Agave seeds up

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agavedave
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Agave seeds up

Post by agavedave »

I have been building upon my experiments from last year where I tried an approach different to those in previous years.

In the past I have used the 'baggie' method where I just sprinkle a few seeds onto a 3 inch pot and place it in a poly bag. The problem comes later in the season where roots need to be untangled and the plants potted on. I have found that the root damage does set them back quite a bit.

Last year, I tried a method where seeds were chittted on some damp kitchen towel and then sown into individual pots where they remained for the remainder of the growing season. The plants do seem to gain an advantage when treated this way.

This year I wanted to get the most out of a growing season so needed to get them started earlier with some form of heating.

Seeds are sown onto damp kitchen towel in a small polystyrene jar and then placed onto the micro propagator.

The micro propagator consists of two aluminium plates with some ceramic wire wound resistors sandwiched between with a dob of thermal paste to ensure good heat transfer. There are two temperature sensors, one in thermal contact with the top plate and one to measure ambient temperature. A micro controller monitors the temperatures and applies the correct amount of power to maintain a constant temperature.

Once the seeds have chitted they are sown into individual pots and placed in a conventional propagator at 21 deg.C

The bulk of these seeds chitted in 5 days.

I'll post some more pics once they are at the first leaf stage.


Regards
Dave
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Dot
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Re: Agave seeds up

Post by Dot »

I have tried this method of chitting Agave seed, never done it before, just thought I would have a go.
It happened that I had some old Nasturtium seed from 1995, so rather than throw them away I tried to germinate them.

I used an old plant saucer and put some damp paper towel into it with several seeds on it. It was covered with cling film and put near a radiator.
To my great surprise I had one Nasturtium seed germinate so there is wisdom in keeping old seed after all!!

Looking at other pots of seed mainly this years BCSS Agaves which had been planted in the traditional way I noticed that nothing much had happened after nearly 2 weeks. I tried the same method as with the Nasturtium seeds which showed signs of growth quite quickly - within days in fact.
They are now in a pot and growing well.

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Re: Agave seeds up

Post by agavedave »

Hi Dot,

Keeping them at a constant warm temperature and high humidity seems to be the key.

I had a play around with some temperature probes in pots in a normal propagator, 24 degC at the bottom, <17 deg at the top where the seeds are. This is one of the hazards of trying to get an early start when ambient temperature is 10 deg in our back place at the moment. If you crank up the propagator any more it can dry out the pots too quickly.

This weeks weather doesn't help. 31 deg in the greenhouse yesterday and down to 4 deg overnight.

Regards
Dave
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