Sarracenia seed germination issues

[jonnyq]

Hi there,

So, I've had reasonably good luck with germination Dionaea and Drosera seeds, but I'm having a nightmarish time with Sarracenia...

Here are the approaches I've tried:

1) Seeds in damp paper towel, in ziploc bag in refrigerator for four weeks.
Result: Mold everywhere
Conclusion: WAY too much water.

2) Seeds on a paper towel (barely dampened with a VERY dilute sulfer/water solution) in a tupperware in refrigerator for four weeks.
~15% of seeds had mold. Remainder sown on peat/perlite under a grow light and sprayed with a sulfur fungicide solution, in a tray of water.
Result: remains to be seen, but several seeds are growing mold rather than germinating. I'm going to hit it with a neem oil fungicide tomorrow in an act of desperation...
Conclusion: Poor air circulation? Sulfur's not doing the trick?

3) The last of my seeds sown directly into pot containing moist peat/perlite. Pot sprayed down heavily with neem-oil based fungicide. Excess liquid gently squeezed out of media (though still wet). Whole pot placed in ziploc bag and placed in refrigerator today, to ride out the next month before being moved to growlights.

I have fading hope for trial #2 above, and a feeling of desperate dread for trial #3. (Even with the Neem oil, I'm worried that mold will set in over the next month.) I'm tempted to simply take trial #3 out of its ziploc bag and just put it outside for the winter, but I fear that the utterly frozen conditions of January/February here in Brooklyn will be too harsh for the seeds...?

Any recommendations?

 

[Exo]

Try this.....put seeds in plastic bag with a wet (but not dripping) piece of LFS, when done stratifying simply remove seeds and plant in a pot....they will then germinate.

Also, the third method you did would have worked if you had not used the neem, neem is an oil....and if an oil covers the seeds they won't germinate.

 

[Not a Number]

Commercial paper towels - the kind you find in public rest rooms or gas stations clean your wind shields are less prone to mold for what ever reason.

A pinch of barely damp long fiber sphagnum moss or even peat moss works just as well. It's easy to lose the seeds in these but you can just spread it out on your seed pots when you sow it. You can chop the LFS up first to make it easier all around.

 

[jonnyq]

Try this.....put seeds in plastic bag with a wet (but not dripping) piece of LFS, when done stratifying simply remove seeds and plant in a pot....they will then germinate.

*blinks* This is what I've done with a few of my indoor adult VFTs during dormancy... Oh man, I wish I had thought to stratify the seeds that way sooner...

Also, the third method you did would have worked if you had not used the neem, neem is an oil....and if an oil covers the seeds they won't germinate.

Ahhh... I see, yeah, that makes perfect sense... *sigh*

Well, let's hope trial 2 pulls through... I certainly won't be spraying neem oil on that pot...

Thanks for the advice...

 

[jimscott]

I've never had a problem with putting Sarracenia seeds in the little plastic crafts bags, with purified water, in the fridge.

 

[jonnyq]

I've never had a problem with putting Sarracenia seeds in the little plastic crafts bags, with purified water, in the fridge.

Do you typical add a fungicide of any type to prevent mold growing on the seeds during its fridge time? That's typically been my biggest obstacle with Sarr seeds...

 

[Fred P]

I use little snack bags and have never had a problem either. And I never use fungicide on seeds.

http://www.terraforums.com/forums/showthread.php?p=963355#post963355

 

[jimscott]

Do you typical add a fungicide of any type to prevent mold growing on the seeds during its fridge time? That's typically been my biggest obstacle with Sarr seeds...

Like Fred... never needed to. Never had a problem with mold.

 

[jonnyq]

3) The last of my seeds sown directly into pot containing moist peat/perlite. Pot sprayed down heavily with neem-oil based fungicide. Excess liquid gently squeezed out of media (though still wet). Whole pot placed in ziploc bag and placed in refrigerator today, to ride out the next month before being moved to growlights.

Shockingly, I actually had a single seed germinate! I put this under my grow lights a few days before Christmas, and, frankly I had given up on this about two weeks ago... In fact, I ended up putting two D. capensis leaves on the peat to try my hand at Drosera leaf cutting propagation.

I came into work this morning, and actually saw this:

I was shocked! The lone germinator! Not sure if it'll make it, but I'm damn well going to try my best to keep it happy...

That being said, I realize that this was probably a chance occurrence; let it not be said that I'm not taking all the sage advice from this forum... About 4 1/2 weeks ago, I soaked a bunch of S. leucophylla seeds overnight in distilled water (with a TOUCH of dishsoap). The next day I dampened two pots of peat/perlite with distilled water and nuked them for a minute. (I didn't feel confident enough to try the bleach method.) I let them cool, sprinkled the soaked seeds on the surfaces, let them sit in a dish of distilled water for a few minutes to absorb, placed them in a ziploc, and put them in the fridge...

So far, no mold... (for a change.)

