Oct 19, 2012
I took a hundred and placed them on a coffee filter and put them into a zip-lock back as before:
One week later about 11 seeds germinated. Eight of those eleven had white stems clearly visible and reaching into the filter paper.
Longest ones were placed in the prepared 15" tube in the order of their size, longest one into tube #1. The procedure for inserting was as follows. First about 10 ml of water was dropped in the middle of the tube. Then the backside of tweezers was used to make an imprint inside the soil:
Then the seeds were placed "pointy side down" per the advice from http://trees.martinsvillenj.com/gsseedsummary.htm , meaning the little white stems went down into the soil:
First eight largest seedlings were placed in tubes and covered by about 1/4" of soil:
October 28, 2012
All eight tubes were sprayed with one squirt of fungicide based on Neem Oil:
Interesting project. I've tried twice to keep the seedlings alive, but they ultimately died due to damping off, so I will soon try to germinate another batch in a more controlled environment.
ReplyDeleteI'll spray some fungicide, but no fluorescent lamps as I don't want to invest so much money.
Dis you cold moist stratify them, have you added some moisture in those zip lock bags or not?
Thank you.
I stopped stratifying a few years ago. I still have a few thousand seeds from the 1oz packet I got in 2012. Every year I start a few hundred seeds that produce a bit over a hundred seedings. Keeping them alive is a difficult job as you discovered. A few more seeds from stratification didn't matter for me. Good luck.
DeleteDid you ever use sodium hypochlorite or hydrogen peroxide as a surface decontamination and antimicrobial/antifungal agent, prior to germination, by soaking the seeds in?
DeleteI've been reading lots of studies about conifers seeds germination and Sequoiadendron giganteum in particular and some have used hypochlorite and hydrogen peroxide.
I might be mistaken but I could see you've used hydrogen peroxide in your thorough experiment. Any differences observed?
How many seeds are in 1oz packet. I'm about to order one packet from Sheffields. :)
Cheers
Sergiu
I have not used oxidants for decontamination. I used chlorothalonil to a great success instead. In general, initial seed germination is not affected much by the fungi. It's the several months old seedling that tend to catch some spores moving around. In a well controlled indoors environment they remain stable and rarely catch disease. Once moved outdoors they quickly get infected with several pathogens. I am planning a well controlled experiment this summer with introduction of about 150 new seedlings to the outside. I will make a new post by next weekend,
ReplyDeleteCheers.
This study is quite interesting. Worth a read.
ReplyDeletehttp://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1601-5223.1941.tb03257.x/pdf
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