i want to germinate without a baggie

[Peterthecactusguy]

to grow without a baggie you will have to be careful not to over water, or allow the seedlings to dry out too much. Doing either one of those things can easily kill the seedlings. The whole idea behind using the baggie is to not have to water them as often, in fact if you do the baggie method right you won't need to water at all.

[Angus]

Indeed, cacti seeds in nature manage to germinate and grow without help. But you have to consider that of many seeds, only a few will germinate and become adult plants.
We as collectors don't want to buy a bag of 100 seeds only to be left with a handful of plants. We want as many as possible to grow big.

The baggie method is easy and practical. I use it because I don't want to make things more complicated than I need to. Give them water, close the bag, and that's the end of it all the way until I take them out

[Peterthecactusguy]

Angus, that is true. Where I live in AZ we have saguaros. It has been said that they produce around 100 million seeds in the average lifetime and that only around 10 live as seedlings beyond 10 years (IE they are small seedlings) and that 1 out of those 10 becomes a valid mature (IE sexually) saguaro. They are supposed to be very easy to grow from seed. I will find out this winter when I start my own seeds which will be soon.

BTW I agree in that if we plant 100 seeds we want to get as many plants as possible, even if we have no room for them, what would I do with 100 saguaros? lol I already have 30 of them outside.. (that are the 1/10s or about that way )

[Rod Smith]

I have never used the "baggie" method of seed raising and have had very mixed results over the years, mainly due to losses in overwintering young seedlings. This year I will give the baggie method a try for all the seeds I sow but I intend to remove the seed pots from the bags by late summer, to allow the young plants to acclimatise ready for a dry cold winter.

This winter for the first time I have left the current season's seedlings in the greenhouse (heated to about 5 deg C) and they have not been watered since early October. So far I haven't lost any seedlings. In previous years I brought them indoors and kept them slightly moist but the dreaded botrytis struck from time to time.

[DaveW]

They never used baggies in the past, though they are convenient now. Old gardeners just used to place a sheet of glass over the seed tray, turning the glass daily to remove the condensation until they germinated and then removed it. As with Rod I have often let seedlings dry out without any ill effects and they must do so in habitat. However the baggie and constant moisture methods are ones designed to produce the maximum growth of seedlings in the minimum time.

In fact I have sometimes had better results not using a heated propagator and early planting, but just sowing in the normal growing season and placing the seedtray in the greenhouse without any extra bottom heat, just as gardeners do with normal flower seeds. You may find these tables of trials on germination temperatures interesting. Too high temperatures can inhibit germination. If you think about it natures way of preventing the seed germinating when temperatures are too high for any seedlings to be likely survive for long:-

GERMINATION.jpg (81.71 KiB) Viewed 2193 times

GERMINATION2.jpg (99.1 KiB) Viewed 2193 times

It is interesting to note on the list, as we were discussing elsewhere Melocactus come from more tropical areas, so they seem to prefer higher germination temperatures and are less inhibited by higher germination temperatures than other cacti, no doubt the same would apply to the tropical Cerei from the same areas.

[Rod Smith]

In fact I have sometimes had better results not using a heated propagator and early planting, but just sowing in the normal growing season and placing the seedtray in the greenhouse without any extra bottom heat, just as gardeners do with normal flower seeds.

I am planning on sowing cactus seeds this year but not before mid March at the earliest, Dave. I have had very mixed results from earler sowings, even in a heated propagator. It only needs a couple of really cold nights to knock the seedlings back and even a heated propagator will drop to quite a low temperature if the air outside the greenhouse is below freezing. By late March, early April there is plenty of light and the greenhouse heats up much more quickly in my case, as it gets no sun at all between mid October and mid February.

From my experience, cacti from sowings made in late March have a more regular growth pattern, which stands them in good stead for their first winter. I'm looking forward to sowing plenty of seeds using "baggies" and will be interested to see how this system compares with my previous, traditional, method.

[iann]

I want to try a no-ziplock-bag approach for this attempt to germinate cacti seedlings

Anything I have to do differently?

My thinking is if they grow naturally outdoors without ziplock bags, they should do just fine as long as I keep the water and light right

If you want, if you think you can get the light and water right. Or just put them in a bag and save yourself all the hassle

[Ivan C]

They never used baggies in the past, ..snip.. no doubt the same would apply to the tropical Cerei from the same areas.

It sure would be wonderful to have a table that shows suggested germination temperature and light recommendations for all cacti and succulents seedlings.
It would take a lot of the guess work out. Thanks for that little bit.

