Starting seeds

[squirrelitude]

I'm late getting seeds into the ground, but I've got some things started. The kid's potatoes and flowers are coming up, and I have seeds in the ground: Tomato, pepper, ground cherry, oregano, thyme, savory, prickly pear, lovage, cleome, sunflower, basil, lemon balm.

More soon. Not exactly the selection I was hoping for; I forgot to stratify things in time, yet again. Now I have a yearly calendar event set for January 15th to remind me about that. I wonder if that's too early or late, assuming a 6–8 week stratification and a week or two in seed flats.

Planting the tiny seeds of plants in the Lamiaciae (oregano, thyme, savory, basil...) I am again amazed at how my thick meat-fingers can sense and manipulate such tiny objects.

Some of these things are easier to grow from cuttings or root division. But I feel compelled to grow them from seed. Something in me values the genetic diversity (and possibility of new varieties) more than the ease and reliability of clonal propagation.

I'm also starting to harden off the perennials so they can live in the front yard again. It'll be nice to get the citrus out again under the bright sunlight they deserve.

Comments

[nablacdotu]

Not sure if this is feasible for you, but I've had good results just storing my seeds in a backyard shed year-round. Automatic stratification! :)

[squirrelitude]

My dad stores his in a freezer (after drying them appropriately) which I should consider doing as well. I think he mostly does it to preserve their shelf life, but I bet it would help break dormancy on some things.

Some seem to need a long cold, wet period, which I'm not sure it would help with.

[chamaenerion]

Which of those are easier not from seed, actually? (I've never gotten anything in the Lamiaceae to germinate at all, so I'm guessing those.)

There's kind of a book's worth of justifications for growing things from seed, really. I'm not sure where to start.

For me the biggest one is probably that it's less alienating, followed somewhere down the line by "so I can see what it looks like." The prickly pear for instance is probably totally worth it just for the experience of having it around while it has its two little seed leaves (I've grown other kinds of cactus, although not that).

Did you do any stratification for the prickly pear? The Internet seems to lack consensus on whether you need to. When I was really little my mother got a packet of mixed cactus seeds that needed stratifying, and we walked through the process. It involved devoting refrigerator space to a tray of vermiculite for several months, but it worked! I'm really glad she did that, even though I have never gotten around to using that technique for anything since then. Dragonfruit was so easy to germinate that it seems like cheating by comparison.

(Also, songbird_becca and I just built a raised bed, so we'll be able to grow edible things if rabbits don't get them first. I'll post about that eventually.)

[squirrelitude]

I would like to hear more justifications! :-D

I believe that basil, lemon balm, and prickly pear will root from cuttings pretty readily. Thyme and oregano should as well, but I've had poor results; in any case, since they're clumping perennials, propagation by division is pretty easy.

So far, 3 of 10–12 savory seeds have germinated and 1 of 16 oregano. They look just like basil so far.

I'm also going to be growing potatoes and garlic the usual way, which is to say, not from seed. (Have you ever seen a potato fruit? I haven't seen one in person. They make 'em, but they're pretty toxic of course. Tiny little seeds.)

I think the things I like most about growing from seed are the delightful moments of "I see green! They're alive!" and finding out what the cotyledons look like.

For the prickly pear, I fermented the fruit off of the seeds and then let them dry. I don't think I put them through cold stratification (let alone cold wet), or nicked the seedcoats. If the ones I planted don't come up, I have plenty more to experiment on. And my dad is likely going to give me a piece of his spineless (!) prickly pear, which is what I really want anyhow.