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In depth analysis of the Athens Riviera climate and palm potential


southathens

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Guys the thread here is for Athens and Attica.

Anything for Lindos and Kasos let's chat in the Lindos thread!!

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4 hours ago, Victor G. said:

There's another aspect to consider when buying fruit that comes from far away; the chemical treatments they undergo.

For example, here in Germany, literally all of the fruit comes from other countries (south Europe, south Africa, south America, ...)
What they do with citrus fruit for example, is they pick them while they're still green and unripe on the tree.
Then, they transport them to Germany, were they spray them with ethylene gas, which aggresively ripens the fruit.
When the fruit becomes ripe, they spray it with other chemicals, such as imazalil and pyrimethanil, which are anti-fungal and prevent the fruit from going bad while it's in storage.
This creates a (cancerous) coating around the fruit and it can sit for weeks before being sold, maintaining it's "freshness".

The result is a non-tasting fruit. You can bypass this by bying the biological fruit, which is sprayed with more "friendly" and non-cancerous chemicals. 6 mandarines for 3 Euros. Yep, I'm not kidding!

Anyway all this process really weakens the fruit. I don't know about coconuts but I wouldn't be surprised if they treat them as well. Don't forget, they grow in the tropical zones and must be transported all they way to Russia/Finland/Canada, etc. which takes weeks at best. That can be one reason for your plant to fail.

True but we don't have any other choice. Bringing a real coconut from India on the plane would be nice but not practical. And anyway many people have managed to sprout coconuts with success

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previously known as ego

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I saw today around the center of Athens these badly burned banana baby trees.

I don't know how they managed to survive this year's winter. Do you think they will make it?

 

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Edited by Manos33
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41 minutes ago, Manos33 said:

I saw today around the center of Athens these badly burned banana baby trees.

I don't know how they managed to survive this year's winter. Do you think they will make it?

 

1.png.4e08c273068440f9d1d7ce5a461657ff.png

 

They look perfectly heathy to me. The stem is always a bit brown, don't let that fool you.
The banana plant absorbs water from the ground and some of it escapes through the upper part of the stem, where the leaves come from. If you took down on it, you can often see the water accumulating there (as long as it's irrigated properly). Due to this, a lot of fungus and mold forms there; this causes the brown colour.

Anyways, these have some burned leaves, but the upper ones seem perfectly green and healthy. And then, there's a young sprouting, which looks healthy as well.

Bananas are one plant that often looks very crappy, when in fact it's perfectly healthy. The stem is always brown-ish and the leaves are easily torn by wind gusts. The plant itself has somehow learned having no problems at all and continuing growing.
Take a look at a banana plantation. One could think that there's a problem because of the grey-brown leaves, but the plants are fine

bananaplant1565763093.jpg

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But how did it manage to survive this winter in a public place nonetheless?

They are located in Keramikos area next to the center

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Just for reference, these are two completely frost-burned banana plants.
You can see that there's absolutely no green

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Just now, Manos33 said:

But how did it manage to survive this winter in a public place nonetheless?

They are located in Keramikos area next to the center

How cold did it get there?

They could be of the Musa Basjoo species, which is very cold tolerant. Or a good microclimate.

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1 minute ago, Victor G. said:

How cold did it get there?

They could be of the Musa Basjoo species, which is very cold tolerant. Or a good microclimate.

Around +0.5C record low for this winter  if I judge from nearby stations 

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1 minute ago, Manos33 said:

Around +0.5C record low for this winter  if I judge from nearby stations 

0,5C is nothing for bananas, unless it stays for more that 4-5 hours like that.
Mine suffered from 0,7C for one hour or so and it looked fine. I mean you could see that damage in some leaves, but the plant was healthy and sprouted new leaves in February.

Bananas suffer from frost, but as long as temperatures stay above zero, they have no problem

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50 minutes ago, Manos33 said:

Around +0.5C record low for this winter  if I judge from nearby stations 

Many bananas in Attica look the same. Some are totally scorched indeed but some are OK. The ones in your photo look really good! As Victor said, some brown colour is normal. Is that wall south facing?

