6,340 Garden Web Discussions | Growing from Seed

Hello! (: Below is a picture where you can see what I'm talking about down near the base of a couple of the stems, however, these are catmint seeds. Luckily, it has gone away on most of the yarrow seeds. Yay! (: But I still don't know if it went away because of using hydrogen peroxide solution or if it was just a normal part of the process?

Those are roots, not mould.

I didn't think they would sprout in the fridge. I'd read that they needed to be stored there to simulate winter dormancy. Plus they came from the small green plums so I wasn't even sure they were developed enough to grow. Pic shows what they look like today. Been keeping them inside but just moved them outside to get some more light for the day.

It's great that they all sprouted. Good luck and hope you enjoy some plums someday.

Good luck with your plantings. Let us know how it goes and you may be able to find more advice on the fruit and orchard forum.

After posting to the thread I read that posting in more appropriate thread might bare better responses than the newbie forum so I actually reposted in fruit and orchard and got a few good answer . Thank you :)

The mix is pretty easy to do, I can makeup a nice big 20-40litre tub of it in about 3 minutes.

The bactivate costs quite a bit but it's around $85 for a 25kg bag, and the application rates are like 15-30grams per m2. I've already done half of my garden beds and have only used about 1kg. They (bactivate) may later on do smaller bags but they are targeting commercial growers first. The seaweed and bioboost+ liquids were about $15 each for 500mL each, I mix at 20mL per 10 litres and use that on about 5-10m2. I put about 30grams of bactivate into about 20litres 50:50 mix I make now to see how it goes.

Perlite I get for AUD$25 for 100litres. 65L of potting mix is about $14

I live in a high rainfall area with lots of fusarium wilt issues, etc so hopefully beneficial microbes in bactivate will help to limit the damage. There are a few videos on youtube of farmers using bactivate and it seems to have amazing differences in growth but I guess time will tell.

Yeahp, too much work for me LOL! I used to do all that stuff but now use what I can easily obtain.

There is a good article on the container gardening forum about how much perlite or the like you would have to add to really make a difference and YMMV.

I am interested in the Bactivate, possibly just because I have a curious mind, but also wonder if it is like the mycorrhizae.

I did try 'Serenade' a good bacteria spray this year but have not used it long enough to really comment on its effectiveness.

Keep us informed on how you make out.

"Has anyone else had problems with mold using the paper towel/coffee filter method?"

If you nuke and cool the final package before adding seeds rinsed with something like hydrogen peroxide (and your fingers too?), that might help keep mold down.

I use the paper towel/plastic bag all the time,I leave the end of the bag open and never have problems.

Sorry, not from here. Did you try planting them directly in flats?

I never pre-germinate. I've never had an issue just planting them in starter paks and normal seed starter mix, unless the seed was bad itself. Is this something rosemary seed normally requires?

This post was edited by zensojourner on Sat, Oct 11, 14 at 22:49

I don't know what the 'slime' is called, but it's normal. Basil (and probably other) seeds react this way when wet also.

I feel your pain, Scarlet. I loved trumpet vine and always meant to plant some - until I moved into a house where someone has planted trumpet vine along our common back fence. This is about 80' from their back door and up a dry, rocky hill from their perspective. Peering over the fence I see no sign of it being invasive on their side of the fence.

However, it is constantly sprouting up into our yard and when we moved in here (its a rental) it was all over the shed, and pulling it off the shed we found that its rootlets had damaged the shed siding.

It is a constant battle to control the shoots, which come up as much as 30 to 40' away from the mothership, even here in this arid near-desert region. I hate to think what it would do in an area that gets 30+ inches of rain per year instead of our measly 7"!

Come to find out it is classified as a noxious weed in some states due to its invasive and destructive habits. It can quite literally pull down houses and trees if left unchecked.

And yet I STILL find it constantly recommended as a bee/hummingbird/butterfly feeder plant! With few or no warnings about how invasive and hard to control it is. Even Roundup doesn't much faze it.

I think it should be declared a noxious weed in every state in the country! OMG I hate the stuff! I am SO glad I never actually got around to planting any, leaving behind neighbors to curse my name!

This post was edited by zensojourner on Sat, Sep 27, 14 at 15:35

Wow, what a nightmare zensojourner, i can literally feel your frustration from here and rightfully so. I have a Hedera helix vine that spreads along the back of my garden and twines around my fence and my tree's. This stuff is insanely invasive, it took me all summer to clear just my side of the fence and i haven't had time to do the back. Then i have Ivy which ran rampaged twinning it's self around everything choking the life out of other smaller tree's which I've cut most if not all away. We haven't lived too terribly long in our new home which is purchased but we knew it would require a bit of elbow grease but now that it's fall. It's safe to say my green thumb is exhausted! There are several roots where I've had to take saws to get through them. It seems the previous owners never did much with the property.

