JBP Germination!

[evmibo]

Thought I'd share my 2nd and by far most successful JBP germination.

- soaked for 72 hours, all sank.
- sowed in a fines mix I save from sifting several soil components.
- full shade
- watered gently when top layer was noticeably dry.

seeds were delivered from www.treeshrubseeds.com about two weeks ago. These are some pictures of today, day 10 after sowing. I saw the first green stalks at day 7! Much faster than I was anticipating.

 

[sbarnhardt]

Congratulations!!

 

[jaholmes]

You did not "cold stratify" these at all? Simply sowed and the came up? If I'm understanding you correctly, that would be GREAT! Congratulations! What would you estimate your germination rate to be?

 

[evmibo]

You did not "cold stratify" these at all? Simply sowed and the came up? If I'm understanding you correctly, that would be GREAT! Congratulations! What would you estimate your germination rate to be?

JBP don't need a cold stratification. Just soak them for 3 days in a container, hope they all sink, and sow. I'd say as of right now I'm 90% successful, but there are a couple late risers, so the % make go up even more.

 

[jaholmes]

I'll have to give that a try -- thanks!

 

[MidMichBonsai]

When were these seeds sown? Is this the recommended time of year for that? Seems a little late to me but I could be wrong.

 

[jeanluc83]

They look good! Now that they are growing start working them into more sun. I would also recommend giving them a few shots of Daconil to prevent any fungal problems. Are you going to try any seedling cuttings?

JBP don't need a cold stratification. Just soak them for 3 days in a container, hope they all sink, and sow. I'd say as of right now I'm 90% successful, but there are a couple late risers, so the % make go up even more.

Stratification is recommended for pine seeds but it is not absolutely necessary. From my understanding there is an enzyme that needs to break down before germination can occur. It is time dependent but also temperature dependent. The recommended 30 days of cold stratification is sufficient to fully break the enzyme down so that it is ready to grow. Without this it does break down but at a less predictable rate. The seeds will grow but results will be sporadic with seeds sprouting over the course of several weeks instead of all at once. As you found it is not absolutely necessary but you will probably have a few stragglers over the next few weeks.

 

[jeanluc83]

When were these seeds sown? Is this the recommended time of year for that? Seems a little late to me but I could be wrong.

In Michigan yes but in Florida it is probably fine.

 

[evmibo]

When were these seeds sown? Is this the recommended time of year for that? Seems a little late to me but I could be wrong.

They were sown on Friday, May 23rd. It could have been earlier but I'm not worried about it, the winter is very minimal where I am.

 

[evmibo]

Update

I potted all of these into individual terracotta pots today. There was a ~2 week period of red bases, but I never saw the violet I was looking for. Maybe I was being too picky about the color..? Anyways, the bases are all tan-brown now, I wasn't sure if the razorblade technique was carried out they'd shoot new roots or not. My reasoning was that the stalks are harder now than they were in the red to violet color stage... I don't know, so I played it safe - and just barerooted them and potted. Next year I will reduce the roots pretty well and either wire or screen the top to get early bends. You can see that I had to switch up my soil composition about 3/4 of the way should be alright though, I hope!

Btw, the pack of seeds I got supposedly had about 50 seeds, although I didn't count them originally. I have 49 seedlings here

 

[larlamonde]

I potted all of these into individual terracotta pots today. There was a ~2 week period of red bases, but I never saw the violet I was looking for. Maybe I was being too picky about the color..? Anyways, the bases are all tan-brown now, I wasn't sure if the razorblade technique was carried out they'd shoot new roots or not. My reasoning was that the stalks are harder now than they were in the red to violet color stage... I don't know, so I played it safe - and just barerooted them and potted. Next year I will reduce the roots pretty well and either wire or screen the top to get early bends. You can see that I had to switch up my soil composition about 3/4 of the way should be alright though, I hope!

Btw, the pack of seeds I got supposedly had about 50 seeds, although I didn't count them originally. I have 49 seedlings here

Pretty good success rate!

 

[QuintinBonsai]

I collected pine cones from some landscaping pines near my home. I'm not sure of the species. If I had to take an educated guess, I'd say they are Pinus Nigra. I never cold stratified the seeds. Just soaked them for 2-3 days, and pushed them in a pot of soil. This was in late February. Sooo many died. Only 3 survived. This is actually my first time having pine seedlings make it this long without kicking the bucket.

 

[evmibo]

Well it's been almost 2 years since these guys germinated. Some dried out, nearly all of the ones that I planted into larger sized substrate. Lesson learned there.

Roughly half have made it this far, and they were repotted recently into colanders.

If you remember, I didn't cut off the tap roots when they were repotted initally, some taproots were over 6 feet long during this most recent repot. Some were potted as singles, and others as trios.

 

[sorce]

Damn!

When I saw the rows of terra cotta pics I was like...."is this another, I swear I saw this before."

2 years! I forgot that was you planted all them!

Nice work! Real nice!

Sorce

 

[AlainK]

I confirm that JBP are very easy to germinate.

I sowed some in 2013, and it's fun to experiment with them, for instance I'd like to form one with apparent roots. The first photos were taken in March 2015, the last one in November 2015:

 

[mwar15]

Is that duct tape only?

 

[evmibo]

Nice work AlainK. I like the movement you've given to the trunk.

 

[AlainK]

Is that duct tape only?

No, it's a cardboard tube of chips/crisps (Pringles). For bigger ones, I sometimes use the cardboard package of malt whisky...

 

[Thomas J.]

I too germinated about 15 of them in 2013 and wired them as soon as I felt they were ready. I fertilized heavy and they began to thicken up fast as you can see from this pic that I posted on another thread. I'll try and post more later. I will allow these all to thicken about as much as the second pic which was a 2yr old seedling when I got it. It's now 7yrs old.