References for Seed Germination - Mostly Time of year

[petershaw]

I am a new member with a full packet of seeds 

I have years of experience with cactus and succulent seed propagation and one of the keys is best time of the to sow them.

I really don't want to list all 20 of the seed packs I have, mostly to avoid someone spending time looking up something that I can (besides this I guess).

thanks

Peter

[Martin Bohnet]

Conventional wisdom is to sow your seeds at the beginning of the growth period of the parent, so winter rain plants in fall and summer rain plants in spring - which will mostly be useful for those not needing a cold stratification.

Basically there are 2 requirements: the conditions that break seed dormancy, and the conditions allowing for good development of the young seedlings. As for the dormancy part, Professor Deno is still a very good reference - unfortunately, the source we link in the Wiki has deleted the 2 supplement files and only the base document is still available i'll google for new sources of the supplements.


Hmm. Supplements on an US Department of agriculture .gov site - as deeplink - not sure if I like to put that on the Wiki:
https://naldc.nal.usda.gov/download/41279/PDF
https://naldc.nal.usda.gov/download/41277/PDF

[David Pilling]

Peter, have a look at this PBS wiki page:

https://www.pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/HowToGrowBulbsFromSeed

I always found the Ontario Rock Garden Society, germination guide useful:

https://onrockgarden.com/index.php/germination-guide

[petershaw]

Very helpful, thank you both.

The Deno book is available online as a pdf.

Peter

[petershaw]

guessing you already knew about the Deno....

[Martin Bohnet]

Thanks @David Pilling for uploading the Deno files to our own server, now we're safe from dying links.

@petershaw : Deno is really useful but always keep in mind: his experiments are all about germination, not about growing things on, so he only solves one of the problems.

[janemcgary]

Good point that Deno did not usually grow on his material. Also, he got a lot of the seeds he used from the NARGS seed exchange, meaning that they had been harvested, cleaned (sort of), and stored in an uncontrolled way. I think he was too sure of his conclusions, but that was his manner. I remember hearing him pontificating to someone, saying that no one could say he was "growing" a plant until it was self-sowing in the garden. He once had me convinced that most Ranunculaceae had very short viability in storage, but now I try them all, and I have currently four species of Trollius growing well from the NARGS seedex leftovers.