***Harunobu's Satsuki Seeds***

Pitoon

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Yep, I have some issues with little bugs and larva on my whip experiment too, but not the same ones as @Harunobu Been hitting them with safer soap, also using Serenade and/or a dilute copper fungicide on the whips infrequently to keep the fungus down. So be ready. I may go for a dilute nuclear option if I get ticked off enough. They are just a nuisance right now

Flats - I recently gave up on the cheap but garden nursery trays and plug flats. Most any cover will work although even doubled up high domes are too small for 8-10” whips. So I’m getting all the trays in the mega heavy duty mode and the plug flats from a place called Greenhouse Megastore (Illinois?). The trays are thicker than at least 4 standard nursery trays the plug flats are at least 2-3x thicker,View attachment 342861
Cheers
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I get my supplies from either Greenhouse Megastore online or a wholesaler that sells to nurseries out in Baltimore.

Your whips are inside and you're covering them?
 

Deep Sea Diver

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The whips, cuttings and seeds are in the garage, on simple shelves under lights on heat mats. Seeds and cuttings 72ish F the whips 63ish F.

First effort and it’s a learning exercise. I’ve made plenty of mistakes, mainly with watering, transfers etc. Also learning to debud and later trim the late in the year cuttings so they will grow into whips.... as most all these have buds.

I only tried growing out for three reasons.
First - I couldn’t get any and had time.
Second - A whole bunch of folks said I couldn’t do it without a greenhouse.
Finally - to test my horticultural skills and learn new stuff. The bonus is that where I live in WA I can offload plenty of azalea to the willing, yet unsuspecting locals!

The oldest “whips” are from Jun/Jul cuttings then next Late July/Aug.

If these last the next three months, which is about 80-20 right now, I think they will be able to transition to the cold frame and then into the ground or larger training pots once mid spring rolls around. Gotta figure that out next.

Finally 2-3 dozen cuttings from Sep - Nov under the dome with the Sep ones now ready to pop out and join the earlier year groups outside of the domes.

All are just experiments to see how to push the azalea growing power curve throughout the year.

If potted it likely all will spend next year’s winter in the cold frames with their big buddies.

Stay Safe and Sane out thar!
DSD sends
 

KiwiPlantGuy

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Hi,
My seeds have probably been in the longest as sowed 20 Nov. With work being crazy busy and my poor grower efforts at sowing and looking after, I might not have loads to prick out. Also it seems that maybe not using Spagnum might be another problem. Not making that mistake again. And I used clear glass as the humidity factor and took this off to be in the hot greenhouse with humidity after I saw germination. Learning curve but probably still 500 plus to learn/grow with.
I will keep you guys posted.
Charles
 

Harunobu

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Sorry to hear KiwiPlantGuy, but not entirely sure what happened. So they dried out despite being in a high humidity greenhouse?

It has also been a bit of a relearning for me. I killed my first batch that I sowed in August. I tried to ventilate and adapt them to normal humidity too soon.
In the past, I often grew the seeds in recycled plastic trays/boxes (often from food products). These of course have no lid, so I use plastic bags.
The problem with these is that they sag under the weight of condensation water, eventually collapsing on top of the seedlings. And once you have seed leaves, the leaves like to be dry at 100% humidity. They don't like the plastic to sag on top of them and for the seedlings to get wet. Doesn't kill them but they stay a paler green.

I did find a nice online source of cheap and reliable seedling trays not (Garland). In the past, I bought some at a local garden center. And these were really brittle. They would snap pieces of and eventually break within a few months. So I was not a fan. But the ones I have now are nice.
Because of fungus gnats, I have been keeping lids on so far. And this is no issue at all with higher humidity. So I will rewrite the guide and not recommend to try to acclimate the seedlings to lower humidity. No need. Just keep them at 100% humidity, but make sure it doesn't rain condensation water continuously.
 
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Harunobu

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Oh, and nice job Pitoon. Expect many more to be taking off the coming days.
 

Deep Sea Diver

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Quick update: Some seeds have started to germinate, so for me its been about 10 days. How is everyone else coming along?

Nicely done @Pitoon! Looks like you will have a bumper crop of seedlings.

I'm Watching and waiting. Something should kick in late next week. It’s a bit cooler in the garage than optimal, despite the heat mats. I’ll know in a week if this is slowing things down.

Good news is about 1/2 of the mid October cuttings I took appear to have really kicked in and the rest still seem viable. All had buds and I had to take each off, so now you see that there will be lots of shots of things progress properly.

