i drove over to the campus after work today to see how the garden came through last night's storm...i hadn't been by in a few days and wanted to see what the weed situation was, if any...i found things in fairly good order...as usual the issue was more grass than weeds as the surrounding lawn continues to send runners into the garden...going out there every other day or so has kept me on top of that but it will be a continuing struggle...the asparagus is doing well, although the eigth plant has still not appeared and i am beginning to doubt it will...if that and the runt garlic plant are all we lose we will be doing exceptionally well...there are only three gamagrass plants up from the thirty seeds i planted last november...i had planned to cull the smaller plants out as they sprouted, but it seems that won't be necessary...everything i've read has said that breaking dormancy in gamagrass is difficult and experience seems to be bearing that out, but why? what purpose could a refusal to grow in quantity serve a plant? or was my reliance on the winter cold to break dormancy rather than stratifying the seed the problem? i have been told that soaking the seeds in a three percent solution of hydrogen preoxide for a couple of hours is anoter way to break dormancy...i still have a lot of seeds left and it's still early...might be worth a try...soaking in hydrogen peroxide certainly moved the Zea diploperennis seeds along...i soaked those for twenty minutes on monday and put them in some damp paper towels ( brown, unbleached ones) stuck those in a baggie and put them on the heating mat...when i got home today i checked them and they were ready to go...so i soaked some peat pellets and put the sprouts in the warming tray...ten in all...and stuck them under a growlight...this is central to the garden's purpose for this season so i am a bit nervous about outcomes...i have had no luck at all with Zea mexicana ( i am beginning to wonder if the seed i got from the usda in florida is viable) and i just started the Zea perennis yesterday...i still have northern tepehuan teosinte to start, and i hope that works...then i will have at least one annual and one perennial strain going to make the effort to get them thorugh a full growth cycle...there are no guarantees in life... we'll see what happens as the season progresses.
How did this turn out?
ReplyDeleteLast year i planted some Zea diploperennis, eastern gamagrass, and an annual teosinte in a pot. It took forever even when watering the pot everyday, but they did eventually sprout. (And i got ~100% germination too!)
So, compared to corn they take longer to germinate, but if watered well, they seem to germinate better than corn.
i overwintered the easten gamagrass seeds in the ground and had some success with that. i am told that soaking them one to two hours in hydrogenperoxide will break doemancy and allow spring planting as well. i have northern tephuan teosinte ( an annual) in the ground on campus and at home and we'll see how that pans out as spring progresses...if there is success there will be more photos than if there isn't.
ReplyDeleteI also planted a little bit of northern tephuan teosinte last year, but only one germinated and survived into adulthood. From what i remember last year, it had pollen very late in the season, and didn't produce any seeds before winter hit. I have been told that in the united states, the only way to get seeds from teosinte is to cover them with trash cans during the season to artificially shorten the day length to trick them into setting seed earlier. You may want to think about doing that this year.
ReplyDeleteI look forward to my own experiments with teosinte again this year. I dug up a suspected Zea diploperennis from last year, and found some it green underneath the soil. I really hope to see if it survived the winter!