I'm hoping that my germination rate for these leucophylla will be higher than my bungling of the rosea seeds... Thanks again, everyone, for the advice!

And good luck to Yinepu, who I imagine will be more successful than my one sprout.
(http://www.terraforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=125533)

 

[jesse]

Seeds in damp paper towel, in ziploc bag in refrigerator for four weeks.
Result: Mold everywhere

I'd change water and paper towel each week against fresh (rain or destilled) water and paper towel. Perhaps add a little living Sphagnum to keep the PH like in a natural bog.

Any recommendations?

Sarracenia is germinating much better with changing temperatures during germination time: Give them chillier temperatures during night, so an unheated greenhouse is better for germinating than the nearly constant temperatures indoors.

If your Sarracenia germination rates are regularly below 20%, you can also try using GA3-stratification instead of cold treatment before sowing.

Good luck!

 

[Dexenthes]

Wait to go for at least that one seed to germinate! Hopefully it makes it.

I have only germinated Sarracenia once, using the method that Exo mentioned, just moss, in a bag. It was even a bag that had once had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in it. There was a little bit of stray peanut butter left in one corner.

I left it in for probably 5 weeks. I had five of the ten or twelve seeds sprout, so I'm feeling good about that.

For some reason I just wouldn't want dish soap anywhere near my carnivorous plants.

 

[Yinepu]

I have several pots of S. rosea in the fridge right now.. potted in a 50/50 mix of peat/sand and in a baggie with a little water in the bottom and some LFS on the top...

Should I remove the excess water?

 

[lizasaur]

So what does one do with seeds that are received earlier in the year, since they don't like being on the paper towel for so long?

And...is misting the paper towel with Neem a bad thing? :<

 

[F R e N c H 3 z]

So what does one do with seeds that are received earlier in the year, since they don't like being on the paper towel for so long?

And...is misting the paper towel with Neem a bad thing? :<

Seed can sit around for years before being stratified, you shouldn't have any problems just storing until you want to use it. Neem misting works very well IME. Some claim misting seedlings slows down their growth but I've not noticed any adverse effects of misting seeds. There's plenty of 'sprays' you can use in addition to neem but if you've got it handy go for it.

 

[kulamauiman]

i am using a small blob of live sphagnum . chopped lightly. Have been using coffee mill to chop. the small snack sized zipper bags wok. I think the live sphagnum has anti microbial properties that prevents rotting.

 

[Joseph Clemens]

I like to place my seed in a small cup, half full of hot water (about 110F), with a drop of dish washing liquid soap (or Tween 20). I agitate vigorously for a few minutes, then let the seeds soak overnight (about 8-10 hours). Then I strain off the liquid then add a few drops of 3% hydrogen peroxide solution. Finally, I sow the seed on the surface of pots prepared with a topping of milled sphagnum moss. The media is moist and I spread the seed on the surface. Then I place the pots in ziploc bags and into the refrigerator. Two or three months later I just remove the bags from the refrigerator and place them on my grow shelves under fluorescent lights, then watch and wait.

 

[RL7836]

Except for the northern species, I get decent germination with no stratification at all. If I'm planting fresh seed in the fall, it's easy to sow the seeds and place them outside & let nature do the stratification for a month or so. If you really want to stick them in the frig, use the live LFS approach (as previously mentioned)

If I'm sowing seeds and can't afford to have moss or fungus (typically for Drosera or Utricularia seeds), I'll nuke soaked LFS (typically in a bowl covered with a plate). I let it cool down (keeping the bowl covered), then spray with fresh Trichoderma solution. I allow this to sit undisturbed for several days before placing in a pot. When I do this, nothing grows on the media for months - except the sprouting seeds. For whatever reason, when I nuked media and did not treat it, I got more weird cultures than ever - very frustrating.

 

[jonnyq]

If I'm planting fresh seed in the fall, it's easy to sow the seeds and place them outside & let nature do the stratification for a month or so.

I think I'm going to try the nature approach as well this Feb... I've got some S. psittacina, S. minor and S. leucophylla seeds that I'm going to let nature give a whirl...

I do also recall reading about trichoderma in another thread... I'll pick some up before Feb and give it a shot... Thanks!

 

[TheFury]

I have some S. oreophila seed in a bag of LFS in the fridge right now. Two more weeks and they'll be out. Unfortunately, I put WAY too much LFS in there. A good handful of it. Should have read this thread first! The seeds will probably be lost in the fibers of LFS. Gah. I'll probably just plop the wad of LFS into a pot and hope that enough seeds stayed on top of the lump to germinate in decent numbers.

 

[DroseraBug]

I've never had a problem using the paper towel method unless seed is old. I've also had great success with a similar method to that mentioned by Joseph Clemens. Another cool method is that used by Meadowview using tube fabric as rain protection (explained on Meadowview Biological Station website). I like growing seedlings year around inside and transporting outside with age but iI used the Meadowview method for several batches that are now healthy and mature plants. Try and start seed stratification as near temporally to seed pod dehiscence as possible.