As horrible as all that sounds, the absolute worst is the holly that someone planted flush to the house and i can honestly say i haven't been able to get it all up.... yet! That is a painful work in progress!

Hang in there, it can only get better right?

Haha, i hope!

I would suggest you till your soil, in the area you intend to sow your seeds & then rake to a very fine tilth.
You still may have time to get your 'six weeks before frost' seeds sown safely.
A light frost for a few hours generally isn't harmful. A hard freeze, of more prolonged duration, can be destructive & damaging to newly germinated seedlings.

Make sure you keep your sown areas continuously moist, by setting your hose nozzle to a fine mist spray & don't allow the surface to dry out, until at least some time after you get a fair amount of germination. This may mean, twice a day. Failure to follow this procedure, is probably why people that sow directly onto the soil, do not have success with this method.
It's much like starting a brand new lawn from seeds & you don't want water run off, by excessively prolonged watering, either.

As for the suggestion of "sowing in spring", many can be sown, before the last 'light frost', & still survive, while allowing them to get off to an early of a start, as possible.
Of course, this advice is all provided without really much more to go on, than simply having specified hollyhocks...

I'm sorry. I guess no one has direct sown seeds as the packages indicate.

I'm not looking for germination.
I'm looking at seeds that would normally have to be in the fridge for several weeks, or the ones you nick.

I'm just going to follow the directions, since they probably know what they're doing.

Thank you all for your time.

I pealed the skin coating off 4 seeds and planted them in a rigid lunch meat container with its lid on to hold in moisture, in a sand compost mix. They came up in 8 days. They are real sensitive to stem rot at the soil surface. I separated them to there own pots an watered them from underneath in a bucket of tap water (chlorinated) so the soil surface and stem never get wet. These plants NEED iron zinc and manganese. these are my 4 P.T's after 7 months. good luck

Now about a year ago, by sheer coincidence, I found not one, not two, but THREE trifoliate orange trees in the woods that were probably carried there by deer. There is now a profitable business relationship between us in which I collect the fruit every fall and raise the seeds. Here are some of my seedlings:

Arlene - you mean to start the seeds? I don't add anything to the soil in terms of fertilizers.
When they begin leafing out -- like when the second leaf set after the cotyledons and first leaf set have already grown, I'll begin to add a tiny bit of fertilizer to my water bottle, carefully. The seed and seedling shouldn't need any fertilizers to get to that stage regardless of which soil mix you use.

I think each ProMix soil type has different things -- like some have mycorrhizae, others have fertilizer, etc. Right now, I have Promix HP, but I've used some of the others too. When it comes to seeds, my treatment is exactly the same no matter what soil I'm using, so long as it's simple and clean enough for seed growing.

Hope that answers your question. If you try - let me know how it goes! :)

Grace

Arlene - for just starting seeds for transplant out, honestly, any halfway decent commercial soilless potting mix will do. I tend to avoid the ones that contain coir just because I feel the jury is still out on the safety/efficacy of unknown sources of coir; but that said, I accidentally bought some Miracle Gro Moisture Control mix this past spring and it doesn't seem to have killed anything so far, LOL! The MG Moisture Control has coir in it; the "regular" MG does not.

When I used to mix my own, it was 1:1 or 2:1 peat and coarse vermiculite but I haven't been able to lay hands on coarse vermiculite for ages. Apparently, it turns out, the major mining operation/producer of vermiculite shut down in the 90s (I gather there was some scandal involved, over safety or what, I don't know) and since then sources of vermiculite are much fewer and farther between.

Then I was using 1:1 peat and a good garden soil (MG was my choice) - which is OK for seed starting but no great shakes for anything likely to be in a pot for more than a single growing season.

Now I am experimenting with various peat and "other stuff" mixes, including some barks that have been deemed unsuitable for long term mixes (too many fines, etc). For longer term I will be trying peat/pumice and peat/pumice/bark blends but haven't got started on that yet. Today I will be planting some ginger in a 1:1:1 peat/pumice/soil conditioner blend.

My seed starting mix for the coming season will be:

1:1 peat and fines sifted from pine bark
OR
1:1 peat and Scotts Turf Builder - a very consistent but very small pine bark product, with a small component of compost and "forest products" plus a very very small amount of fertilizer (1:1:1)

I will alternate rows in my paks with one or the other, with the same plants planted in one row of each. I will have lots of extra starts to share, I think, LOL!

