Seed germination on damp paper

Never tried leaving the seeds in the paste for any length of time so cannot help with hydroponic theory.
Surely the Foot powder would be for Runners!

 

:D :D :D

 

Oooooh Matron!!! :D

So the fungicide in wallpaper paste is good for plants now is it? I can't keep up.

 

I have just used the damp paper method with hardy cyclamen. I did not use two sheets but just a folded piece of kitchen roll in the base of a plastic container which i then put in the utility room cupboard. I had failures with cyclamen seed that was not fresh. I decided to do it after reading through Chris Grey-Wilson's Cyclamen book.
I had a pack of old Cyclamen africana and some of my own Cyclamen hederfolium. All of the Cyclamen africana germinated after 3weeks and have just transferred 60 germinated Cyclamen hederfolium to trays.Will be my preferred technique for cyclamen in future. I always used to pre chit runner beans, french beans, melons, cucumber and parsnips years ago. Those I put in a warm cupboard. With cyclamen I think it is important to get a stable temperature.

 

Welcome to the forum Geoff. Your knowledge and experience will be most helpful. How many days after germination did you transfer your seedlings. I transfered mine the same/next day when they were exceedingly small. But they seem to have done OK even so.

I have been using Nemophilia - just doing it at present as an experiment. I have also left some in the polythene bad, just to see how big a small seed will grow without any outside soil or nutrition, though they are in the sun and I have given them a bit of carbon dioxide by breathing into the bag. So far they are about three inches long from root to the two leaves. Which amazes me.

 

The book said straight away which i did with the Cyclamen africanum. Some I left a couple of days. You have to be careful, leave it too long and the roots can start bedding into the fibre of the paper. I remember that from when I used to grow beans...my present garden is not big enough for veg.
The only problem is transferring the seedlings. I was leaning the tip of my pruning knife in and using it to spoon them out. I then found it easier to lift out the paper on to a flat surface but still had to use the tip of the knife blade. They are just too tiny to handle using fingers.
It is fiddly but then the seedlings are space sown in trays. Cyclemen are then supposed to spend two years in those trays, so it should be better than the the pots where I sowed seed, cause the seedlings there are coming up next to each other.
Thanks for the welcome...its nice to be on a forum with largely UK gardeners. My specialisms are primulas and Meconopsis....only the mad specialise in Meconopsis.
I used to use the method on parsnips because sowing them the normal way I would have such poor germination that i would have gaps in my rows. On an allotment that everyone could see it was downright embarrassing. Instead we used to have a glut of huge, long parsnips.

 

Just caught up with this. Wallpaper paste normally has an anti fungal ingredient added and it will hold a lot of moisture for a long time without going off. Add a drop of liquid nutrient (eg. Baby Bio) to the mix and if you fill plastic drinking cups with it and cover with clingfilm you have a perfect medium for striking soft cuttings. So much cheaper than gel pots!

 

Geoff - I found my old stamp collecting tweezers. With these it was very easy to handle the seedlings. The tweezers held the seed itself and did not touch the soft growth, so you could transplant a seed with the tiniest of sprouts.

Palustris and frogesque, thanks for the ideas on wallpaper paste. I am trying this also. After reading Palustris's suggestion I sowed two lots of Nemophilia in wallpaper paste. One was in a fairly sloppy solution and 2 out of 9 seeds germinated after 4 days . This was the same minimum time as seed tray and damp paper method, but the damp paper method resulted in 70 to 80% germination in that time. Now, 6 days after sowing no more seeds have germinated. I also made a thicker solution but nothing there has germinated in 6 days. Neither was covered.

My conclusion (from a pathetically small experiment) is that for seeds to germinate, they need it pretty wet. This may be the reason you have lower/slower germination in seed trays. If seeds are sown on the top of the soil, some may be less moist than others. I haven't tried cuttings yet - but presumably they do not want it so wet.

 

I used to germainate cyclamen like that, but now I just throw the seeds on the gravel path in the rock garden and they germinate like crestard and muss.
Actually another pro for damp paper or wallpaper paste, is that you can put the container in the fridge (salad area, not the freezer part) for seeds which need cold or in the heat which ever. Also you can give or not give light. Some seeds need light to germinate, others prefer darkness. Cyclamen actually need light by the way.
If you really want a Scientific treatise on seed germination the look out for a book called Seed Germination Theory and Practice by Prof. Norman Deno. Fascinating reading.

 

No I think you have got it the wrong way round. Norm Deno says light blocks germination in Cyclamen in his first edition. Chris Grey Wilson also says to put the containers in a dark place. Mine were all germinated in the dark. In nature I wonder if ants take them underground, cause they are covered with a sticky, sweet material.

 

Ants certainly do spread cyclamen seeds around. I have always germinated them in the light. Also been told not to be in too big a hurry to move them off the paper either. Mind you it is a fair few years since I bothered formally sowing Cyclamen, so I am probably wrong.

PS. Some of the info on Allium seed germination in the early editions is not right either!

 

What edition of Norm Deno's book are you using. I am using second edition and first supplement to the second edition. Cracking books. I managed to germinate a specie of Allium using the fridge. It also explained why I never germinated the Thompson and Morgan skunk cabbage - the seed dies as soon as it is dried.
Had a search round on Cyclamen germination. No reference to the use of light but quite a few references to light being an inhibitor, including the Cyclamen Society.

 

Told you I was probably wrong. Just realised i stopped sowing cyclamen seed when I had to give up the Society five years ago, sheeeesh.
Only bothered with the first edition, never got round to collecting the others as I have given up on formally growing from seed now. The small number of plants we need are easier to find from self sown seedlings.

 

As someone who runs a nursery specialising in species hellebores & cyclamen, and who is also involved with The Cyclamen Society...

the level of light isn't as important as maintaining a consistent temperature (approx. 16C). After sowing my cyclamen seed, it is kept underneath the staging in one of the glasshouses where it is shady, but not at all dark. It's interesting to note that occasionally a single seed will germinate in a pot of 40+ seeds and even though the pot is then placed in good light, the seeds continue to germinate. I'm sure that sometimes a few seeds have already started to germinate when the pot in put in good light and obviously continue to do so, but sometimes an odd seed will germinate so early that I can be sure every other seed has not started the germination process - and yet the ungerminated seeds will germinate despite the pot being in a bright position.

Don't believe the received wisdom about cyclamen seedlings staying in trays for two years, Jeff. I prick my cyclamen seedlings out into 7x7x8 cm pots at the cotyledon stage (when it has stopped expanding) and it cuts a lot of time off of the wait from sowing to flowering. In some species it is best measured in years. If done carefully most species can be flowered in around a year after germination, including the 'so-called' slower species such as C. creticum, C. purpurascens (nine months is common), C. rhodium, etc.

Great to see cyclamen being talked about on this site.

 

My seeds grown in Focus wallpaper paste have been a complete disaster. Two seeds in the weaker solution germinated to a length of about one tenth of an inch and have not moved since. They must be dead although they still look white. Nothing else germinated. This may be a function of the lateness of the season but that would not explain why the ones that did germinate did nothing. Does anyone have any experiance of success with this for seeds or cuttings.

By contrast the damp paper method works a treat. I have left some seeds in the sealed bag, where thay have been for almost a month since they germinated. They are perhaps two and a half inches long with just their cotyledon leaves, but looking very healthy, having never had any nutrition. I occasionally breathe into the bag to give them carbon dioxide.