HYB: seed germination

Good news continues from the garden.  Using a combination of Paul Black's and
Don Spoon's techniques, I planted outdoors last fall, as usual, but in pots
covered with an inch of pine straw, rather than my usual practice of planting
in uncovered aluminum loaf pans.  The seeds began sprouting this past weekend.
Because of last year's miserable excessive rainfall, I only had 22 lots of
seeds to plant, for a total of 701 seeds.  At this point, I have sprouts from
20 of the 22 lots, including one lot of unripe (white and tender) seeds.  (The
two lots not yet germinating are both of unripe seeds planted.)  That is a
major difference from the past, when I have always lost large numbers of
seeds, including some entire lots, from seeds having worked their way to the
surface (where, of course, they would not germinate).  This time, NO seeds
have surfaced.  I attribute that to the pine straw mulch breaking the fall of
the rain and also deterring the raising effects of freeze-and-thaw.  What
percentage of germination will occur in each of the lots remains to be seen,
but, good or bad, it should be more attributable to the genetics of the
parents, since losses from seed eruption have not occurred.

In 2003, I had phenomenal germination  --  upwards of 80% in most lots.  I
attributed that to that year's long, cold winter with plenty of prolonged snow
cover (and, consequently, little seed eruption) and to having soaked the seeds
for 5 days before planting.  (I have previously posted the tale of woe
involving the subsequent loss of 2/3 of that crop from damping-off.)  This
past fall, I again soaked the seeds, but we had an exceptionally mild winter
with little rainfall and almost no snow, so the results should be more
indicative of the effects of the pre-planting washing.  --  Griff

zone 7 in Virginia

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