Hi,
I just started a little over 200 plants from seed in College Station, Texas. They are about 8 days old and about 6-7 inches tall. I have one acre near Port Lavaca, Texas where we will be planing them, as well as another 300 that will be ready to plant in a few more weeks. That will give us 500 Jatropha curcas plants on one acre. We will be installing a drip irrigation system as well, using water from a windmill that is onsite and producing about 1100 gallons of water a day.
The big plan is to have at least a few of these plants survive the winter here and still produce in the spring. The plants produced from the seeds produced from these plants will likely be able to survive winters (which are short and mild, usually) here in South Texas. It's just a little "survival of the fittest" game. If we can develop a strain of seed that survives in Port Lavaca, then we will have something that can be grown on hundreds of thousands of acres in South Texas. At this point, we don't plan to be an oil producer, just a seedling producer. We plan to license the use of our seedlings without allowing the planting of seeds grown from the plants. This is early in the game and those who get into it early will have a better chance of success than those who wait too long.
I'd love to hear from anyone else who is growing Jatropha curcas in Texas.
I am open to any suggestions or comments.
Patrick J. Janis,
College Station, Texas
