Re: Re: HYB: seed germination?

Hi, fellow pollen daubers and hybridizers, I'm watching my 2001 crop of seeds starting to sprout.  I follow George Sutton's method of preparation as he wrote about in the AIS journal about three years ago with a modification suggested by one of our Australian friends about soaking them in a certain tank for ten days.  From there I put them in a black plastic bag in the bottom of the refrigerator for 14 weeks (two weeks longer than I intended because I was sick).  On Feb. 18, I put them in their pots.  I use all kinds of pots, eight inch nursery pots for small groups of seeds, under 20, plastic ice cream cartons for larger bunches.  These I buried in the garden and covered with a seed blanket held about six inches over them which I can remove easily.  I have been watering them every other day.  For the past three days they have started popping up.

Last summer as I was grooming one of my iris beds, I accidentally cut a stalk that had a green pod of a cross that I really wanted.  I thought that since flower stalks mature well in a vase in the house, perhaps a seed pod would too; so I put it in a vase by a window where it got some sun, changed its water frequently; and it ripened about the same time as the others.  I am pleased to report that the seeds from that pod are coming up first and fastest.  It is SOUL SISTER X ROMANTIC EVENING.  I don't see anything from the one I want most though, NEW LEAF X RING AROUND ROSIE, luminata by plicata.  I planted over 100 seeds from that one.  I'll have to be patient, and I'm not.  I have to peek every day.

The two years I have been using this method I have gotten over 75 percent germination.  The year I planted the seeds directly into the ground, I got less than 50 percent, and I'm not satisfied with that.  Temperatures here in the last two weeks have been quite variable, some days in the high 80's some nights in the low 30's.

Francelle Edwards   Glendale, AZ  Zone 9
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: storylade@aol.com 
  To: iris-talk@yahoogroups.com 
  Sent: Thursday, March 07, 2002 5:15 AM
  Subject: Re: [iris-talk] Re: HYB: seed germination?


  In a message dated 3/6/2002 9:11:18 PM Central Standard Time, 
  randysiris@juno.com writes:

  <<  I guess
  I've rambled on enough...Randy,  >>

  I know how exciting it is to see your own bloom and to anticipate what the 
  future holds.  I'll never accuse anyone of rambling on.

  With germination, I guess it might make a difference how and when you plant.  
  I've always planted the seed straight into "mum" pots--the shorter eight inch 
  ones.  I plant between Thanksgiving & New Years . . . around Thanksgiving 
  this year.  No prior soaking or refrigeration.  I do soak the seeds each day, 
  for the first few days, after they are potted. 

  This created a senerio where the seed are all planted at the same time, after 
  a minimum of 3 months in dry storage.  After that, they are all treated the 
  same.  If one gets water all get water, etc..  

  To others . . .  I suspect that watching seed sprout (so closely too) much 
  rate somewhere around watching wallpaper dry?  <g>

  Betty from BG KY USA Zone 6 

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