Sprouting coconuts

[estación seca]

I bought a fresh coconut at the store, soaked it for a few days in water in a bucket, rinsed it, drained it and put it into a large lidded glass jar. I put it where it would be nice and warm, and in bright shade. It sprouted about 8 weeks later.



People have also done this with large plastic bags and a bit of perlite, peat or coconut fiber for some moisture. The key is keeping it warm, much warmer than most people keep their houses. Select a coconut that has a good amount of liquid inside.

[Diane56Victor]

This is going to be interesting to watch. Hope you post more photos as it grows on.

[estación seca]

They are not hard to grow if warm and watered. At one time people could buy sprouting coconuts in Hawaii, and have them mailed home for use as house plants. People would need to get rid of them when they grew too tall for the ceiling. I knew some people who did just this.

The tops are supposedly hardy somewhat below freezing. We can't grow them outside in Phoenix because they can't tolerate cool soil temperatures. There is supposed to be a coconut palm growing in the ground in Yuma, Arizona, the part of the state with the warmest winter temperatures.

I've considered building a large outdoor raised planter with a heating cable for a coconut, but then I realized it would be better used for a baobab tree. They likewise will not tolerate cool winter soil. But they aren't able to tolerate any frost, so I'd need to build a removable structure above the planter each winter. Much easier to grow baobobs in big pots and move them in for the winter.

[JScott]

I've heard that as the coconut sprouts, the inside kind of solidifies into something that looks alarmingly like a white brain, and that that inner material from a sprouted coconut is delicious. Have you ever tried that? I have not; I've only read about it, but it exercises a particular fascination over my consciousness.

[Mr.Fakename]

Very interesting indeed.

Some stores here sell grown trees as house plants, but I've never thought of growing one from the start.

Neat lil experiment, can't wait to see it develop!

[estación seca]

I've never eaten sprouting coconut insides. I've eaten young coconut, which is the insides far before it ripens.

[Keysguy]

In the Keys they sprout just laying around on the ground and during hurricane season we call them "CANNONBALLS"!!!!!!.

[DirtyCoconuts]

This thread is great and a bit amusing to us Floridians

The truth is I am a HUGE fan of the coconut. Hence my name. I am a very complicated theologian who has read all the major biblical and foundational texts, willingly and comfortably discusses god with others of unlike beliefs and will always point to the coconut as my example of proof that there are miracles.

If you have ever seen a mature coconut palm, one that has lived through more than one wind event, and it is twisted, crooked, bent and unbelievably strong...and that came from a small bowling ball???

Also, the coconut itself, can sustain itself for 8 months with no help, like adrift in the ocean that 8-10” seed can thrive for 8 bleeping months!!! I have found mature coconut trees growing in floating pallets in the ocean while spearfishing.

I will offer no advice bc I have no idea what coconuts want. I put on in the sandy soil outside 4 years ago and it is 20+ feet tall now.

ES, your only challenge will be her thirst.

Good luck and I really hope you can get her to grow bc they are a magical plant...great juju

[estación seca]

Thanks for the info! My friends who brought theirs back from Hawaii (already sprouting, with the entire husk still attached) are not plant people in the least. It lived for them for many years in a somewhat dimly lit house, 6 feet from a west window. They had it in a pot just larger in diameter than the husk. They gave it away when they moved out of state to somebody who left it outside the first winter and killed it.

I don't think you can ship coconuts in husk any longer. A yellowing disease is threatening coconuts worldwide. But almost all the husked coconuts sold in markets are viable when they arrive at the store.

Monocots (including palms) owe their bending strength to their structure. Dicots, including most broad-leafed trees, have a very thin layer of living vascular tissue, to carry water and nutrients, just under the bark. It runs from roots to the top of the plant. The old, inner parts of the stem turn to wood, which isn't hard to break with twisting or horizontal forces in a strong wind.

Monocots have numerous bundles of living vascular tissue scattered throughout the stem, running from the roots up the entire length of the plant. Trying to snap a palm tree is like trying to break an extremely thick section of jute or sisal rope. The thicker the stem, the more bundles. Palm trees are defoliated and uprooted by wind, but almost never snapped off.

The downside to this structure is almost no palms can be rooted from stem cuttings. (Nor leaf cuttings.) They don't have living tissue anywhere near the outside of the trunk that can extrude new roots, and the plant dies before rooting if the stem is cut transversely. Some clustering palm offsets can be separated at the base, if they are already forming roots. But solitary palms generally can't be grown from cuttings.

I have heard anecdotal, unverified reports that date palms (Phoenix dactylifera, a clustering palm) will root from the trunk if an air layer box is built around the trunk, filled with soil and kept wet. I've been tempted to try it with a palm in my front yard, but my neighbors already think I'm crazy.

[JScott]

Originally Posted by estación seca

I've never eaten sprouting coconut insides. I've eaten young coconut, which is the insides far before it ripens.

What is inside an unripe coconut? When I'm in Brasil, street vendors are always selling agua de coco, The coconuts look small and green, and you drink the water out of the coconut, then they fashion a scraper from the outer husk with a giant machete, which you then use to scrape out the inside, and the inside material is very soft, not like the flesh of a ripe coconut, and it is refreshing and delicious with a very mild flavor. Is it like that?