Death of 20

I went away from home for a business trip. Out of about 50 seedlings that were growing to replenish the white patch, about 25 fell on the ground by the time I got back. Not enough water. I thought that my six-year old daughter could do that, but apparently I was mistaken.

Five or so fallen seedlings recovered after watering. I moved four out of the remaining 20 into a more permanent space on the white patch.

White patch continues to thrive.

#39 remains the leader, while #15 remains the second. Third place is unclear between 3-4 contenders. They seem to go through growth spurts every few days.

#39 February 23, 2013. Three months.

An unusual seedling is #72:

#72 February 23, 2013. 2 months and 2 weeks

It is tall and fairly thin as compared to the older seedlings. It is clearly the tallest one of all at this time.

The oldest one #4 has not visibly changed. #15 keeps adding volume but keeps growing very wide and low:

#15 February 23, 2013. 3 months and 3 weeks.

Here is a view at the white patch "A":

White patch "A" February 23, 2013.

White patch "B" keeps being very fluid with the new seedling getting there, dying, and being replaced with the new ones:

A Crisis of Prosperity

The number of germinations from unstratified Jan 24 batch jumped to 42. I find myself in a bit of a bind to process all samples properly. Since I figured out what makes seeds to succeed, I can not let any seed left behind, pun intended. Need I say I am happy?

After Angus's comment I spent a few hours examining if I indeed expose seeds to undue stress related to constant drying up and watering. The results are pretty conclusive and I am considering an interesting modification of the experiment.

In summary, what does not kill you, make you stronger. Seeds exposed to alternating drought and flood, but not as much as killing show superb development of the root. The length of the root is directly proportional to the amount of water added, while the number of "near death" episodes defines branching of the root. It appears that as the soil is drying up, the root is looking for ways to get additional sources of water. It spawns additional branches. Once the water is delivered those tiny branches develop into full fledged roots. This weekend exposed a lot of superb looking roots.

I have a few excellent examples but #111 is  the best illustrator of the stated above:

#111 February 10, 2013. 3 week old.

#111 fell almost all the way to the ground a week ago, clearing the soil by just 3-5mm when I waited too long to water it:

#111 February 2, 2013. 2 week old.

As it can be seen on the picture from today, February 10, #111 has a very solid root with at least six branches off of the main tap root. Other samples in the vicinity of #111 all have at least three branches.

Here is what a sample grown in "near death" experience setup looks like once removed from the germination container:

#110 February 9, 2013. 2 week old.

The soil around center clump is completely dry and fluffy. It allows extraction of the clump with seedling very easily. Since I know that the seedlings grown in the described fashion are not fragile at all, the dirt can be simply shaken of gently from the seedling. I apply a few squirts of water on the seedling and then place it inside a permanent container. The container has an inch deep cavity made with applying pressure in the middle:

The soil around the main root was pushed inside, covering the root.

In other developments, the previous leader and perviously declared dead seedling, made an aggressive move to become #2, getting ahead of two strongest rivals:

#15 February 10, 2013. 3 months and 1 week.

#39 remained an undisputed leader. Since it started leaning on one side a guide stick was placed with a thread attached to try to keep it more vertical:

#39 February 10, 2013. 2 months and 2 weeks.

#38 had a similar device attached:

#38 February 10, 2013. 2 months and 2 weeks.

New seedlings from the brown patch keep getting into more permanent homes on the white patch:

Finally, a new experiment idea that I had is related to Angus' comment. Since I am very positive I will be able to fill all 30 vacant spots with sequoia seedlings with the recent influx of samples, I will attempt to push the "near death" experience of a few samples, let's say six, and see what happens. Worst case is that I will kill 6, best case is I will have a few interesting leaders. Who knew, watching trees grow can be such a heart pumping experience.

Stratification gone bad

Stratification is good for giant sequoia seeds or so I heard. My recent observations indicate that too much cold leads to poor results. Too little stratification, or as in this case - no stratification, and the results are excellent.

My December 30th 2012 next to last batch of 100 seeds, which spent 3 months in a refrigerate at 0C produced twelve (!) germinations as of today. This is full 5 weeks. On January 24th 2013, I decided to start a new batch of 100. Since I did not have any left in the fridge, I decided to try an unstratified batch.




As of today, I have 32 germinations from that last batch. This is after 2 weeks on a coffee filter in a much smaller container. I have been moving germinated seeds that reached about 5-7mm in length into the brown patch. The first two, that germinated within three days were already moved to the white patch into the real soil.

Since this batch germinates much faster than anything I experienced before, I started putting two seeds per cup to save on effort dealing with dozens of new seedlings:

As described in an earlier post, I now place germinated seeds with purple loop formed by the stem between root and the seed pointing up. A good looking loop increases chances of a healthy seedling dramatically:

I continue to water seedlings on the brown patch with a small pipet, applying water in a very close proximity to the seeds. Most of the cup remains dry. I believe this method keeps roots reasonably moist while the rest of the cup acts as a large dry buffer that keeps negative effects of over-watering suppressed.

A very low percentage, around 10% of the seeds perished on the brown patch since I started using this method. Previous methods had over 50% mortality rate. The downside of this new method is that it requires extremely careful watch. Since there is so little water involved, it's easy to miss 6-10 hours and then the seedlings react violently, like in this example:

Fortunately, all seedlings recovered and straightened out after water was added. All fatalities after the new method were due to seedlings not emerging properly above ground for one reason or another.

There is currently 22 plants on the white patch, with a couple showing distress signs. At this time it's 22 out 106 germinated seedlings. With this new influx of fresh seedlings, now there is a hope to have white patch close to its intended capacity of 30.

Here is a quick update on some notable white patch seedlings.

#39 continues to outgrow every other seedling and if anything, its growth is still accelerating. It starts to look like a small tree. The soft stem at the bottom hardened, somewhat cracked and is now adding some thickness. It keeps branching vigorously:

#39 February 7, 2013. Two and a half months.

#15, the seedling that had a "surgery" in December, continues to develop well, but is still not able to catch up with top three:

#15 February 7, 2013. Three months.

#24, the subject of January surgery, also appears to do fine. It has not shown the explosive growth of #15 immediately after the procedure, but looks on par with other seedlings of similar age that did not experience trouble:

#24 February 7, 2013. Three months.

#38, the second best seedling still looks extremely bent, but continues to add volume. There was a positive change in color of the growing top region. Last time it was reported that it started turning very light green and even bright yellow. I started controlling moisture content much tighter in this sample over last two weeks, which in practical terms meant NO WATERING. There was plenty of moisture in the core of the container, hovering around 3:

#38 February 7, 2013. Two and half months.

I am discovering that the cactus soil I have been using lately holds water a bit too tightly for young sequoias. I started adding more of better draining soils to the latest additions to the white patch.

Last but not the least, my daughter's #44 is doing very well. It is now surpassing its previous twin #42 by a safe margin:

#44 February 7, 2013. Two and a half months.

White patch:

Half of the white patch February 7, 2013.