Propagation: Starting seeds for 2013, Part 2, 1 by guygee

guygee wrote:
What a great thread, I have been reading for hours. I will try to chip in with my experience. For hard seeds that take many weeks or months to germinate, I have finally settled on a particular method. I begin by soaking my seeds in distilled water and hydrogen peroxide ten to one. I first observe the ratio of floating seeds to sunken seeds and then see how that changes over each 12 hours period until I am fairly certain that everything that will sink has been on the bottom for 12 hours. This can take 1-4 days, changing water/peroxide solution daily.

A $-store item around here are "deepish" plastic sealing containers roughly 4" wide x 8" long x 10" deep, clear plastic with translucent lids easy to see through. I buy coir by the brick and insulation-grade vermiculite in 50 lb bags. In a deep plastic bin I bury a couple bricks of coir in vermiculite then pour several large pots of boiling water on top to expand the coir. The vermiculite insulates the mixture so it takes a few hours to cool down to the point where the coir can be broken up wearing gloves. I mix in the center of the bin until I have roughly a 50/50 mix to fill the plastic containers three quarters to the top. I microwave the seeding medium in the plastic containers for 3-4 minutes to try to assure sterilization, with the lids loose. Once the seeding mixture has cooled I add 1-2 seeds per container and seal.

I watch for condensation on the lid to see if I have my moisture content correct. Best case is I do not open the container until germination, but if there is only a little condensation I will spray in some sterilized distilled water, and if it seem like a lot of condensation I will check to see how moist the mixture is, shake off the moisture on the lid if needed and repeat if necessary. If white mold develops I physically scrape off the soil surface and mold then spray lightly with copper sulfate solution, repeating as needed.

The light fluffy sterile mixture of vermiculite and coir was key. Coir is more neutral than peat and seems to be more consistent over many species, although peat works great with some things. The fungus and over-wet mixtures that were killing my seeds are in the past now.

Picture: Canarium ovatum sprouting using methods described above.

This message was edited Mar 21, 2013 9:44 PM