Once each gets established more, I’ll take some tiny scissors and cut all but the strongest off to get the test whips started.

To push the power curve I just took some December cuttings from my contest azalea which got lighty pruned by the @&$?!! rabbits. So I dug it up and slipped it into a pot. It’s dug in inside one of the cold frames. I may try more from my other cultivars as it really hasn’t gotten mungo cold yet and they are all pushing new green growth...!

Photos of Eiken and Kaho cuttings. The Kinsai cuttings new growth are way too small to take a decent photo of.

Cheers
DSD sends

BEC904F8-92D8-4C2D-85D8-322D9F0AB734.jpeg
3F7C285C-5A8D-414A-A0DE-8225B6F3CFEE.jpeg
 

Pitoon

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Nicely done @Pitoon! Looks like you will have a bumper crop of seedlings.

I'm Watching and waiting. Something should kick in late next week. It’s a bit cooler in the garage than optimal, despite the heat mats. I’ll know in a week if this is slowing things down.

Good news is about 1/2 of the mid October cuttings I took appear to have really kicked in and the rest still seem viable. All had buds and I had to take each off, so now you see that there will be lots of shots of things progress properly.

Once each gets established more, I’ll take some tiny scissors and cut all but the strongest off to get the test whips started.

To push the power curve I just took some December cuttings from my contest azalea which got lighty pruned by the @&$?!! rabbits. So I dug it up and slipped it into a pot. It’s dug in inside one of the cold frames. I may try more from my other cultivars as it really hasn’t gotten mungo cold yet and they are all pushing new green growth...!

Photos of Eiken and Kaho cuttings. The Kinsai cuttings new growth are way too small to take a decent photo of.

Cheers
DSD sends

View attachment 344259
View attachment 344260
I hope you're still interested in trading some cuttings. Next year after the first flush I plant to take a good amount of cuttings from my satsuki's. I sent you my list already. I may pick up some more cultivars in January.
 

KiwiPlantGuy

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Sorry to hear KiwiPlantGuy, but not entirely sure what happened. So they dried out despite being in a high humidity greenhouse?

It has also been a bit of a relearning for me. I killed my first batch that I sowed in August. I tried to ventilate and adapt them to normal humidity too soon.
In the past, I often grew the seeds in recycled plastic trays/boxes (often from food products). These of course have no lid, so I use plastic bags.
The problem with these is that they sag under the weight of condensation water, eventually collapsing on top of the seedlings. And once you have seed leaves, the leaves like to be dry at 100% humidity. They don't like the plastic to sag on top of them and for the seedlings to get wet. Doesn't kill them but they stay a paler green.

I did find a nice online source of cheap and reliable seedling trays not (Garland). In the past, I bought some at a local garden center. And these were really brittle. They would snap pieces of and eventually break within a few months. So I was not a fan. But the ones I have now are nice.
Because of fungus gnats, I have been keeping lids on so far. And this is no issue at all with higher humidity. So I will rewrite the guide and not recommend to try to acclimate the seedlings to lower humidity. No need. Just keep them at 100% humidity, but make sure it doesn't rain condensation water continuously.
Hi,
Yes I believe that the glass was taken off too soon. The glass had nice condensation going, I saw germination and the rest is history. The high humidity greenhouse is probably not as high as I led you to believe, as it would struggle to get beyond 60-70% and quite hot inside say 25-30degC on sunny days. So yep lesson learned.
Charles
 

Pitoon

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Hi,
Yes I believe that the glass was taken off too soon. The glass had nice condensation going, I saw germination and the rest is history. The high humidity greenhouse is probably not as high as I led you to believe, as it would struggle to get beyond 60-70% and quite hot inside say 25-30degC on sunny days. So yep lesson learned.
Charles
So all your seeds are gone? Nothing survived?
 

Harunobu

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He said earlier that about 500 survived? Hopefully they weren't stressed or weakened.That is still a nice number. The strongest survived, and whole they only had 2 weeks or so for superior genetics to try to play their tole, you probably did select for superior genetics a bit, though randomness and environment probably player a bigger role.
Did oryzalin play a role at all?

Ah, if temperatures get up to 30C then probably best to keep the glass covers on. I never sowed seeds in mid summer in a greenhouse, so you'll have to adapt some things, I guess. I have always sown seeds in unheated rooms during winter, so temperatures are between 15 and 20C.

