Like a watched pot never boils, the pods seem to sense your anticipation and make you wait just until a day when you say, oh what the heck, I'll check it tomorrow, the next day you go out and the pod is empty having scattered the seed to the wind, soooo don't forget to tie them

Hello to every one,
Doris, Congratulations again for succeeding in having you plant produce seed pods, now comes the hard part, the waiting, It takes around two to thee moths for the to be ready for ripening depending on how big the seed pod gets, usually the bigger it is the longer it takes, seed pods can contain from 5 to 70 seeds in them, when you get the big pods you'll also get bigger seeds in them to, so you have to have patients on this, some times it'll look like its taken forever. also you'll notice that the seed pods will change its color tone, from green to a brownish green when its starts to ripen, just use a tie to wrap around the seed pod like Jim mention to avoid the from flying away just in case your not around when it decides to open. One more thing I forgot to mention earlier, when plants are producing seed pods, they tend to stop blooming until the seed pods have fully developed, as soon as it has no more seed pods, it will start to bloom again after one week.

Jim, some times it takes more time for the Neem oil to work on some types of insect than others, some insects are more resistant then other but eventually they'll die to. That Weavel does look like a bugs ghost, like Melissa mentioned before, you just have to remind it it has to be dead so it could bee a true bug ghost, LOL! Keep spraying with Neem oil two get rid of them, tell neighbors to see if they're willing to spray their gardens with it also to control their spread.
I hope all your seeds germinate for you Jim, congratulations in advance for your success with them.

jlp222, I'll send you some seed, just have to wait for my seed pods to be ready and I also need your mailing address, send it to me through D-mail if your interested.

Melissa, 150 years to mature, give me a break, its more like 250, LOL! I should know I'm 480 years old and fresh as a daisy, LOL!
How are your babies comming along, have they survived their first weeks of having been sprouted, post a photo if you can.

Wilfred

Good morning all, Winfred, just a quick post to let you know that now at least 4 of the seeds have burst through, possibly more but I will have to wait till tomorrow b-4 I can say for sure, I'm happy as a pig in stuff to even have the four, I still see nothing from the two that were planted a week b-4 I recieved yours. Now, just to be sure; a question. Do you use a weak solution of lliquid fertilizer to spray the seedlings once they show green? Also, it's my intention to wait till they have 4 leaves b-4 I pot them, is this correct? Jim

Seedling Saga, chapter 5 6 or 7:

Stupid rain. Yes we need rain, but my seedlings do not. I dug craters for drying purposes, need that air circulation!!!

Chapter 7 continued:

What the happy guys look like. There's one slightly bigger than the others, he came up first. Then all the rest, but there was one straggler. I believe that they got too wet while incubating because I left the pot in the sun on my deck, and there was a heavy shower. I need a seedling house with a glass roof! Oh, another one is very pale, maybe an albino, maybe just pale, it's a little bit green.

Molamolla, I agree, enough already! I put some trays of seedlings out in the bright hot sun yesterday,blue skys and not a cloud in sight, went to the doctors for about two hours and came home in a tropical downpour. I think I got everything undercover in time,I fight mother nature all the time knowing that mother nature will win in the end. The fight is what makes it interesting, and knowing the eventual outcome I don't get upset when things go different then I planned. Jim

Chapter 7 cont.

The yellow ring is around two seedlings. One is in bad shape, with no leaves on the top. The other one is the late sprouter, and sure looks like it could be an albino!

(wow, I messed up two pictures, more to come once I fiddle with them!)

Funny, Jim, we bumped into each other here! haha

Mollamolla, ya gotta check out the Florida chit chat thread, you will find a wealth of information on greenhouse, some big, some small, all seem very inexpensive, I am hopeing to get me one soon.

OK, Chapter 7 cont.

The albino? Fun with the close-up setting! That's a ring off a gallon water jug.

I now have 5 of my D.R. Seeds that have burst through, the latest one this morning, that gives me hope that perhaps I will get just a few more in the next few days. These I am going to keep in pots, I have about ten in the ground but find it VERY difficult to get down every morning to hand pollenate, I struggle with it and am determined to get it right. Hey, doesn't Wilfred give great instructions, and here I find that he's just a kid, only 47 or so, what a wealth of knowledge he has and is willing to share.

OK, OK! Chapter 7 cont.

