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Seedling
I've been told by several people that pines are not good trees for beginners. I believe them - I had no plans to start working on pines until I had at least a few years of experience under my belt. After all, there are plenty of types of trees out there, right?
But then you had to go and frame this as science. I am not a scientist (unless you count computer science), but I am quite a big fan. This I can do. So I ordered some seeds from treeseeds.com, which arrived last week. As others have reported, they sent an abundance of extra seeds.
Order #1009
Placed on: Jan. 27th 2018
1x Japanese Black Pine Seeds
Select: 100 seeds
Order #1026
Placed on: Jan. 28th 2018
1x Japanese Black Pine Seeds
Select: 100 seeds
I will only be using the seeds from one of the orders - the other package is for someone else. I'll admit that I was too lazy to count the seeds - not a great trait for someone claiming to like science.
I would like to try a number of growing condition combinations to see what happens. I planted a control group tonight - 36 seeds straight into a tray. I'm following the soil recommendations found here for this group - a mixture of akadama, pumice and lava covered with some coarse sand. I suspect that different soil types might be interesting to experiment with, so if anyone has recommendations that they'd like to see, feel free to mention them and I'll see if I can get my hands on the components.
The rest of the seeds are soaking. I saw a suggestion (on the page mentioned above) that one might try both hot and cold water for soaking, which seemed like a reasonable suggestion. In the picture below, the left glass contains cold water and the right glass contains hot water. It was interesting to see that some seeds in the hot water sank almost immediately. I wonder if that has to do with the change in density of water at different temperatures?
I do plan to cold stratify them once they've finished soaking. Here's hoping some of them live! In six years, maybe I'll be ready to style a pine. If not, then maybe I can at least hand a few over to people at my local club.
But then you had to go and frame this as science. I am not a scientist (unless you count computer science), but I am quite a big fan. This I can do. So I ordered some seeds from treeseeds.com, which arrived last week. As others have reported, they sent an abundance of extra seeds.
Order #1009
Placed on: Jan. 27th 2018
1x Japanese Black Pine Seeds
Select: 100 seeds
Order #1026
Placed on: Jan. 28th 2018
1x Japanese Black Pine Seeds
Select: 100 seeds
I will only be using the seeds from one of the orders - the other package is for someone else. I'll admit that I was too lazy to count the seeds - not a great trait for someone claiming to like science.
I would like to try a number of growing condition combinations to see what happens. I planted a control group tonight - 36 seeds straight into a tray. I'm following the soil recommendations found here for this group - a mixture of akadama, pumice and lava covered with some coarse sand. I suspect that different soil types might be interesting to experiment with, so if anyone has recommendations that they'd like to see, feel free to mention them and I'll see if I can get my hands on the components.
The rest of the seeds are soaking. I saw a suggestion (on the page mentioned above) that one might try both hot and cold water for soaking, which seemed like a reasonable suggestion. In the picture below, the left glass contains cold water and the right glass contains hot water. It was interesting to see that some seeds in the hot water sank almost immediately. I wonder if that has to do with the change in density of water at different temperatures?
I do plan to cold stratify them once they've finished soaking. Here's hoping some of them live! In six years, maybe I'll be ready to style a pine. If not, then maybe I can at least hand a few over to people at my local club.