Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Hooray! Larger MF plant update

So in the four-ish months since I've had my largest miracle fruit plant, I at first saw stability, then loss of foliage, and for the most part after that, nothing. No new growth, no loss of leaves, and I began to worry that: A, my plant was dead, B: it was defective, or C: I was doing something wrong. Because it was unlikely I would have a "defective" plant, and it would have been obvious if it was dead, I was probably doing something wrong. The obstacle of correcting this is that I didn't know what I was doing wrong. I contacted the seller and in short, was told to keep doing what I was doing. This was about a week ago.


Yesterday, I looked at my plant and noticed that a couple of leaves had turned brown, so I opened the bag and checked to see if there were more dying leaves. I didn't find any, instead to my delight I saw that at the top of the plant there were two perfectly formed flowers! I looked carefully, and found there were actually a dozen or so tiny buds growing on the branches, and a few small red leaves, which I think are newly formed. I took a cotton swab and brushed against both of the flowers to hopefully polinate them.

I think my plant has finally overcome its transplant shock. I just wish I could find what I was doing differently, so I can keep it that way.

2 comments:

  1. Hi, I just purchased a couple of plants myself and I'm looking forward to seeing some flowers. Wow, you're are already flowering!? Nice!!

    In regards to polinationg, I've heard that shaging the plant will help in that. How do you politate witha swab?

    Good luck and congradulations.

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  2. I wouldn't say "already" with my plant because with most people it seems to flower sooner. I've heard that shaking helps too, butonly when there are lots of flowers on the plant which I really don't have. To polinate my plant I really just brushed against the inside of the flower to hopefully get some pollen on the stigma, but even then there's no guarantee I'll get fruit.

    Good luck, and be sure to keep me posted on your plants!

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