The forbidden trials: Indoor junipers

[Wires_Guy_wires]

I found day temperatures to play a big role too. What it comes down to, I believe, is that weak light promotes leggy growth if the temperature allows it. With low temperature and low lighting, leggyness decreases as well.

 

[JudyB]

I have start hundreds of seedling peppers and tomatoes every year for a long time, and I found using an oscillating fan on them a few hours every day makes the stems stronger.

 

[Wires_Guy_wires]

That's a good one Judy!
Oscilating fans correspond to a serious temperature drop in my cabinet so I can't use them unfortunately.
But I have done it in the past with good results. Nice addition!

 

[Leo in N E Illinois]

Glad to see the junipers are doing well. So far so good. I raise a lot of plants under T-5's and your complaint about hardware and lamp costs is on target. I've been lucky hardware wise, no problems, but lamps do not last anywhere as long as the old T-12's.

 

[Wires_Guy_wires]

Thanks @Leo in N E Illinois ! I was lucky with my first two sets of T-5 that lasted a whopping 4 years. They don't make them like they used to anymore, one single set lasted me a month before shutting down last year. Since the government is tackling every cannabis related store in the country, I couldn't get a refund.. The store owners were in jail. Switching to out-of-the-box consumer LED's was a risk, and soldering them into place was too, but it was worth taking.




Everything is looking pretty OK. The stretching has stopped!


Phoenicians in the front, halepensis in the back.

What?! Indoor pines?!
Yeah, again, I know.. But it's -6C outdoors. This is a test; I got 300 seeds last fall, and they have been laying around in the living room ever since. They come from a dry and hot climate, and I wanted to know if they were still viable when stored like this. I have 250 seeds stacked away for spring to try again. Outdoors.
These seeds were sown straight away, no soaking whatsoever. Two weeks later, these popped up.

 

[ysrgrathe]

You can start pines under low light, 100-200 par. This is sufficient for the first 4-8 weeks.

 

[Leo in N E Illinois]

@Wires_Guy_wires

Seed storage - best shelf life in ''home storage'' (not cryogenic) is to store cool and dry. Temperature below +4 C, but above 0 C, (33 to 40 F). In this condition germination rate for most 2 needle pines, like JBP can be above 50% at 10 years. At room temperature, JBP seed stored dry at +18 or 65 F might drop to less than 50% germination in 12 months. But I don't know exactly, I know the principle. I've only seen published data for storage at refrigerated temperatures. So with your dry seed, plant it this spring, you will probably have good enough germination, if you are not concerned about 50% versus 70% versus 100%. Do not expect seed stored at room temperature to give much in the way of results after 12 months. Though it is always worth a try.

Results are species specific. For examples, at room temperature tomato seeds will still give near 50% germination at 5 years.

Japanese white pine and most white pine species (sub-genus Strobus) even in ideal storage, cool & dry, germination rates will drop to less than 50% in about 18 months. At room temperatures, rate drops quickly. So do not forget and store JWP seed at room temperature, and don't expect much from 5 year old seed.

Light technology has come a long way. Fortunately the USA is moving toward legalization of marijuana, rather than towards criminalization, so we can get under lights systems here. But I'm sure at some point, if one is willing to tinker with technology, you could develop a light garden bright enough to grow pines indoors, but this would be a level of light that is well beyond what the average new to the hobby grower would ever invest in. So I will continue to tell people pines ''can not be grown indoors''. It is a level of complexity similar to breeding corals in captivity - way too technical and a lot of guesswork. Second issue with long term growing of pines and conifers under lights - getting the diurnal temperature changes right to allow accumulation of carbohydrates sufficient to fuel tight, normal growth. Etiolation is a constant problem. I was never able to get tight compact growth on a mature JBP, or a JBP over a few years old. Light intensity alone may not have been the problem. So, I will be following your progress with curiosity.

 

[Vance Wood]

@Wires_Guy_wires

Seed storage - best shelf life in ''home storage'' (not cryogenic) is to store cool and dry. Temperature below +4 C, but above 0 C, (33 to 40 F). In this condition germination rate for most 2 needle pines, like JBP can be above 50% at 10 years. At room temperature, JBP seed stored dry at +18 or 65 F might drop to less than 50% germination in 12 months. But I don't know exactly, I know the principle. I've only seen published data for storage at refrigerated temperatures. So with your dry seed, plant it this spring, you will probably have good enough germination, if you are not concerned about 50% versus 70% versus 100%. Do not expect seed stored at room temperature to give much in the way of results after 12 months. Though it is always worth a try.

