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 I weeded all my malus sieversii trees and i lost quite a few to what i believe was a combination of deer, rabbit and rodent attacks. I think i lost between one fourth and one third of the 426 plants i grew from seed. I discovered some visually very amazing and different ones in two of the six seed batches. I singled out several unique ones that i planted in my polytunnel to grow them properly. I didn't have the time to protect the 426 as i would have liked to. All trees of the 4 other batches have basically green leaves. Here is one example. This is a very nice green leaved one. And another green leaved one. Already these two are different in leaf colour and shape. But i selected them from the batches were all had green leaves in order to be sure to have genetic diversity. I kept 18 seedlings in the polytunnel that contain some of every batch. The following ones are very special and unique and display many variations of red and green and even other colours. One seedling with nice
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Monkey puzzle

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 Last year many monkey puzzle trees (araucaria araucana) around here made good nuts and for the first time i tried them. Raw they are ok, but not great like a raw sweet chestnut. Lightly roasted they are delicious. Roasted too much they turn hard and are less good. So i went and collected nuts under all the trees i could find and kept the biggest for sowing. I was surprised that they grow very easily if you don't let them dry out they germinate and grow quite well in poor soil. The seeds germinated very well and now i have quite a lot of young baby trees. One thing i love about them is that they don't need fencing. I heard that goats will eat them but my local wild life doesn't touch them. I will probably plant them all out amongst my larger ones. Lots of tasty nuts sometime in the future.
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Feijoa

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 I am growing out feijoa seedlings in hope of finding plants better adapted to my climate. Inspired by an internet site about growing feijoas in the UK i thought i would try mass seeding and subsequent selection. Feijoa seeds, difficult to separate and clean from the flesh, germinate quite easily with sufficient heat (minimum 20 celsius, i'd say) They are rather slow growing and need good care. My hope is to plant all seedlings outdoors and to screen for the most vigourous and quick flowering. I have several varieties of feijoa growing in my polytunnel that i planted last year and i am looking forward to taste really ripe feijoa for the first time (meaning grown under heat) i tasted friends outdoor feijoa and it was good, but you could tell it could be much better.
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 Avocadoes after a cold winter. I have two fantastic seedlings that were crossed either with Wilma or Opal, one growing outside and one in the polytunnel I also have a mexicola seedling growing outdoors. This winter was a cold winter and the mexicola seedling looks pretty dead right now. Mexicola seedling looking pretty dead despite being 5 years old and having quite a trunk already. Each year it grows and then dies back down. Fantastic seedling. Only 2 years old, so much younger than the mexicola seedling, only half died down and has a new green sprout. It is much cold hardier than the mexicola. Second fantastic seedling in the polytunnel. It took a good hit but it's definitely not dead. At the bottom of it is my attempt to root layer a low growing branch in a pot that still looks alive and has a green shoot.
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 Gevuina avellana. I checked the two other branches that I tried to layer. I cut both branches and took away the pots. I carefully took out the cuttings to check for rooting. Both cuttings rooted well.  I planted them into new pots and cut off most of the leaves.  This is the third time i root chilean hazelnuts like this and up to now i had 100% success.
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 Japanese medlar. A very beautiful and very useful tree. Now for the first time i have seen them in flower. They are flowering now. The flowers smell very nice and the bees and insects love them. I now know 4 flowering trees in the area. I hope i will be able to collect fruit and seeds in order to grow them from seeds. The only negative thing about this tree is that it's not well adapted to growing in brittany yet. I plan to change that by doing several mass sowings and planting them very close together in mini big forest style and harvesting and resowing directly the seeds of the first one that flowers. That way flowering should happen quicker and the tree will become better adapted to growing here. Japanese medlar flowering Fairly large plant about 5 meters tall
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 Monkey puzzle. I found monkey puzzle pine nuts for the first time. I went to collect them under several different trees. There are slight differences in the size of the nuts. There is also differences in taste. Some tasted ok and some really nice raw. Fried in a pan makes them taste even better but if you leave them too long they turn hard. I didn't try boiling them in water yet. In the neighbouring village there is a huge female tree that the owner wants to chop down. I am personnally not at all worried about this tree becoming rare or extinct. In brittany alone there are hundreds if not thousands of monkey puzzle trees. Large tree nearby. Differences in size and appearance of araucaria araucana nuts
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