The one without leaves. Poor baby!!!! I believe it had too rough a time getting out of the seed shell, husk, whatever, tho I soaked it for an hour.

While fiddling with the photos, I noticed root stumps on the bottom? I powdered a tiny bit of peat moss and watered it in place arounf the teenie tiny plant. I'm good at doing little stuff! And while I had my trusty Windex bottle, I sprayed a half-spoonful of water at the bases of all the seedlings in the pot.

Now I can go look at FL greenhouses. Thanks, Jim! Tho there is no leftover construction stuff here on this tiny island. I have to buy all new construction materials. We are having a building boom, but it's about fifteen or twenty houses, all told, here and there, on new lots.

Really! I'd love to be 47 again!!!!!!

Hi Melissa, rain did a good one on you, but don't worry, take out your new seedling carefully and re-pot them individually, Now referring to the ones in the yellow ring, one is a albino and the other throw it away it has fungi do to the excess water from rain at its early stage, it won't recover. the albino can not take so much direct sunlight, it'll die pretty fast if it does and just to let you know chances are it will die any way if it does not develop some green parts to produce its chlorophyll to live, just give it a weak solution of fertilizer to see what happens in the next few day, if your lucky it'll turn to a variegated one.

Hi Jim, If in the next week no more spout out then they wont, probably rotted before they had a chase to, you should remove the seedling you have already and re-pot them individually in small pots and while your at it check the other seeds, they maybe having a little trouble pushing they're way up, just uncover them and leave them there for a week, after that if nothing germinates just disregard them, their dead.

Yes I'm 48 to be exact, just got there this past July, you know sometime I feel centuries old, maybe since I've been working since the age of 8 to help my mother and my brothers and sisters back when I was a child, father abandoned us but that's in the past, and this is another time now.
Now the question is, what good is knowledge if you don't pass it on to others or use it to help others obtain it or even yet not use it for good things?
Its not how much you know but how you use what little you know that matters.

Wilfred

BTW, this is a photo of a plant I recently pollinated, can you see how many seed pod it has developing on it, it has more on the bottm part (base) of the plant.

Here's another photo of the same plant.

Wilfred

Goodmorning all, I'm about to be on my way to flamingo gardens, just wanted to check in with Wilfred in the hope that when I get back home he will have replied. Wilfred, the seedlings that have come up only have two leafs! Are you saying that it's not too early to put them in pots? I just want to be sure I am not mis-understanding you, but will follow whatever directions you give. Jim

Yes Jim, you can transplant them as early has that, but you have to be extra careful with them since their more fragil at this stage and can easily be damaged, I told Mellisa to transplant hers since there were more in danger of roting do to all the rain she recently had fallen on her seedling and already lost one do to water, moisture fungus is common a this stage and I noticed it from photos she posted on the seedling in the yellow ring, after that they just rot, remember at this stage you have to control the moisture a little more, if you decide to transplant at this stage it should be in a small pot with good drainage until it get a little bigger.
Jim, can you post a photo of yours like Mellisa did, would like to see how yours doing and check the soil you used in the process, one of the things I noticed looking at Melissa's photo was her growing medium was to coarse for the seeds, next time I send her seed I'll tell her how to correct this before planting seeds, this way she will be more successful in germinating more seeds than she recently had. If you take a close look at the photos at the beginning of this tread were I show how to plant the seeds, notice the medium I use was a fine one stead of a coarse one, easier for seeds to germinate. Show me some photos so I can be more precise to what direction to go with them from here.

Wilfred

BTW, any time any of you have a question, please post a photo if you can an able to do so, photos can show more of what your asking than you miet think and makes it easier to answer, sometime others can see things you miet have unwilling over looked and not noticed it.

"They" must be right when "They" say a picture is worth a thousand words!

My neighbor's Desert Rose, just took the photo an hour ago. And I mean took! They'd die of embarrassment at the weedy yard, they keep it so neat all the time.. We just had a lot of rain and everyting is growing a foot a day!

Wilfred, this plant, or these plants would have a caudex under the current ground level?

I bet he says those D.R. are from cuttings, I had quite a few myself until I saw what they were supposed to look like, now I'm hooked on the real thing. Getting cuttings to grow is 100% easier then doing them from seeds, but the reward for growing it from seeds is more then worth the time and effort. Jim

Hi Mellisa, don't worry about the weed, I have the same problem controlling it over here when it rains a lot.

