Seed #9 - Branches

Seed #9 - Transplant

It's moving day! After the seedlings have a few sets of secondary leaves, they should have enough of a root system to hold together the cel-pack root ball. I just watered my seedlings yesterday with diluted fertilizer from bottom-up, so I was pretty confident that the soil would stick. I used a razor blade to carefully cut away the cel-pack, as to not damage this little guy.

I then put together a well-drained soil mixture, consisting of:

• cheap potting soil
• vermiculite
• perlite
  
• sphagnum peat moss
• sand (just a bit)

and carefully planted this little guy in a six-inch pot.

This last photo is intentionally out of focus to show the soil mixture, rather than the seed leaves.

Seed #9 - How Quickly They Grow Up...

After three weeks under the grow lights, just about all of my seedlings have taken off, growing several sets of secondary leaves. Before the grow lights, their growth had slowed to a crawl, and they were starting to damp off.

A great way to avoid damping off is to get the seedlings to grow as quickly as possible and to transplant them out of the cel-packs after they have a few sets of secondary leaves.

Seed #9 - Secondary Leaves

Seed #9 - More Progress With Seed Coat

I wish I could just pop off the seed coat to help out, but I think it'll fall off in the next few days on its own.

Seed #9 - Cotyledons Pushing Seed Coat Off

This seed coat should fall off in the next day or two. The cotyledons are looking healthy, as is the stem. I can't be sure from these photos, but I would guess that there's four cotyledons, based on the stem thickness and heartiness it's shown so far.

Seed #9 - Seed Coat Sprout

Seed #9 pops out of the soil after six days.

Originally planted 5/9/2007, six days ago.

Seed #9 - Germination

Originally placed in the coffee filter on 4/27/07, twelve days ago.

Seeds #5, #6, #7, #8, #9

I had five more seeds sprouting their radicles today. Seed #5 is the best of the bunch, the others are barely showing a root, and in a couple cases, only just breaking open the seed coat. I'm splitting the post into five separate ones, which will make it easier to track a seed's progress later on using my tags (seed_5, seed_6, seed_7, seed_8, seed_9).

I didn't see any harm in putting them in the soil a little bit early. These are all from my second batch of seeds, from April 27. They've been in their baggies for twelve days.

At this point, after three weeks, 9 of my 117 seeds have germinated, and 3-4 were discarded due to mold. I couldn't be happier with these results. I expect somewhere between twenty to thirty percent of the remaining seeds to germinate in the next two months.