Timmy's Apple Tree

About a month ago, when our friends the Goldmans were visiting from North Carolina, Timmy and Johnny had apples as a snack.

"Um, okay...I guess that's exciting..."

Wait, there's more!  I promise!

Timmy typically makes one pass around an apple, taking off the skin and any flesh underneath that the first set of bites will cover.  Then he calls himself done.  He doesn't eat any part of the apple that doesn't have skin in the same bite.  Frustrating, but at least he's eating apples.  He eats 3-4 per week, can't complain about that....

Johnny, on the other hand, is very good about eating as much of the apple as he can, and he left a minimal core behind, complete with the seeds exposed.

Timmy had never noticed the seeds in the core before, and immediately wanted to plant the seeds from Johnny's apple core.  Amidst all the chaos of our friends visiting, I made Timmy set the seeds aside and promised to plant them when things had calmed down some.  I needed time to prepare a place for the seeds to go and I didn't want to do it yet.

We had a planter that the boys made at Lowe's last year, complete with a window in the front to let you see the root action.  I had to clean out the dead carrot plant debris and refilled the container w/ fresh soil.  We planted the two seeds on July 13th.  I wasn't optimistic.

On the 18th, the boys flew up to their grandparents' house in New York.  So far, the container hadn't done much, but on the 22nd, this is what we had:

Here it is on the 26th, just before I left for New York to pick up the kids:

And this morning:

Timmy's so excited about this, and I'm glad I let him go forward with this experiment, against my better judgement.  Timmy's already making plans about where to plant the apple "tree" when it's big enough to plant outside.  He pointed to a corner of the backyard and declared "It needs to go HERE!"

Again, I'm not optimistic...apple trees don't typically grow in this part of the country.  I have a large patio planter that we can use, if it comes to that.