How Does a Coconut Tree Grow?
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How They Grow Naturally
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Coconut trees are exotic plants and survive best in tropical Asia. They grow well in salt water which is why they thrive on sandy beaches near the ocean shoreline. When a nut is ripe it will break off from the coconut palm and fall to the ground. Often that very spot is where another palm tree will eventually germinate. The coconut tree is capable of bearing fifty nuts per year. These trees are quite tall, growing up to fifty or sixty feet tall and spreading to around twenty-five feet at full height. Once the nut has dropped and germination has begun, it takes about six months for the full germination process to take place. The tree will not grow fruit until it has reached anywhere from six to ten years of age, at which time it will bear up to fifty nuts a year, peaking somewhere around ages fifteen to twenty. They will continue to bear nuts until they are eighty years old.
Coconut Palm as House Plants
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Coconut palms can be planted indoors as well but demand a lot of light so it is important that they are kept close to windows or in a greenhouse where the sun is able to shine through the roof. Shake your coconut and if it sloshes it is perfect for planting. Soak it for a few days in a bucket of water and then it will be ready for a pot at least ten inches deep and wide enough around to comfortably hold the entire coconut. Use potting soil and then plant the nut stem end up. Leave a third of the nut up above the soil and water it often, as long as the pot has good drainage so that the soil is always moist but never thoroughly saturated and your coconut should do just fine. The room temperature should never fall below about 32 degrees fahrenheit and ideally it should be much higher than that.
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Some Basic Facts
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Coconut palms do not form trunks until they are at least five years old, but will send out leaf shoots early on. These shoots simply stick right out of the top of the coconut until such a time as it can form into a trunk. While these trees can be grown up to nine hundred meters above sea level they will seldom be planted at that level, usually accumulating along beaches and in tropical forests at sea level or a little above. Sometimes if the nut lands directly in the ocean, the tide may carry it out and since coconuts float, they can easily germinate out to sea, live on sea water for days, weeks or even months, and finally plant themselves on some foreign tropical shore. Throughout the first year of its growth, the palm tree will take all of its nutrients directly from the stores within the coconut itself, sort of like an unborn baby getting nutrients from it's placenta, or a chick within an egg getting its food from the yolk. After that point, the tree can take its nutrients from the soil itself, or from fertilizers.
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