marios levi

Konstantinos Karoubas wrote:
If you could give us an updates on your almonds. If they didn't survive at all ie if you had 100% failure rate, that's all right. As we mentioned before failure and set backs we should welcome them. Easy success should be viewed suspiciously.

Very interesting concept to utilize the cactus pads to create a mini environment for our seeds such as acorns, almonds, etc.

Good article.

The cactus pads may allow us to plant trees in semi desert environments such as the Middle East or Northern Africa.

From about 72 almond saplings that came out from seed last spring, I watered 30 of them through the summer last year. Then from October2023-April2024 I stopped the watering completely and just let the limited rains water them. They survived the winter but almost all of them had wind/cold burns on the top of their branches which were dead, about the top 10cm at most. So they all started shorter than last year. This year in April, I put drip irrigation on about 25 of the "best" ones (healthiest or good spot on the land), and those are doing very well. Here are some pics of some of my favorite ones that get irritated. Scale is hard to tell from images, but they are all about 60-85cm tall at the highest point. No fertilizer or anything else except weekly drip watering. Images named Watered#.png


Of the remaining ~40 almond trees I, let about 25 of them be completely on their own, of which 7 have survived, although very short and not the healthiest looking as can be seen in the pictures NotWatered. This is their second year of no watering- I simply put seeds in September of 2022 and they have made it until today with only extremely limited rains (I did dig around some of them and put mulch though one time).

The remaining random amount of almond trees I water them manually sometimes if I feel like it, or they are close to some other irrigated ones and take water from there, etc. Not great for science experiment statistics...

On a side note, I had put fig cuttings early last year, with only some manual watering, and all of them died. This year I retried but put drip irrigation as well, and of the 18 I put in April, half of them have rooted very well and seem to be doing great...

I just read this article https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/forests-and-global-change/articles/10.3389/ffgc.2024.1343069/full that came out this year and I thing it is very related to this thread. It talks about the place of Prickly Pear / Opuntia cactuses in Mediterranean reforestation.

A statistic that really shocked me there is that "Average natural regeneration density under prickly pear was almost double that under olive trees and almost 30 times higher than in open areas"

This picture shows how oaks survive well near prickly pears:


Of course you need to keep in mind the invase-ability of the cactus, but it goes on to say that it really is not invasive in the Mediterranean basin. If you do want to be extra careful though, it would not hurt to go back every 2-3 years to where it is planted.

I think a practical use of this article would be to plant a seed (like you are doing Kosta), and also plant 1-2 cactus pads in such an angle as to cause most shading. Later as the tree grows, the cactus dies and regeneration can happen more efficiently.

I think I will try this method on my 4000m^2 marginal plot, especially because Sifnos already has many prickly pear cactuses growing throughout very marginal areas.

Great updates Konstantinos! Seems those plums are growing very slow. Is it not worth it to put some mulch and a little bit of water + organic fertilizer one time so that can have a bit more growth and can potentially access their own nutrients/water further down? Just to nudge them a bit

I'm updating too now as it has been 8 weeks from my last post about almonds from seed.

Originally I had written that I found 47 almonds that sprouted, but that number has now risen to a total of 75 almonds that sprouted. That brought up the germination rate to over 80%. A couple sprouted after a good rainy day a couple weeks ago, and also now that other plants are drying in the summer, it is easier to spot the green leaves and distinct shape of almonds trees I forgot I planted.

Of the 75 total that sprouted, 5 of them have dried and died.

From these remaining 70, I am watering 28 of them. I chose the almonds to water based mainly on the location, choosing the ones that I know for sure I want in my food forest. I am also keeping track of all growth rates. The watering schedule was an interval of 1 month, then 2 weeks then 10 days, with the first watering starting on April 16th, 2023. Now I will be watering once every 10 days through the summer. Note: it has rained 2 times in the last 8 weeks as well. Of those 28, I used a homemade fertilizer at a ~1:50 ratio, which didn’t seem to have any effect.

It's interesting to see the varying morphologies of each tree. Some are long and straight, other ones have a bent stem and then straighten out, other ones have a thick canopy. I've attached a small collage of some interesting shaped ones.

