Growing from Seed - Fails and and Surprises

Part of the outdoor seedpot staging area, 2017.

Growing from seed: you choose a plant you want to grow, sow the seed, up pops the seedling and on you go! Right? Well, sort of, sometimes....

I started gardening in my teens, indoors and out, here in the country, but I wasn't growing from seed in those days, apart from the family vegetable garden, which I'd been helping with from a much younger age. Then I lived in cities for a long time, with little to no outdoor garden space, and enough access to good sources of houseplants to keep me satisfied.

When I moved back to the country again, things began to change. Retail opportunities for unusual tender plants are limited, and  online plant sales tend to be both expensive, and  very limited in Canada for the sorts of plants I'm interested in. So I began to look at seed vendors.  I'd also begun to participate in online communities of rock gardeners (including a wide range of plant and garden types) where seed growing is a pretty standard way of getting the unusual plants not generally available at nurseries. 

So I started sowing. And learning. 10 years or so later, I'm still learning! What soil to use? Easily a full post on that topic... How to water? Above, below, spray, pots standing in water? Enclosed in a baggie? Under lights? Outdoors? In the fridge? (Hint, the answer to all of those questions is yes, maybe).

Today's topic though, is the surprises in growing from seed, when things don't go quite as expected. No germination at all, sadly is not really a surprise-- unless you are much more skilled or luckier than I am, there will always be pots of seeds that do not germinate. Experience should reduce that number --better moisture/temperature control etc., but some of the fails are just unknowns. Seed from reliable sources sown according to standard protocols, and still nothing. I don't sweat it. If you sow enough things, you won't have time or energy to fret that much about empty or slow pots. (Wait, maybe that is a sign that I'm sowing too many things??).

Of course one of the most common surprises is that the seedlings are not what you expected. This is particularly common when trading seed or getting it through club exchanges: the seed is collected by friends/other members, and we hope they know what they are doing, but they could be mistaken (identifying plants in seed can be tricky). Or, they might have the right plant, but it may have cross pollinated with something else in the garden giving a garden hybrid. Or they may have collected seed from a plant which was incorrectly named in the first place (sadly common in the horticultural trade). Any of these will give you seedlings that are not what you expected-- often inferior or more common cousins of the plant you wanted, but sometimes pleasing in their own right. Some years ago I had seed that was supposed to be Helichrysum milfordiae-- a beautiful mat forming alpine everlasting from South Africa, The seedlings grew well for a couple of years, nice silver hairy leaves in a tight mat. Lovely foliage, and I was pleased it was hardy. Then came flowering, and .... not milfordiae flowers at all: that species has short stems and relatively large, showy flowers. My plant has longish tangly flower stems with small inconspicuous flowers. Probably a garden hybrid between milfordiae and another species. Disappointing for what it is not, but still a beautiful foliage plant in the rock garden, and I'm glad I have it.

Helichrysum, *not* milfordiae, probably a hybrid with that species. Just in bud in this shot.

I start a lot of warm germinating species indoors under lights, but most pots end up outdoors eventually, either for the seedlings to keep growing or for ungerminated pots to sit in hope. No longer much of a surprise, but things will start to pop up in those outdoor pots, and I always leave them until they are large enough to id. Various plants will sow themselves in, with the help of wind or birds, especially common weeds and native trees! I've started keeping some of the tree seedlings as pre-bonsai, and others have been planted in ground in an area I am trying to fill in. 

Picea glauca/White Spruce; self sown in an old seed pot, I moved the seedling into a slightly larger pot last year; I'm thinking to keep it in a sort of bonsai-ish way, but not very organised with that thought yet! In front is a pot of Penstemon procerus.

One of the more dramatic cases was supposed to be Lindera benzoin, an interesting small tree from wild collected Ontario seed. No germination for a year (two?) and then something started to sprout, and it wasn't dandelions, clover or grass! I watched the seedlings (lots of them, another clue I watch for-- *usually* weeds come up one or a few at a time, not a whole batch at once) for a couple of seasons until I realised they were: Bunchberry/Cornus canadensis, a common native plant here!!  I still don't know how they got there, the seed was from a private trade with a person in Southern Ontario who could surely tell the difference between a tree and a small plant on the forest floor. I can only assume that a passing bird (rodent??) with a gut full of Cornus seed pooped in that pot giving me a whole crop of seedlings (though I still sometimes wonder if I somehow got a packet of Ontario Bunchberry- the plants might not be confusable, but envelopes are!). In the end I decided to leave it potted, eventually moving it up to a larger pot-- this gives a different effect than in the ground, with a lot of flowers close together.