Those plant in the photo must have a humongous caudex under ground, you or they have no Idea how big it is. whats under the ground is three times or more thicker than the truck itself and judging by the size on top it goes pretty deep, three to four feet, I dug up four Adenium Desert Rose half the size of the ones in the photo for a friend a couple of years ago to help expose the caudex and I was surprised to see the size it had gotten under ground, had to make a hole three feet in diameter by two and half deep to get them out without damaging the roots and it weigh a lot, had two get help to dig it out. That plant must have quit a few year to it, its a beautiful specimen, nicely grown and well branched at the top. Have you given them any tips on fertilizing it to get it really blooming, I believe it would look incredibly gorgeous covered in blooms, and it could produce thousands of seed on it.
If the ever what to dig it out to expose the caudex, they must be prepared for the hard work that involves with a plant that size, first they must start to dig around two feet away from the base inward slowly with a hand shovel and gradually so not to damage the roots or caudex of the plant, Its a slow process and you have to start early in the day so you have enough time to dig it out unharmed. Caudex can be two feet wide and one and a half feet high on those plants taking you have left 2/3 of it under ground to work as roots for it.

I my opinion I would leave it alone unless I really would like to expose the caudex for its beauty, but the bloom alone is enough for me to see.

If you want to have an idea of how big it is under the soil, just take one that is one year old and scale it up to the size of the one in issue here and you'll get an idea of what I mean with that. the way you do this is you take a ruler a measure the size of the plant from the top of the soil in the pot to the tip of the plant, than you take out the plant from the pot and clean all the soil away from it and measure from it was buried to the bottom root, finally you measure the whole plant, both first two measurements added must equal the last measurement, now you measure the plant in issue from the ground to toe top of it. now you scale up the first measurement to the last and at the same time the second measurement to.
Example: if the first one measured 1' on top and the bottom measured 9"and the one in issue measured 3' from soil to top, that would mean that the rest of this plant under ground should measure approximately 27" deep. ( 1' scaled up to 3' = 9" scaled up to 27" ). The year old plant top portion has been multiplied by the top portion size of the plants in issue and if you multiply the top portion than you must multiply the bottom portion equally and that give you the size of the plant in issue size under the ground approximately. this is only an example on how to scale up a plant roots system when you have the top measurements from the ground up to top of plant only. Hope this helped you a little.

Wilfred

Amazing, again! The neighbors are just quiet, older Island people. They might become very frightened at having a weirdo underground monster so close to their home!!! I don't know them well enough to ask if I can just go dig dig dig! Haha!

I might give them some super-bloom fertilizer.

I know some other folks that have a similar Desert Rose in the corner of their yard. They neglect their yard, must have Big Screen TV football or something. Maybe I can ask to buy the beast, and then go in with a backhoe! haha

I'll go take photos in the next day or two of that one, it's a little bigger than this one.

Haha, I can just see me in there with a team of Haitians digging away! (I highly respect the industriousness of Haitians! They work hard!)

Silly me.

WOW I am going to be mommy 5TIMES I just was looking at my first two seed pods and I see 3 more growing it is unbelievable, I may have to call in the nurses aid when they are ready to deliver *LOL*



Doris

Hi Wilfred
I thought of you this morning when I looked out my bedroom window at dawn and saw these guys and the smaller honey bees feasting on the hamelia patens. It was hard to get a good shot from the window. They move really fast. I love these big black and yellow bumbles.
Jan...

Mellisa, sorry about my guess, but I had quite a lot of cuttings and they sure looked similar, glad I didn't bet money LOL

Wilfred, heres the picture you asked for, now don't yell at me! I already figured the soil was too course, but I did get another one up for a total of six, I've put the first five in 3"pots with a much finer soil, and have them out in the sunshine because the planting medium was rather wet, I started to get fungus on the soil but learned from another thread that if that happens just sprinkle with ground cinnamon, that took care of that problem. Now I will re-read your thread to see when and how much to water the seedlings, Jim

Cutie little bay-bees! lol

Over in the Orchids forum one poster was all excited about a bump on her Vanda's stem. Every one watched her every photo of the growing bump , and comments were thick and fast. Turned out to be a new root.

Only gardeners!

I went to town for a while, but before I left, I brought everyone inside. No rain troubles risked!