more seed stuff

Posted on December 11, 2014 by paridevita

Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, Chess the purebred border collie, filling in for the guy I live with, and hear to bring you some, well, at least moderately interesting news. You may remember me from such posts as “Guarding The Fort” and “Show And Tell”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose.14121105You can probably see how things are going with me. The guy I live with has been obsessing again, or still, and so today’s post will be frightfully didactic, and yet mercifully short.

Remember the business about soaking oncocyclus iris seeds, well, this has now been taken a step further. The seeds come with an aril, or collar, which is why they’re called aril irises. (Someone who did seed germination for a living said that this process can be done with all other irises, though there isn’t a collar. You would cut the seed at the hilum, where the seed attached to the seed pod.)

The collar is the whitish thing on the right. It gets pulled off with a dental pick, which is why the seed is soaked, to make it softer.

14121102Removing the aril exposes the endosperm; or, if it doesn’t, a small amount of seed coat can be carefully pulled away to reveal it. The endosperm should be white, or off-white, and healthy-looking. (It’s easy to tell.)

Then a small (less than a millimeter) slice is taken off the tip of the endosperm, and you keep doing this, until you have also cut a portion of the embryo. Like cutting across both the white and the yolk of a hard-boiled egg. Use a razor blade, with masking tape covering one side. The seed in the picture below is probably not healthy, since you can see a brown ring around the embryo (brown is almost always bad in gardening), but it does show the embryo, surrounded by the endosperm, surrounded by the seed coat.

I know this sounds like hyper-counterintuitive, actually slicing the embryo, but this is the root end of the plant, and if you remove just a little, things will be okay.

What you are actually doing is cutting across the micropylar barrier in the endosperm; this barrier is so strong that sometimes it will heal, after the seed has been cut. 14121103And then the cut seeds are put in a folded, damp, if not actually moist, coffee filter (the underwear-looking thing in the last post, though some people just use a bag with perlite in it), and put in a freezer bag, and left in the vegetable drawer of the refrigerator for a month or so. (Not in the freezer.)

Then stuff starts to happen. Sometimes. 14121104At this point the seeds can be planted, though the guy I live with said that Prof. Deno suggested leaving them in the filters until the first leaf has emerged. The guy I live with is not that patient.

Well, that’s all. See, it wasn’t so bad, was it?14121101

 

Until next time, then.

 

 

 

 

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going to seed

Posted on December 9, 2014 by paridevita

Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, Chess the purebred border collie, filling in for the guy I live with, and hear to bring you the latest news from our garden, using the cleverest post titles imaginable. You may remember me from such other clever posts as “Slush Fun” and “Below Average”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a highly uncharacteristic pose. This was taken looking into the sun, of course, but that scarcely detracts from its charm, don’t you think? Say you wanted a biscuit, and needed to know how to look utterly pathetic and sad, well, this is this place to learn how to do that. Wouldn’t you feel the need to give this poor creature a biscuit? Of course you would. cute1I got a biscuit, as you would expect. Thanks to the antibiotic, I am feeling totally excellent, by the way.

Mostly, the guy I live with has been obsessing about seeds. This post might be a tad didactic, which is why there are two cute pictures of me to make the whole thing worthwhile.

The cactus seeds he sowed on November 25th are coming up.cactus1These will be added to the few already in the house. cactus2I don’t know why he grows all these cactus from seed. He just does, I guess.

There are some agaves grown from seed, too. This is Agave toumeyana var. bella. This is one of the few agaves that people say are hardy here that is actually hardy, though not one hundred percent so. Some winters can damage it.agave1Agaves are really easy from seed, so this isn’t as big a deal as you might think. This, however, is a big deal. (For the guy I live with.) Some old tulip seed came in the mail.14120901This is pretty exciting, and he’ll be sowing this old tulip seed fairly soon. (This, of course, was originally from Jim and Jenny Archibald.)

The guy I live with even has a book on tulips.14120902Denver’s climate is very similar to that where many of the world’s tulips grow, and we both often wonder why there aren’t tulips here. Maybe there were at one time.

Also in the same package were some old seeds of oncocyclus iris. Yes, again. You might be able to see that this is forty-six-year-old seed. 14120903He says he’ll know within a month or so if the seed is viable. First it gets soaked in a solution of bleach and water. (The bleach is chlorine-free and says non-toxic, but the tap water has chlorine in it. The disinfecting process is for the outer coat of the seed, which can have bacteria on it.) The seeds are put in a coffee filter to make them easier to retrieve.14120904Then after about fifteen minutes, the filter is removed, and rinsed a lot, then the seeds are removed from the filter and put into one of those salt shakers he bought a while ago, and left to soak in water for a couple of days. The salt shaker makes it easier to shake out the water, so the water can be changed every day.

Then the seed is cut (we’ll show you that, later), and put into a damp filter, in a freezer bag, and left in the vegetable drawer for about a month. Here’s a picture. I know this looks like underwear, but it’s a coffee filter.14120905The bags go into a plastic box, but they’re wrapped with that towel to prevent them from freezing. That probably wouldn’t hurt, but the guy I live with likes preventing stuff.

Well, that’s the end of the didactic part of today’s post. I hope you enjoyed it. If you didn’t, here’s a picture of me, in a very casual pose, waiting to be helped up onto the ramp, to come inside. I can usually do that by myself, but, you know, not always.patio1

 

Until next time, then.

 

 

 

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