Welcome to the long version of "How to Plant Gesneriad Seeds", with lots of photos!
First you need a trusty cat or two... I know, it seems counter intuitive, but who else will so carefully inspect your work??
Let's start out with a clear "deli" container of your choice. Make sure it's clean. I also use some long fiber sphagnum a few steps further along, so having it out and preparing it at this stage of the process is a great idea.
I take the long fiber sphagnum moss and rub it vigorously between both hands to make a fine dusty powder. One hand was needed for the camera in this shot, but take both hands and make a fine powder, throwing out all the chunks.
Inspect your work carefully and then get it into a small container that you can set aside for a while.
Here is the powdered sphagnum moss with the lumps taken out and set off for use later as a soil topper.
Take your deli container and something sharp (being careful not to stab yourself in the process) and make a couple of very small holes in the top. We want almost 100% humidity and not much air circulation, but a little air exchange is a fine thing.
You and your Sharpie marker are now good friends. You will want to keep good records about your seeds such as the date they were planted, which variety etc. The Sharpie won't fade with time or come off if wet. With multiple seeds being planted, you WON'T remember which was which two weeks from when you planted them.
There are many very wise people on the net that suggest using various planting media to start the seeds. If you have a favorite USE it, but I use what I use for planting my gesneriads. It's a light mix and I don't find that it has any negative side effects (such as algae growth, etc.)
I moisten the mix. As I'm hoping you can see from the photo, the soil mix is DAMP but fluffy, crumbly and friable. It's not sticky, chunky, oozy or gooey at all. This is an
important point. The seeds need moisture to germinate, but you don't want to rot them!!!
Here's where the powdered sphagnum comes in. I sprinkle a very thin layer on top of the moistened soil. It's said that this helps prevent any fungal problems associated with seeding. Perhaps because of the nature of the sphagnum or because it simply seems to work for me.... we'll go with that.
Now we have the seed bed prepared. The box has tiny air holes, the soil is moist, the topping of powdered sphagnum is on, we're almost set to roll!
Here are some labels. I use a double (hopefully) foolproof method of marking the seedlings, especially when there are multiple varieties like I'm going to be planting today. The white labels are IN the box and the Sharpie Marker writes on the OUTSIDE of the box. This way if something does get dislodged or put in the wrong place, you can still figure out what is where. It's nice to do this a bit ahead of placing your seeds down on the soil. You won't be fussing with marker tops and so-forth when it's time to focus on the teeny tiny seeds.
Gesneriad seeds are SUPER SMALL! They aren't sort of small, they are almost powder-like. This means you have to take special care when planting them.
You WILL need a completely clean sheet of white paper (so you can see the seeds) cut into a reasonable size and with a fold half way up the paper, like shown in this photo.
Always work OVER THIS PAPER. The seeds will scatter and any breeze can move them, so working over the paper (with the friendly inspection cats now in the kitchen having a mid afternoon snack) is essential.
These seeds usually come folded into a tissue paper. Very carefully unfold the paper and leave it over the white paper you've prepared.
This packet had about 15 total seeds in it. I put out about 11 for the photo, but I'm only going to plant about half. If something should happen to my seedling box, like a mildew or a damping off fungus or if I drop the box, I'll still have some seed in reserve to try one more time. Some of these seeds are pretty rare... be careful.
You will perhaps note in the photo above that over the lettering on the label above the letters 'h' and 'a' is a little speck.... I've blown up this photo so you can see the "speck" is a single seed... it's really that small.
Here's the time for a steady hand and nerves of steel. I spread out my few seeds on the paper so that when I am moving them to the soil, they will hopefully come off the paper one at a time and are spread out. This makes transplanting the seedlings so much easier than having them in a tight ball of micro-size green when it comes time to start moving them to their larger quarters.
Here's a shot of half of the packets planted on the left and the right side waiting for it's precious additions.
Here's the box all planted. Close the cover so it snaps closed and .....
I put mine under some lights. These are quite far from the bulbs. Make sure that your lights aren't too warm. The seedlings do need light to germinate, but they don't want to cook either. They could go by a window or just on a shelf till you see something sprout. Like any other seedlings though, keeping them in dim conditions promotes leggy growth and weak plantlets.
Just to give you one more sense of how small gesneriad seeds are... they are the specks next to the paper clip and the stick pin. From something so tiny comes (sometimes) a giant shrub!
Comments??? Questions??? We'll try to answer!
The Missouri Botanical Garden is one of the most well-kept botanical gardens in the US with premier plant collections and one of the best non-university botanical research institutions in the world. To me, the best feature of the garden is the Climatron, a futuristically designed greenhouse that encloses a very nice collection of plants.