The thing with 100% humidity is that it prevents plants from respiration. And if there is no respiration, there is no water uptake from the roots. Which means it cannot take up nutrients from the soil. I thought this could be a problem. But I have now several trays with lids on them at all time. And I remove condensation water from the lid once a day. So I guess that allows for enough respiration. The leaves are dry and the peat and sphagnum does slowly dry out, while condensation keeps sticking to the lid. If the medium gets to dry, I make it 'rain' by tapping the lid instead. When it gets too dry, I water. Bottom watering makes everything way too wet, so then I remove condensation water from the lid again.
No issues with mold or yellowish seedlings. So 100% humidity seems fine after all.
So I would keep the glass cover on. And just remove excess water by angling the cover once a day so they drops start to slide down under gravity. Water evaporates way faster at 30C than at 15C.
Or did they dry out despite the glass cover with condensation being on top? More shade cloth then? They don't need light to germinate initially. The summer sun has a lot of infrared light as well.


Originally I thought it best to start ventilating once the seed leaves emerge. Not even sure if that is the best thing to try at 15C.

I think I said in the guide to do a test sow first, but you both sowed everything at once :p
 
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KiwiPlantGuy

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Hi,
Thanks for all the information. Yep, sowed all the seed because I thought I had enough experience at this stuff. First mistake was the peat drying out and not using Spagnum and the glass thing.
I looked at them again today and there may be only a hundred or so, dunno really.
Orazylin didn’t work as expected. I think I might have got heavy handed and wet the peat which activated the pre-emergent side of the chemical eg. killed most. Go me. There might be a handful if lucky.
Great learning curve and looking forward to trying a second lot etc if possible.
Anyway, looking forward to watching others and their progress reports.
Charles
 

Harunobu

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Ah, I see that oryzalin can inhibit an enzyme crucial to seed germination (though the science here seems dodgy). Yeah, this is why I thought it would make sense to bathe germinating seedlings in a bath for half a day or so, then place them back. That way, you have total control.

And keep some untreated ones. Hakusen, Suisen and Miharu probably already give polyploid seedlings.
 

KiwiPlantGuy

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Yep, ok, but I only treated the MK?20 seed (forgot code sorry) as these we thought would be a good white possibility. Peat too dry and all the above with the others.
Maybe with the Orazylin I wait for germination and maybe first true leaves and apply a v fine mist to not interfere with their roots etc. Don’t know
 

Harunobu

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Suisen x Hekisui transplant tray, 6 weeks 4 days after sowing:

1608241917944.png

1608242733623.png

Most of them want to grow narrow but rather large fresh green leaves. Shoots between the leaves seem quite long.

My favourite seedlings so far are Kobai x Hekisui, sowed 5 weeks ago:
1608242845767.png

1608242910071.png

These seedlings are quite neatly shaped. The seed leaves are all quite dark green and rounded. They are now about to diverge as their first true leaf appears. I will be looking for glossy dark green seedlings among these in about 1 to 2 weeks, and pry them out.
 

KiwiPlantGuy

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Off to a good start here, how thick is your Spagnum moss?
Charles
 

Harunobu

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I don't think it really matters how thick it is. I try to cover the surface and have it as flat/even as possible. If you shred it really fine, you can make it quite thin, like 1/4th of an inch. Probably mine is usually in the 0.5 - 0.75 inch range. The sphagnum is mostly to keep things moist easily and to ward of fungus. Also, boiled sphagnum stays clean for a really long time. With peat, 2 or 3 months from now, you'd have algae growing on top and it starts to look dirty and compacted. Maybe boiling peat has the same effect, but boiling mud is a bit of a mess, haha.

Many seedlings will actually grow quite a long root straight down pretty fast. Say before they even initiate growing the first true leaf. Like an inch or so. So it could grow right down into a peat layer underneath. Others seem to branch out into the sphagnum fibers. Not sure if that is genetics or the environment.

@Pitoon, now would be a good time to use a toothpick and hook out some of the seedlings. I'd recommend a thin layer of peat only on top of peat/perlite, so the roots can dig down easier. I have one where I planted them straight down on 50/50 peat/perlite, and that generates a bit of a root-over-rock effect.

In 1-3 days, you will have some leaves opening.

Hmm, strange that the Suisen x Kobai seeds don't germinate for you. They couldn't all be affected by mold, could they?
 

Pitoon

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Hmm, strange that the Suisen x Kobai seeds don't germinate for you. They couldn't all be affected by mold, could they?
Yeah, not one seed germinated in that tray. Not sure why it really doesn't look that bad at all. Also the gnats are starting to become a nuisance now.
 
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