Petunias from seed

Anyone know if the breeders keeping the seed to themselves then (to have a monopoly on selling the Plugs), or do they have to propagate them vegetatively (tissue culture or somesuch)?

 

Moles seed is usually free P&P (except big seed like Beans, and green manure - might be a few other exceptions)

 

I dont know how the breeders propagate Surfinia , I presumed it was from cuttings Kristen. Every year I here Surfinia seed mentioned , but I have never known anyone grow them.
Thansk for the info on Moles , why do they not make it clear on the home page that P and P is free. Its frustating on some site when you are ordering £4 worth of seeds and you enter name ,address ,rank ,serial number card details and on and on......then the postage comes up at £7.50 !

 

Hiya FC

It might be worth considering buying yourself a propagator, instead of trying to keep a large area warm(ish), at least for starting seeds off

 

Funny you should say that To overcome this, I bought two. One is the type that can be manually adjusted to control the temperature. This was fairly expensive at around £120, but it's plenty big enough at around 1m long. The other was maybe £20? It's preset at around 18c. I therefore have pretty good control over what I can sow during the main sowing season Of course, the real problem comes when it's time to shift them on into larger containers. I have a heater in the greenhouse, which I use if I have to. One thing I've found that really helps, is to leave seed sowing for as long as possible. We all do it, sow as soon as possible, but I try VERY hard to resist the urge. The way I see it, the later I sow, the more I save on energy costs

Cheers...Freddy

 

Yep, mid March is usually my target date, but I also try to take into consideration what the weather is doing. Of course, I'm no forecaster, but I TRY to get a 'feel' for how the season is going. Just to add, so far it hasn't worked

 

Yes, this year has been a stinker. However, I'm guessing there are many in here that have seen it all before....

 

Dunno if its any good as an answer, but I can tell you what I do for seed-raising.

I have two propagators (only because one was not large enough for the volume I do, its not a "batch" thing per se). They are windowsill propagators and they take 7 x 1/4 size seed trays (each with little clear plastic lids). No temperature control or anything fancy, just a gentle bottom heat (40W each I think).

Here's a picture:


I do put more than one variety of seed in each tray, at times, depends how much I want to sow. For example: I need 18 Tomato plants for the greenhouse - 6 each of 3 different varieties - so I sow 8 seeds of each (2 for spare of non-germinators). I sow them somewhat painstakingly nudging them on the surface of the compost with the point of a pencil (a "dibber" !!) until they are evenly spaced about 1/2" apart - so that when they germinate they aren't crowding each other out.

Most things take 14 days, or less, to germinate. So I run on a 14 day schedule - which I have built up over the years - so that crops are sown at round about the correct time, taking into account how frost-sensitive they are, how quickly they grow, and thus how log they will take from sowing to planting out.

As soon as something germinates the lid comes off, but its still going to be a while before it is ready for pricking out. So I have some spare sets of 1/4 size seed trays, and after 14 days all the ones that have germinated come off the propagator and the spare set are put on with the next batch of seeds. I bought the spare trays also with clear plastic lids, but I didn't really need to as once they have germianted they don't need the lids - so you only rally need as many lids as tyou have propagator space - i.e. one set is enough (in practice I do have some trays "moved off" the propagator but still with the lids on for a week or so, so I need a bit more than one full set of lids. In fact I now have about 3 complete sets of trays and somewhere between 1 and 2 sets of lids (per propagator, but as I have two thus multiple everything x2)

One other important thing is that I only mix things in a tray that I know take the same length of time before pricking out. 3x varieties of Tomatoes is fine. Tomatoes (quick) and Petunias (slow), for example, would be a disaster - pricking out the Tomatoes a month at least before the Petunias were ready would seriously disturb the Petunias. For the first few years I kept records of days to germinate and days to prick out for each crop, that data evolved into the sowing schedule I now use, and now I just do it, each Spring, "by numbers"