Edited by ego
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previously known as ego

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36 minutes ago, ego said:

Many bananas in Attica look the same. Some are totally scorched indeed but some are OK. The ones in your photo look really good! As Victor said, some brown colour is normal. Is that wall south facing?

Its a very narrow alley in Keramikos there is one more wall just two meters away sheltering the entire alley from both sides.

Edited by Manos33
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2 minutes ago, Manos33 said:

Its a very narrow alley in Keramikos there is one more wall just two meters away sheltering the entire alley from both sides.

Makes sense then

previously known as ego

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During the weekend I passed also from Nikaia area which for some reason is full of bananas and these trees looked great!Most of them anyway. Mind you that low altitude Nikaia did not get any snow this year. Like most areas around Piraeus 

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22 minutes ago, Manos33 said:

During the weekend I passed also from Nikaia area which for some reason is full of bananas and these trees looked great!Most of them anyway. Mind you that low altitude Nikaia did not get any snow this year. Like most areas around Piraeus 

Let's start a thread "Can cocos survive in Nikaia, Greece?" !

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9 minutes ago, Phoenikakias said:

Thanks, it is true.

Happy burst day! So you're 26 now?

previously known as ego

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Finally got some pictures of my plants (in Dikastika).

Overall they seem to be doing nice (considering the winter we had). More specifically:

Dragon fruit: Many reported that the covered or lost theirs, but these are alive and well
Date palms: Obviously survived, but it's a 9a plant so it was expected. It can take frost and snow without a problem
Banana: Some damage, but it's very green. One leaf broken from the wind. Young plant underneath is fine. Keep it mind it receives very little sun there (so it doesn't get heated from it as much)
Avocado: Even better that it was in the summer! But I've seen some in the colder suburbs of Athens; they can take some cold
Mango: Poor looking. I don't know if it was the cold or the fungus. After January's cold wave it looked much better, so I'm guessing the March cold is not the only factor at play here. Hope it will recover.

Also, the plants have received absolutely no care for the last 3 months and I'm not even sure that the irrigation system is working.
Some other young date palms have turned pretty brown too, which suggest that there probably is some irrigation problem. Hope to solve it when I come before I lose them all

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I believe the mango dying is more due to a fungus that the cold. It was attacked by a fungus in September and although I sprayed it, I don't think I got to all of it.
On the lower branch, the front leaves look terrible, while the back leaves are green and fine, which might suggest that the fungus bounced back and is slowly spreading to the plant.

But I can't know for sure

Edited by Victor G.
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On 4/12/2022 at 1:26 PM, Victor G. said:

I believe the mango dying is more due to a fungus that the cold. It was attacked by a fungus in September and although I sprayed it, I don't think I got to all of it.
On the lower branch, the front leaves look terrible, while the back leaves are green and fine, which might suggest that the fungus bounced back and is slowly spreading to the plant.

But I can't know for sure

Cold and moist together are the open door for fungal infection.

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1 minute ago, Phoenikakias said:

Cold and moist together are the open door for fungal infection.

True. But yesterday I learned another fact: The automatic irrigation system had been turned off for the past 3 months.
It has been 22 days without any rain, so maybe it just dried out. It's sitting under the sun, which is starting to get intense

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Just now, Victor G. said:

True. But yesterday I learned another fact: The automatic irrigation system had been turned off for the past 3 months.
It has been 22 days without any rain, so maybe it just dried out. It's sitting under the sun, which is starting to get intense

Imo unlikely

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2 minutes ago, Phoenikakias said:

Imo unlikely

Why? It's a young and small plant, so it's roots aren't deep in the soil.
The past 22 days have been completely rainless and in the past 31 days only 14 mm have fallen. That's not much, right?