I have actually started seeds in 100% peat. While there are undoubtedly seeds that won't start well in that, nothing I grew that year turned a hair.

Seeds are generally pretty darn forgiving. I don't think you have a lot to worry about, whatever you choose. I would suggest choosing the option that is most economical for you, whether that is watching for sales of MG or Hyponex or what have you, or going with a mix of your own.

Pitimpinai -

Our "cold" is really not as impressive as yours. They'd be in about 40-50 lows for the winter. Would that still work, I wonder?

LilFarmGirl:
I'll have to try that in the spring. Sounds simple enough. I've always had a pretty good germination right -- more often than not with most of the seeds germinating. It's more a matter of whether I have to thin or can I possibly pull one out without disturbing the other, haha.

Zen: I brought the little pot inside to see if that helps. Who knows - by now all of the seeds could have blown away or eaten by the hummingbirds for all I know....and I'm nurturing a pot of soil, lol. I have a bunch of seeds starting now in the window, so I figured what the hell.

The ones at the end in the square seed pot is where the petunias were planted....and where they plan to live forever, seemingly. Frankly, I'm not even sure why I'm starting these right now. At the rate they are popping up, I'll be living in a jungle by January. I only did 1 or 2 seeds per cell but the evening stock, salvia spathacea, pineapple sage, cerinthe and tweedia have all come up.

Not sure what I plan to do with these...

At lows in the 40s, my bet is the seed would just blow away or rot before they can sprout if you tried the "overwintering" thing. Wave petunias are a tad expensive for that!

I had temps getting up well over 100F (soil temps, not air temps) when I had my seed starts in my sunny window. However, it's kind of a window WELL - set about 18" into a nook. I don't know if that concentrates the heat somehow or what. But the sunward side of my seed flat (which is, of course, black) hit 106F before I got scared and tried to shade it with paper towels. Which sort of worked - brought the temp down 10 to 15F.

Now I have them all under lights. And THAT gets way hotter than I would have thought, over 100F sometimes if I don't put the fan on them.

You know I never USED to take so much care with my seedlings. It was into the flats, into a window or under the lights, in a dark, dank old-style basement with old-fashioned buzzing fluorescents hanging from shelves made of cement blocks and lumber - and they came up or they didn't - and they have nearly always come up.

I never owned a heat mat (in over 40 years) until just a month or so ago. Never took soil temp. According to the experts, I did everything WRONG and all my peppers and eggplants and most of my tomatoes should just have rotted in their non-official potting mixes.

And yet somehow nearly everything I've ever put to the soil came up. I don't know whether or not my plants are any better off now that I have gadgets to measure soil and air temp, and things to heat up root zones, and fans to cool and strengthen the starts - but I know *I* am sure more of a nervous wreck, LOL!

Okay, my brother finally emailed me back. He is a man of few words, and this was his reply.

The seed pods will continue to mature until they sort of start turning brownish. Then take them off and let them dry and then keep them in a plastic baggy until spring. See attached pic.

Here is his picture of the seeds.

Very cool! Love to see the seeds. I have brought my Mandevilla in the house already because we have had some VERY cold evenings already in MN. I didn't have any seeds, but I am going to try to start new plants by taking some cuttings and dipping them in root hormone and some additional clipping and put them in grow gel. I will also take some and just put them in water with maybe some miracle grow. I guess we will see if I get lucky! I am excited to get a new Madevilla next spring so there can be cross pollination maybe. The Audubon Society is hosting a class in my town on Tuesday and they are teaching all about landscaping and pollinators. Can't wait!!

I don't see any suggestions that stratifying improves germination of Sedum glaucophyllum - although I doubt if a brief moist chill would hurt it either, just would not be necessary.

Sounds a little slow to germinate, can take 2-4 weeks sometimes, surface sown obviously with the size of the seeds. It is not one I've sown myself.

Thanks Zen and Morz for your help!

Slow is fine...I'm doing sort of a hybrid winter sowing experiment this fall.....digging deep holes, cutting bottoms out of water jugs and sinking them directly into the ground.... almost like direct sowing only I won't lose all the tiny seed species so easily :) Hoping the sedum will like this method!

I am not facing any problems whatsoever and never said anything remotely in that direction. Its just you make no sense in your theories or 3/4 of your thoughts. I do not have the desire to read all you write for it is more like a book to me and I have much better time ways to spend my time, like getting my tomato plants in. Maybe you should take some advice from soulreaver!

Well that's a shame. Best wishes. Hope your tomatoes do well.