One of our winter goals this year is to finish planting trees in the garden (quinta). We planted 48 fruit trees last year and lost half. So we are  planting replacement trees as well as the rest of the planned trees. That is if I can figure out where to buy them. But I digress.

At the top fence which separates the quinta and the main pasture we have always planned to plant carob trees (Ceratonia Siliqua). We thought we’d found some our first year but weren’t quite ready to plant them. Then last year when we thought we were ready we couldn’t find any. Carob trees aren’t all that popular down here – they are slow growing and can be messy. They also don’t transplant well if over a year old. They have a very vigorous tap root and the tree needs to be below a certain height to do well being replanted. Slow growing trees that need to be planted when they are still tiny don’t sell well in nurseries.

So last October I planted my own from seed. Carob seeds have a rather low germination rate so I planted 36 trees hoping to get 11. I ended up with 12 9mo. seedlings to plant. But one seedling is a bit sickly, so 11 it is.

They don’t look like much. But if I’m lucky and they survive we’ll have a row of trees at the top of the garden line. (Each tree is surrounded by 3 stakes. Which is the only way to tell that anything was planted until you step on them!)