I'm not saying it's only because of the lacking rain, but that must have contributed in some level

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Ι grow also three mango trees in my garden one osteen and two keitt. All three remained without irrigation until start of April. Nevertheless the extent of damage differs depending on cultivar. Top of osteen is defoliated but wood is fresh, top of of osteen was also defoliated but wood has also started rotting. Fortunately I see already new sprouts on fresh wood of osteen.

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Edited by Phoenikakias
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24 minutes ago, Phoenikakias said:

Ι grow also three mango trees in my garden one osteen and two keitt. All three remained without irrigation until start of April. Nevertheless the extent of damage differs depending on cultivar. Top of osteen is defoliated but wood is fresh, top of of osteen was also defoliated but wood has also started rotting. Fortunately I see already new sprouts on fresh wood of osteen.

Good luck! I love mango gardening!

Until the start of April I don't think there was big need for watering. It rained every now and then, so the plants did fine.
But since the last days of March and also the start of April (until now) didn't have any rain at all, I believe the plants are stressing.

Look at the date palm (try to find it first! :P). They always become brown like this when they lack water. It has happened last Autumn and last summer as well, when I left them a week without water (in the middle of the summer).

1649947770995.jpg

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  • 2 weeks later...

Two interesting species in Syros. Ficus lyrata seems very unhappy after the exceptionally cold winter but I think it will survive?

 

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previously known as ego

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I passed yesterday from Alexandras Avenue in Athens and just 100 meters after Pedio tou Areos I saw 4 huge bananas trees in a small coffee (located in Alexandras Avenue) that were totally unaffected by the cold snaps of 2022. They seemed pretty healthy. I passed with the car so no time to take pictures but they looked amazing. I am surprised they managed to survive so far from the south suburbs!

Edited by Manos33
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17 hours ago, ego said:

Two interesting species in Syros. Ficus lyrata seems very unhappy after the exceptionally cold winter but I think it will survive?

 

IMG_20220423_150336.jpg

 

Are they fruiting in Athens?

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17 hours ago, ego said:

Two interesting species in Syros. Ficus lyrata seems very unhappy after the exceptionally cold winter but I think it will survive?

 

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IMG_20220422_163810.jpg

Lol this is only very minor, cosmetic damage.

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2 hours ago, Phoenikakias said:

Lol this is only very minor, cosmetic damage.

Do they survive in the soil in Attica?

previously known as ego

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3 hours ago, ego said:

Do they survive in the soil in Attica?

On long term I am not sure at all. I am referring of course to Ficus lyrata not to the Hylocereus.

Edited by Phoenikakias
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@NikoPalms here some updated pics of the Roystonea in Voula from Jan 2022

 

 

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Attica registered its first 30C+ T for the year today in the Davis met station of Avlonas

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On 4/7/2022 at 11:37 AM, Victor G. said:

As a matter of fact, my number one interest are date palms! I started this whole gardening project because of them.
Everyone had me convinced that dates do not ripen in our climate, but then I started seeing them, ripe, hanging on the trees. The I understood that people look at canary palms and say "see? I told you these don't ripen in Greece!".

I already have 7 little date palms, which I planted from Tunisian seeds. I think they're of the Medjool variety, but I'd like to get my hands on Zahidi as well, since they ripen earlier.
(Altough with the Medjool ones, if you remove most of them while they're underdeveloped you can make these giant king dates).

Problem is the soil is so rocky, they grow 3-4 times slower then they would. I'll switch to organic compost to fertilise, because I've been using Complesal and I'm extremely dissapointed (on other plants as well)

Notice how dried they look in the summer. I used to water them every other day, but when I switched to everyday they looked much better (and much greener)

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On 4/7/2022 at 1:30 PM, Phoenikakias said:

Better not stick to already existing varieties.  Those are developed and adjusted to other, more arid and hotter climates. This way you put yourself  genetic restrictions and you do not exploit the immense potential genetic material. I would definitely start from already (not only fruiting but much more) edible dates producing exemplars within the borders of Attica.20220208_125401.thumb.jpg.94e46d25d767495feae58029a76ceee6.jpg20220211_144339.thumb.jpg.df7fe25ee6adde6ba4eebee64c8e80b3.jpg20220211_144359.thumb.jpg.190ecf820a88826da1626cc5a92f7eea.jpg20220220_091528.thumb.jpg.5494d27713180e95f35c64ff3afb4b0e.jpg

Besides a good occasion that we test the theory of seed shape defining the gender of future plant.