Results are species specific. For examples, at room temperature tomato seeds will still give near 50% germination at 5 years.

Japanese white pine and most white pine species (sub-genus Strobus) even in ideal storage, cool & dry, germination rates will drop to less than 50% in about 18 months. At room temperatures, rate drops quickly. So do not forget and store JWP seed at room temperature, and don't expect much from 5 year old seed.

Light technology has come a long way. Fortunately the USA is moving toward legalization of marijuana, rather than towards criminalization, so we can get under lights systems here. But I'm sure at some point, if one is willing to tinker with technology, you could develop a light garden bright enough to grow pines indoors, but this would be a level of light that is well beyond what the average new to the hobby grower would ever invest in. So I will continue to tell people pines ''can not be grown indoors''. It is a level of complexity similar to breeding corals in captivity - way too technical and a lot of guesswork. Second issue with long term growing of pines and conifers under lights - getting the diurnal temperature changes right to allow accumulation of carbohydrates sufficient to fuel tight, normal growth. Etiolation is a constant problem. I was never able to get tight compact growth on a mature JBP, or a JBP over a few years old. Light intensity alone may not have been the problem. So, I will be following your progress with curiosity.

It is not the lights that hamper the growing of Pines indoors, it is more and much of that "more" is still beyond our understanding. It has to do with wind and stress and numerous things that make an outdoor environment real. Unless things have changed it was at one point impossible to keep in an aquarium a Great White Shark, I understand it is based on some sort of relation with the magnetic field of the earth being adversely affected by the aquarium environment.

 

[Wires_Guy_wires]

Some unexpected developments.
In both ways, a few positive and a few negative.


Osteorsperma junipers are looking crisp. Good dark color and it seems they're branching out.


Halepensis pines are looking good too! It does get cold at night, and they show that on their tips.


Turbinata junipers are doing fine as well. I'm dealing with gnats, by the way! Can you spot them?


These are looking way worse! Wowzers! Both virginia and scopulorum.
So let's work some diagnostics, as always starting at the bottom: gnats in the soil. Sucks. Can't fix that easily.
Higher up, we see the first set of leaves deteriorating. That means these plants are using up the nutrients stored in there, normal plant behavior for seedlings.
But even higher up, we see a mix of yellow and purple. These colors can indicate cold stress, but also nitrogen (and/or Iron) issues.
A single dose of full spectrum nutrients did not change their appearance.
This means they're either too wet (gnats are an indicator too) or that there's some other issue I'm missing.
It could be that the lights are not strong enough, so I changed their location in a way that these plants are directly below the LED's. Over the course of 4 days, nothing changed. This rules out light as a source of the issue. LED bleaching usually doesn't cause purples to happen, so that's a definitive 'no' to the lights being an issue. Well, maybe there's too little light.. But I'm not changing the setup.

A wise thing to do, would to ease down on the watering to combat both the gnats as well as the water issue. However, my time is limited the coming weeks. I can't monitor them every day. So I'm going to do some countering out of the creative box.

These plants are having a tough time in a warm and humid environment with nearly tropical conditions, that drops to 10 degrees C at night for a few hours.
So instead of fixing the environment, I'm going to switch the settings. They can handle wetness, they can handle humidity, but only in winters. When they are shut down, and the environment is just the environment washing over them.
Today, februari 7nd, I heard the first blackbirds singing. Today, I noticed my JBP seedlings somehow never entered full dormancy and just kept going all winter.
It's time for the hurt junipers, to be outdoors.

If it doesn't work, then it doesn't. Again, I know the risks. I knew them when I started this project, and I kind of expected this to happen. Let's see if a 2-month dormancy can fix things. I was kind of lucky the past few months in obtaining new material and new sources for material, so losing these would only direct me towards something better (and less time consuming) in the end. That's the kind of positive vibes I like.

 

[Leo in N E Illinois]

Good post, showing how you came to deciding the last group of seedlings are suffering from too much water.

I would have gone with less water. But putting them outside, to winter, might work if they do not get a hard freeze.

Nice post.

 

[leatherback]

any updates on these junipers?

 

[Wires_Guy_wires]

They're all outdoors now.
I tied a bunch of scopulorum together to see if they'll fuse over time. I'll snap some pictures later today.

 

[Wires_Guy_wires]

The box of virginia looks the same as these.



Phoenicea var turbinata. The only two left, the rest were bird toys.

 

[hinmo24t]

The juniperus vaginas are stretching? Hmm ?

the office heard that chuckle