Some Stats:
Average growth rate of not watered trees: +31%
Average growth rate of just watered trees: +63%
Average growth rate of “fertilized”/watered trees: +52%

Some of the trees grew significantly, with the tallest tree now being 47cm! That one was planted on a hügelkultur-type hole I had covered underground, but I think that may just be a coincidence, since other trees that are 46cm & 45cm were seeded in random locations.

Some observations/thoughts:
>Many of the ones that I am not watering are starting to turn reddish, even if they look healthy and large. Some, even with no watering, are still very green.
>My DIY fertilizer is probably a lot weaker than I had thought. I might switch to a stronger one for a couple of them to see the difference it makes.
>The leaf density of the watered ones changed in the new growth. I.e., less leaves per stem length.
>I made a wind breaker out of large stones to surround 3 trees, and one of those trees died, and the other 2 looked very unhealthy. I think the stones keep in the heat and make them dehydrate a lot faster, so I will not do any more of that style.
>Trees are surviving very well even in direct wind.
>Even though the planting plot area is only 3800sq.m, there are tons of microclimates on it, so I am not sure how to best measure what is having the biggest impact on the almond growth. It is obvious that watering makes a big difference, but many of the watered trees are also protected partially by the wind, or different soil conditions, etc.
>I should mulch all the trees I am watering

All in all, everything is looking good! In the meantime, a peach tree has come out too, that I guess is from some buried compost. I have transplanted some fig trees, olive trees, artichoke, blackberries, carobs, and mulberries in the same plot. Will update on those in the future too.

Thank you for the idea!

Yes, Sifnos is full of almond trees, both domesticated and wild ones. These almonds I planted on September 24, 2022. I got them all from a tree on a neighboring field less than 200 meters away, although it is a tree that is growing on the corner stone walls that are about 1.5 meters high, so it was well protected from the wind when first growing.

In Sifnos, there are wild pear trees and pomegranate. Also many many fig trees, and cypresses. Of course a ton of olive trees as well, and some laurel and Leucaena in less windy areas. I have not seen any oak or laburnum trees. There is also tree spurge, though that is more of a succulent. No other note-worthy trees I've seen grow wild, and the mastic here is more of a bush than anything.

I will do what you said, and not water the ones I don't want. Do you think that 1.5m distance is good? I will also add a little fetid swamp water fertilizer that I made 6 months ago to them. I planted them perpendicular to the wind so that when they get windswept, the branches will not be interfering with each other.

No issues with unrestricted goats, and I have fencing around to make sure nothing comes in.

I attached a pic of the windswept tree that I got the almonds from, I find it beautiful and gives hope that nature finds a way. Note how the branches that are directly hit by the wind are dried out and then protect the green ones. This is a pattern I see in all windswept olive trees and anything. If you cut the dead branches off, then the ones facing the wind will die off again, so best to just keep them on.

Thanks to the inspiration and idea I got from Konstantinos Karoubas in this thread, I planted about 80 almond trees around a piece of neglected land that I have on the island of Sifnos in the Cyclades of Greece. I came back to the spot now in spring, and am happy to see that 47 of them sprouted!!. This was all with the sparse rain and humidity of the island.

Field mice were not an issue for me, as there are many (hungry) cats all over the place that eat anything they can get their paws on.

I took height measurements of each tree I spotted and they range from 8cm-34cm, with the average being 22 cm.

I want these to succeed since I am making a food forest, so I will mulch around each one and am planning on giving them 1L/week/tree during the hot summer months this year.

Issues:
1) My main issue is the wind, and I want to make a dry stone construction circling each sapling, even though it is very laborious. Stacking a tire or 2 around them can also work, though it is unsightly. Maybe covering the tire with mud and then cement can be an option, but still a lot of work. Any suggestions on this front would be highly appreciated; before the strong dry winds start.

2) Since I planted many of them 50cm away from each other, and so many sprouted, there are areas of super high density of saplings that I fear in the future will interfere and limit growth of each other. Should I try transplanting some of them to leave at least ~2m between them?

I attached some images too