government seeds

this past thurdsay i received some maize seed and seed from two accessions of teosinte from the from the ars-midwest area plant introduction research unit in ames iowa to use in a morphological demonstration in the community garden on campus...the seed arrived intact and, obviously, the maize won't be planted until next may, however i wanted tot est the viability of the teosinte seed...

so i soaked ten seeds from each accession in a 3% solution of hydrogen peroxide for twenty minutes ( nothing new here...a standard for germinating around here )...put the seed in brown paper towel dampened with distilled water and and folded the toweling into appropriately marked baggies...those went into a dark, reasonably warm place to see what happens germination-wise...if it all goes well there will be seedling teosinte under the lights downstairs in the plant room...more on this project as it comes up...literally.

dousing the shelf

the top two photos are of the black sludge the rotting potato from the previous post left on the shelf in the basement and the floor beneath it...one of the sanitizing methods fro clean up after blackleg rot is to pour hydrogen peroxide on the affected area to kill the bacteria ( dickey dianthicola ) that causes it so i did...and you can see how the hydrogen peroxide reacted with ( and, hopefully, killed ) the bacteria...there will be further dousing until there is no reaction...here's hoping the tubers in the ground already are not infected.

viability

i usually buy annual teosinte seeds from native seed search to be sure the seed i have is viable..but this year they are already sold out of seed ( why? bad year? or are more people growing it? )...i have some seed i bought from them last year and i am fairly confident of its viability so i decided not to test germinate it...i have other seed as well...the baggies int he top photo contain seed i bought in 2012 as well as seed from plants i grew here last season...maize seed is usually viable for two years so why shouldn't the ancestor be so as well? well...i don't know so i am searching for empirical evidence...i got out the bottle of 3% hydrogen peroxide and put half a dozen seeds from the 2012 store bought seed to soak...it soaks for twenty minute to break dormancy and while it was soaking i got out the brown paper towel...this is important...the bleach used to make white paper towels doesn't do germinating seeds any good so unbleached paper towels are a necessity...and i doused them in distilled water ( chlorine in tap water probably wouldn't be a problem but i am being picky )...when the soak was done i put the seeds in the toweling and into a properly labeled baggie to await results...if we don't see any in the next couple of weeks there could be a serious lack of annual teosinte plants in my gardens in 2015...not an outcome that would pleasew me.