IMG-50ab61144ac1908e87fadb4384ba025f-V.thumb.jpg.38a5dfc5d221d4dfac2477447ea8646a.jpg

 

 

On 4/7/2022 at 1:55 PM, Victor G. said:

Yeah these seeds look a lot different that the ones I planted.

Like I said mine are Tunisian so they come from Qafsa, Qabes or Tozeur. They are more arid and hot than Dikastika of course, but nothing compared to the Arabian Desert, Sudan and Chad. In terms of both sunshine hours and temperature. So they might fruit, who knows?

In any case, I'll take your advice into consideration, cause you're right. There is a fruiting date palm in Nea Makri (two actually that I've seen, but one is on private property), si at some point I can drop by and take a few.
If you also grow date palms from seed, you know it's a giant pain in the butt! They took me 3 months to germinate and they really grow slowly

Είμαι θεούλης φοινικούλης...

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I noticed that the port of Pireaus has a new weather station, since the beginning of April 2022.
https://penteli.meteo.gr/stations/pireas-port/

I gotta hand it to Greece, these are a LOT of stations for such a small country (and occasionally they keep adding new ones).
Most of these stations aren't even 8-10 years old, so we don't have a lot of data at the moment.

However, in another 10 (and more) years, we will have a huge pool of data available for many purposes (climatic research, hardiness zone map, etc.)

Στιγμιότυπο οθόνης (55).png

 

Edited by Victor G.
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Yep, thats the new Piraeus Port met station!!

It would be very very interesting to get the data from Piraeus Port. For sure I can say that downtown Piraeus and especially the Port are the areas of metropolitan Athens with the lowest frequency of settled snow. It is one of the mildest areas of Attica. I do have some reservations as to whether it will be milder than Nea Smyrni, at least in terms of average annual temperatures but it should be one of the mildest places in Attica.

As for the rich met network we have in Greece due to the National Observatory of Athens...well this proof of what collaboration between state and private agencies can achieve. The National Observatory of Athens is funded by the Niarhos Foundation regarding the met stations network. It would have been next to impossible if NOA relied only on public funding regarding the met stations network. Thanks to their deal with the Niarhos Foundation and the important funds coming from them NOA can develop such a rich met network!!!

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 1/28/2022 at 6:25 PM, Alicante said:

Yep, that part. Thanks. Unfortunately I'm unable to read Greek. 

Completely amazing man, thank you for the pics! Do you know the high temps it had from 24 to 26th January? It would be interesting to see if that Roystonea took any damage and if it did, how much. This can help us as a future indicator. 

 @Alicante time has come for the final damage account the Royal has suffered during past winter. It is almost June and it is safe for us not to expect disclosure of any more damage in the future. Well damage remained minor and only cosmetic, restricted to brown tips of some leaves. It is almost inconspicuous. Most impressively trunk meanwhile has fattened up! Pictures taken today.

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On the other hand a royal specimen of a friend of mine, which was still growing in pot, kicked finally the bucket. It had been brought only indoors in an unheated room during the January cold spell.

Judging from mine, which had been planted in to the ground just last summer, and which entered past winter with 5 fronds and is now entering summer with two and an expanding new one, I dare say plants of this sp are quite sensitive to very cold weather, when very young, but become considerably hardier with age ie after trunk formation or growth of leaves with over 1 cm thick petioles.

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That said trunking king palms in Palaio Faliro look more damaged.

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