A Science Project Gone Awry.

Well not really. Since gardening truly can be a year round project if you plant and collect your seeds, I was an active participant much to the hubby's dismay. Come late summer he was surrounded by old ice cream buckets & margarine containers and tupperware containers that had seen better days. They were generally filled with seed pods and heads that were in various stages of dehydration, eventually to be lovingly plucked of their seeds. Then the seeds would be placed into plastic and paper bags and stored away until the next planting season. Eventually the mess is cleared away but only until the seeds come back out for planting season.

Step back three...um, four years to when I last harvested my seeds. I gave as many away as I could to favourite neighbours and aunts but I did stash some away in our storage locker. A rubbermaid container of them....just a small rubbermaid.

Now comes the science experiment. Rather than plant a whole bunch of seeds and discover they are now duds after 3 uh...4 years dormancy, I am testing my seeds. You do so by wetting a paper towel, placing approximately 10 seeds within the paper towel, loosely wrap it and place it into a plastic bag. You place them into a fairly warm and bright spot and then hurry up and wait. If and when your 10 seeds germinate gives you a good indicator of what percent of your final seeds will germinate when you plant them for real. Three seeds, 30%. Germination of the seeds depends on what type of seeds you are testing. Mine are all perennial plants so it can take 3 weeks for them to germinate.


While not conventional, my resting place is rather creative. I put my plastic bags, clearly marked with the plant name, on a thin plate and then placed the plate on top of the DVR player. Why? Because it's warm and toasty there. I move them into a sunny spot during the day but put them to bed on top of the DVR player at night ensuring the bags are sealed tightly so that the condensation building in them doesn't leak. I planted them 15-Feb. Yesterday I unravelled my seeds, and guess what I found......






















This is a baby iris. So far it is the one and only thing to sprout but I transplanted it from here to a peat pellet so that it wouldn't rot in the soggy paper towel. We also did a bit of planting today - gerberas, penstemons, rose of sharon and hibiscus.




And just to leave you with a bit of colour, my orchid is starting to rebloom for the first time since I bought it. I have been babying this thing for months and am really excited to see it bloom.