Moisture, warmth, and voilà!

Wow! When I slipped seeds into plastic bags with damp paper towels this week, it was to check their viability. They’re not just viable, some of them are bursting with vitality. 

Cosmos sprouts pushing their way toward the light

    I took the opportunity of Tuesday’s nor’easter to start my first seeds of the year. Some of my seed packets were a year old or more, saved in the basement in a plastic box. I didn’t want to waste time and space by planting them in six-packs of potting mix like the newer seeds and then find out they’d lost their ability to germinate. Instead, I’d see whether they’d sprout on the paper towels. 

Were these calendula seeds as dead as they looked?

I expected that if they were going to germinate, it would take a week or two. I placed the sealed sandwich bags in a tray on the floor to be warmed by sub-floor heating.

    I glanced over on Thursday morning and was surprised to see one of the bags pushed upward by sprouting cosmos seeds. By the next day, another cosmos variety was showing green sprouts too, and tiny celosia seeds were pushing out pink roots. 

These celosias will fill a niche in the pollinator garden

It seemed as if every time I checked, more seeds had sprouted. Two days later, all the bags were showing some signs of life: zinnias, black-eyed Susans, bachelor’s buttons, even calendula, an edible flower I had poor luck with last year.

    The next step seemed a bit trickier than I’d expected. I’d read that I should pull the sprouts away from the paper towel with tweezers and plant them in potting mix. I set up my six-packs filled with Organic Mechanics Seed Starting Blend. Then I tried to separate a cosmos seedling from its towel. 

     I was afraid I was breaking off the growing tip of the root. That seemed like a bad idea, so in stubborn cases, I cut out a small section of paper towel around the little root and stuck the whole thing into the planting medium. I put the six-packs with their newly planted sprouts under the grow light with the seeds I’d planted on Tuesday and replaced the lid to keep the humidity in.

A humid environment for the young seedlings

    So far the sprouts seem to have survived the transition without trouble. I can see I’ll need to keep planting this week as more seeds germinate. I’m rapidly running out of space under the grow light in the kitchen, which is the brightest I have. March sunlight from the west-facing window  isn’t strong enough to give the seedlings a good start. 

Even sunlight on snow doesn't reflect enough lumens to grow stocky seedlings indoors

 
The fluorescent tubes set up in the basement aren’t bright enough either. Maybe I can find some inexpensive LED fixtures to expand my options.

    Meanwhile, several of the seed varieties I planted in six-packs of homemade potting mix have popped up too. Basil and alyssum were the first. 

Newborn basil

I’m using a heat mat under the seed flats, which probably helps. It warms the medium by 11 °F. Once the first leaves peek out, it’s time to turn off the heat and start opening the lid. Welcome to reality!

So far so good

 

Sowing diversity

It’s seed-starting season, and I’m about to start my second round of annual and vegetable seeds. 

Time to plant some more seeds

With this in mind, I was eager to hear a talk this week by Randi V.W. Eckel, an entomologist and founder of Toadshade Wildflower Farm in New Jersey. She made the case for starting native perennials from seed and then offered some pointers on how to do it.

    Entomologists advocate growing native plants in our backyards, because native insects are adapted to live off them. 

Native plants feed native insects

Randi also pointed out that seed-grown plants are genetically diverse, whereas perennial plants that are multiplied by division, cuttings, or tissue culture are clones—genetically identical copies of the parent plant. In diversity, there is strength.

    My experience with seeds comes from common vegetables and flowers bought from large mail order seed houses. I was surprised to learn how different it could be to work with seeds of native perennials. Think they’ll all sprout around the same time? Think again—it’s adaptive for them to spread out their germination times so that one disaster won’t wipe them all out. It turns out that predictably timed germination is one of the characteristics our tame seeds have been bred for.

    Randi listed at least nine special requirements that seeds may have for germination, all adaptations that improve their chance of growing into successful populations in the wild. Some require periods of moist cold conditions, some dry cold, some alternating periods of warmth and cold. Some need their seed coat “scarified,” which can be done by scratching the seeds with sand paper (I wholeheartedly agree with Randi’s point that oft-repeated advice to do this with a razor blade is a recipe for losing a finger).

Seeds of blue false indigo (Baptisia australis) need scarification to germinate

     I think I know now why I’ve never been able to grow common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca), although I’ve brought home seeds with their silky parachutes several times when the pods opened in fall.  

Seeds of common milkweed are equipped to travel

Although this plant is usually regarded as a weed, I like the idea of its attracting migrating monarch butterflies. Monarchs lay their eggs on milkweed because it’s what their larvae need to eat. I pictured a gleaming orange and black monarch emerging from its chrysalis in my yard. Wouldn’t that be cool!

Monarchs are milkweed specialists

      Right now I’ve got a flat of unfortunate milkweed seeds mostly failing to sprout under lights in my kitchen, this time from a packet I was given by a friendly seed collector last spring. Randi pointed out that milkweed seeds need light to germinate. I shouldn’t have been covering them with soil outdoors or growing medium indoors. 

Luckily these milkweed seeds got enough light to sprout. I planted the rest too deep.

    So when I start this week’s seeds, I’ll try sowing milkweed seeds on top of the growing medium. But Randi’s talk convinced me to keep buying most of my native perennials from nurseries like hers. Let the experts provide the care the seeds and young plants need. If my native perennials succeed in multiplying in the garden, so much the better.