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arjo_reich

Gerbera Daisies From Seed...

arjo_reich
16 years ago

I harvested some seeds from a couple gerbera daisies a couple months back and I'm going to try to grow these from seed - but I'm told that they're one of the most difficult seeds to germinate and I was looking for a little advice and a little reality check.

The reality-check is to ensure I collected the seeds properly...

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I collected them by cutting off the dead flower heads and placing them into a fruit-cup sized tupperware and placing that into a coffee can that was then filled with a desiccant (damp-rid) and a lid went on that to keep them in total darkness as the desiccant dried them out quickly so as not to rot in the darkness.

Every day or so I would vent the lid in a dark room and give it some fresh air to ensure the moisture would make it's way out of the little tupperware and into the desiccant. What i have now is a tupperware full of the same type of white-fuzzy's you'd see on a dandelion.

They've been kept in that same dark, dried environment since. Is that correct for the harvesting technique?

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The other half of the question is how to germinate them. I hear they need solid contact with soil but also to be covered in a layer of vermiculite which is kept at field capacity of moisture, but still is sparse enough to allow bright light to penetrate. I'm going to set up a seed-bed for this purpose this weekend but if any part of this sounds wrong or needs correction I'd love to hear from anyone else who's had success with this.

I love these things but online searching has only yielded advice along the lines of "just buy plugs or pre-grown plants" ... =/

Comments (6)

  • artzypantz
    16 years ago

    I'm no expert, but what your doing sounds about right.

    I collected the seed pods from my geraniums last fall, threw them into a ceramic pot with lid on my counter, forgot about them untill this march. Opened the lid and they are similar....white puffs.
    I threw them ontop of soil in a pot, kept them moist by spritzing daily, and now have seedlings growing.

    As long as you provide the right growing conditions as you were speaking about, you should get some germination.
    Good luck and keep us posted.
    Tonia

  • calistoga_al ca 15 usda 9
    16 years ago

    Germination is not difficult. Your seed saving is too much work. I just cut off ripe seed heads into a brown paper shopping bag with the top left open and store it in a dry place until I feel like separating the seed from the chaff. Al

  • arjo_reich
    Original Author
    16 years ago

    Yea, I probably went overboard but I'm technically an engineer by trade and there's an old adage that...

    "Engineers will over-complicate anything until they run out of time or money or both..." ;-p

    Thanx again for the reality check and any additional advice on germination would be more than appreciated. I'm still doing research on the lighting requirements / etc. needed...

  • sebastian
    16 years ago

    This may help:
    http://www.backyardgardener.com/tm.html
    http://www.tomclothier.hort.net
    This should be the perfect time to start them.
    Barbie

  • Seonghee Ryu
    13 years ago

    It is in July 2010 now, and I harvested some seeds from pink Gerbera Daisies which are living outdoors in the garden during warmer days and indoors in pots during winter for 3 years. They're known as annual, but when you keep them warm enough they grow like perennial and the flowers keep coming back! When they were transplanted outdoors they were popular among bumble bees and so I could get them pollinated and harvest seeds!

    I found that not all the seeds from one head of flowers are ripe. Let the head dry on the stalk and become fluffy like that of dandelion puff-ball (not that fluffy though) and search for a bit stouter seeds around the petals. Ripe seeds are rare (maybe around 50th or 100th of total?) but are definitely there if pollinated. And maybe this is why flower shops keep telling us that growing daisy from seeds is near impossible and we'd better get flowers or whole plant from the shop.

    Germination is really easy. I succeeded in germinating them in a pot filled with quality potting mix, kept moist by spraying water every day, placed by a sunny window, with room temperature around 70-74 F, within a week.

    Hope there are more people who succeed in growing Gerbera Daisies from seeds!

    - Ryu

  • heidinoel
    5 years ago

    Hello, It's now 2018 :-)


    I'm wondering if you can make recommendations of how to store the seeds? I'm in the process of collecting them, but not sure how to store them: dark sunlight? warm? cool? Thank you!