Re: HYB: seed germination

Sounds like we have some "half successful" versus "half failure"
germination stories... <g>

I used to plant all my seeds outdoors, didn't count the seeds, and was
satisfied with a potful of seedlings.  Then I started counting the
seeds.....

I started germinating seeds indoors partly to see if I could control
germination climate better than our usual wild outdoor winter weather
(which varies too much from too hot too cold too wet too dry), and
hopefully improve germination rate, but mostly because I wanted to be
able to see more than a few generations of seedlings before I'm 100 yrs
old!

Several more three, four, and five year old seedlings (pod to bloom)
should give maiden bloom this spring, along with quite a few seedlings
from last year's batch of indoor germinated seeds.  None of the outdoor
germinated seedlings from last spring are anywhere near big enough to
bloom this year.

So at least all this fussing around is getting seedlings up to blooming
size faster.  Once I get my own lines of seedlings going, with plants
that can mature pods that will produce seeds with a higher rate of
germination and growth rate under my own growing conditions (starting to
get there....Paul Black told me it will happen eventually....), I will
probably go back to outdoor overwintering seed pots for most crosses.
By then, I will have seedlings coming along each year to work with, so
it won't matter as much how fast any individual cross makes it to bloom
size.  And hopefully none will take 6 yrs to bloom!

This is definitely not California....

--
Linda Mann east Tennessee USA zone 7/8
East Tennessee Iris Society <http://www.korrnet.org/etis>
American Iris Society web site <http://www.irises.org>
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