Re: RE: HYB: Seeds Germinating

Sounds like Mary is seeing the same kind of survival- or lack thereof- in new germinants.  I just totaled up my germinants this year so far and had 160 germinants but currently have 63 surviving seedlings -all in the two to five leaf category.

  At this point I'm wondering if survival has the most to do with pod age or maturity at harvest.  The lion's share of my pods this year were harvested at or beyond 8 wks, however they were not all actually splitting.  Since other variables -same day of germination, same germ conditions- seem to be the same between crosses where one survives and the other doesn't there's got to be something specific to the seeds themselves that makes the difference.
   
  It's a guess anyway.
   
  Christian
Mary Swann-Young <MryL1@msn.com> wrote:
  The primary reason I began using the burrito method to start
seeds was I had abysmally few sprouts when starting them
outdoors.

Followed recommendations precisely, tried several different
mulches. Anguishing failures. Since I found very few seeds
in the spring, I concluded that most/many had sprouted and
been killed by the roller-coaster temps over the winter.

As a gross generalization, most of my sprouts fall into one of two
categories: a) begin sprouting somewhere between 60-90 days
and have a significant percentage sprout within 30 days of the first
one or b) random sprouting - maybe one every 2-4 weeks through
7 months of chilling. I think a few of the random sprouts were
about all I wound up with when I left them outside. With crosses
that sprout in the 'a' mode, I've found that, after about 10 days with
no additional sprouts, it seems to help to let the bag sit at room
temperature for a couple of weeks, check them again, then start
another chilling cycle, to get another, reduced, surge of sprouts.

Even when potting up sprouts indoors, an unacceptable precentage
of them never break ground, even with ideal conditions. Certain
crosses, especially from locally vigorous pod parents, will all break
ground and grow like weeds. Murphy's Law rules here, so these
are never the ones I'm most excited about.

At one time I had thought that maybe leaving the sprouts in the
burrito a little longer before planting them would increase the
survival rate. But my experiment (you know how I love experiments!)
disproved that theory. Also tried watering them on planting with a
very diluted Miracle Gro, with no improvement. Sometimes all the
first sprouts of a cross fail, but later sprouts will come up. Since
I'm keeping track of the sprout order, will hope to be able to draw
some inferences from those crosses this spring.

I'm still trying with some apparently healthy seeds from the 05 crop,
but have never had any germination from anything after 12 months
from harvest. Just kept a few crosses from the random sprouting
group that I really want badly.

BTW - Amazed again this year at how many things with iris on them
people can come up with to give me for Christmas. I never find this
stuff, but then, I hardly ever go shopping.

Mary Lou, near Indianapolis, Z5 - Z8 right now.

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