Self-sown (?) Cornus canadensis/ Bunchberry; this appeared in a seed pot for something else, and I have kept it potted.

The most gratifying surprise is when something you had given up on germinates the next year or even later.  Unlike popular garden annual flowers and vegetables, many perennial plants have varying germination protocols: they may need a warm period followed by cold, then warm again, or they may need a freeze/thaw cycle, or outer seed coats may need scratching (seed scarification). If sowing time or another factor is off (miss the warm period, or give too short a cold period or not cold enough, don't scratch deeply enough--too deep and dormancy will be permanent) the seeds may sit and wait until they've had the right conditions in the right order.  I have quite often sown species that need a cold treatment ( cold stratification) just a bit too late in spring, so that they don't get a long enough cold spell, and then had the seeds come up the next spring. Occasionally another year or so later when hope was lost. Similar is the pleasure felt when you have seed that should have been sown years ago ( again, a sign I sow/try to sow too many things??), and they still germinate. Some things usually  only germinate when fresh (others can sit for years and be fine) but you still may get an occasional seedling. Corydalis (perennial species) mostly have short-lived seed that needs to be sown fresh for a warm/cold/warm regime, germinating the next spring. A couple of times I've had seed that I received or sowed too late, but got a couple of seedlings anyway, as I did with Corydalis cava, which I now have  a couple of healthy plants of. 

Corydalis cava/Hollow Root; A Eurasian species; I was a bit late to sow the seed, but it managed to produce a couple of seedlings anyway.

A few years ago I received seed of a natural hybrid between Sorbus (Mountain Ash/Rowan) and Cotoneaster, from Siberia. Typically Sorbus needs cold stratification, and I had them too late the first year, so I didn't get them sown. I think another year passed, and then I finally sowed them last spring. Still too late for a proper cold treatment, apparently, (and I wasn't sure about long term viability of the seed) nothing came up. So, while it wasn't any miracle, just proper timing, I was very pleased to see a couple of seedlings come up this spring! Another happy (if not all that surprising) surprise was Geranium maculatum, a hardy wildflower from Ontario. I sowed last spring, but again, apparently too late to give a sufficient cold period. No results. This spring they started to germinate, and are growing nicely.

Geranium maculatum/ Spotted Geranium; a hardy Geranium, from Ontario wild seed sown last year, germinated this spring.

Yesterday, however, I had my biggest surprise to date. I was mowing (a vast and never really complete task, here) when I passed an area where a number of non-germinating pots were left (part wishing, part didn't get around to doing anything with them) a handful of years ago or more. The area is overgrown with grass, weeds and some native plants. I stopped checking the pots for germination several years ago, so I was surprised to see yellow flowers out of the corner of my eye as I passed. Not dandelions. A closer look suggested Primula, first I thought florindae, which I have a couple of patches of, but which is not in flower yet at this time of year. Closer still, I realised to my surprise it was P. veris/Cowslip, which I have sown unsuccessfully, but have never had any plants of. So, no extant plants to seed in there. I thought I must have left a failed seed pot in that area-- maybe 8 years ago! I photographed the area, then dug into the grass to find the pot and move it-- second surprise-- no pot! The plant is growing in a bit of turf between several pots. My final theory is still that I put a failed seed pot there, but that the pot must have tipped out, and some long dormant seed (this is usually an easy warm germinator) germinated in this bit of grassy soil, and sometime over the last few years grew enough to reach flowering this year. Now I have to decide whether to move it right away, or wait till it has produced seed.......

Primula veris/Cowslip; I found this flowering in a spot where I may have left a failed seed pot, many years ago!

So is there a moral to this story? Keep sowing, keep learning keep trying, and be patient! I would usually say, keep the pots of seeds that may have more complex dormancies several years at least, but those that should germinate promptly I might dump by the next year... now? I may never dump another seed pot!