[DaveW]

From the text part in my link above it says that's a mean temperature of 25C (=77F). Seed germination on average is reduced by 50% for a temperature 9C above or below optimal temperature, that is 16C = 61F and 34C = 93F). Most cactus seeds seem to need light to germinate, or are not inhibited by it.

http://opuntiads.com/O/zpdf/cactus%2520review.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

A quote from the link below:-

"For cacti seeds, temperatures between 17°C and 34°C are generally more favourable for germination, with the optimum temperature approximately 25°C. According to Rojas-Aréchiga and Vázquez-Yanes (2000), in general, seeds of this family germinate better under alternating compared to constant temperatures. An alternating temperature system (30/20°C) is recommended by the Brazilian Rules for Seed Analysis for germination tests of cacti. However, as most studies use only constant temperatures, alternating temperatures still need to be evaluated.

http://www.academia.edu/824026/Brazilia ... conditions" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

When sowing without extra heat during the growing season in a greenhouse night temperatures are lower than during the day (as in habitat) so provide alternating temperature, unlike a constant temperature thermostatically controlled propagator.

[Tiggy]

I find this discussion very interesting. I've never tried growing from seeds myself yet as I always thought it would be too difficult and that I would have to get various equipment to optimise results. If I get a new greenhouse this year though I think I may be tempted.

Susi

[Peterthecactusguy]

Interesting list, but I have had O. phaeacantha come up during wet cold winters OUTSIDE in AZ, when in temps near freezing. Hell I had an O. ficus-indica that seeded itself somehow in my yard (bird dropping would be my guess) that came up in November two years ago. I had to remove it from the soil and bring it in due to freezing conditions. It recovered and then has been eaten by pigs twice so it's sorta lumpy lol What I think the list means tho, is that higher temps are needed get good germination.

[hoteidoc]

@ Susi: Baggie's only way to go if you want simple, not effort -- after soak soil, sterilize, add seed after cooled, bag, put in propagator, recommend timer with 16 - 18 hrs of light, heating pad usually not necessary, temp range: shoot for 60-65F --> 80-85F, ignore if possible for 3 - 5 months, Viola' It really CAN be that simple. Some people -- with lots of time on their hands -- like to really work @ it & hover (no offense, all the power to those of you that do!) w/o baggies.

[promethean_spark]

The bag approximates a couple different things that are found in habitat but not our gardens.

#1: desert habitats have less fungus/bacteria around than we do. Sterilizing the soil and keeping it sterile more closely approximates the relatively lifeless desert soil.

#2: cactus seedlings in habitat often grow entirely on dew that forms daily in the growing season. We could probably approximate that by misting the seedlings every morning, but it'd be a lot of work and would expose them to germs from the environment - see #1.

Also, cactus seedlings tend to respond to water/heat stress by turning red, hardening their skin and cutting back dramatically on their metabolism. This results in zero growth, but they will survive, they do not easily come out of this stressed state (they're waiting for a prolonged period of daily dew). This results in much slower growth rates if they are allowed to get too dry, yet if they are watered daily and exposed to the atmosphere they will damp off.

Some of the species with larger seedlings are much more forgiving about their care, but the slow growing guys with tiny seedlings are pretty much doomed if they don't get a well executed bag treatment (or you micro-graft them). I wasn't bagging ferocacti seedlings for a while (just putting saran wrap over the top of the pot with a rubber-band for a few weeks), but then I sowed F. johnstonianus and F. crysocentrus - bagged strombocacti are 4x bigger than those guys now, if I could have doubled their initial growth spurt out of the seed I could have gotten ahead by years.

Mesembs on the other hand seem to HATE bags, they'll come up like cress and all damp off a couple days later. For those I'll put plastic wrap over the top and start opening it as soon as it looks like germination is mostly done. They don't seem to have the problem of hunkering down under stress like cacti do, they just try to grow fast or bust.

[DaveW]

As you say Peter seed will sometimes germinate outside the usual temperature range as that is a survival strategy. The plant takes the risk this odd seed may survive, but most of it's seeds will germinate in more optmum temperatures and conditions for survival. Some plants (including cacti) also adopt the germination in time strategy where some seed within the fruit will germinate almost immediately, wheras others will need to age for different periods. That spreads germination of the fruits contents over a period of years, so if any crop of seedlings is wiped out by abnormal conditions after they germinated one year the species has adopted the "belt and braces" method that some will still lie dormant to mature and germinate in future more favourable years. That is annoying to those of us who set seed and want 100% germination the year we set them, only to find seeds coming up years later in the seed pans we threw out!

The Baggie Method is really only a form of the Wardian Case in miniature where the seeds are provided with their own self contained environment.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wardian_case" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Peterthecactusguy]

lol Dave, that has happened to people I know that were growing other things. Once we had a bunch of rotten tomatoes and we threw them in a corner. How many plants do you think we got the next year? (try close to 1000) They all didn't make it of course, many died. BTW I would like to mention in the case of the plants that seeded in those very cold temps, I would be willing to bet that for each of those seeds that set MANY thousands of them didnt.