More Mold! (No Problem)

For the past month, I've had between fifteen and one-hundred fifteen giant sequoia seeds sitting in damp coffee filters in the dark. I realize now that there's no guaranteed way to prevent mold growth, so rather than freak out, I spent tonight cleaning all of my seeds, and transplanting them in new coffee filter baggies.

I found the best way to do this was to place the seeds in a metal vegetable strainer with very fine holes (less than 1mm square), and run room-temperature water through them. For the few seeds that had a decent build-up of mold, I carefully gave them a little rub, and more water. I used toothpicks to help maneuver the seeds, discarding them after touching dirty ones. I didn't want to waste my time cleaning the seeds, only to give them back their mold afterwards.

Once the seeds are in the soil and sprout, the air circulation should help prevent mold problems at that point. My goal is to keep them as clean as I can until then, then make sure to remove the seedlings from the greenhouse as soon as they sprout. With germination taking anywhere from seven to ninety days, the baggie method really helps fight mold. If I had planted the seeds in soil from day one, there would have been a serious mold problem in the greenhouse pretty early on.

Seed #4 - Germination

This never gets old... Another little radicle, this time from seed #4. This is from the second batch of seeds, along with seed #2. It spent ten days in its baggie (from 4/27 to 5/7) before showing activity. It's now sitting in the greenhouse with seed #2 & #3.

I'll continue to monitor the rest of the seeds, as they may sprout between 7 and 90 days after first soaked in water. If I'm lucky, I'll receive 40% germination rate. I'm hoping for 20%, since I didn't stratify the seeds as most reading recommended. As of right now, I've seen 4 radicles from 117 seeds, or 3.4% within the first two weeks - not bad so far.

Unfortunately, while planting this one in the greenhouse, I found two more moldy seeds in the baggies. I discarded them to prevent further spread.

Mold!

Everything I've about growing giant sequoias from seeds says to watch out for grey mold. Well, when looking through the baggie seeds, I noticed something that concerned me. This is what was I found when I opened the coffee filter...

I'm not sure exactly what type of mold this is, but it concerned me enough to discard this seed and transplant the clean seeds to a new filter and baggie. Hopefully this didn't spread to any of the others. It's a good thing that I had split all my seeds into several bags in the first place. And, since I found this while still in the baggie, this mold won't make it to my greenhouse.