Winter sucks up here. Growing some seeds over the winter helps pass the time, and gives me an excuse to have some lights on!

Rhapolidphyllum hystrix (already germinated)
Seabuckthorn
Acer Pennsylvanium
Hybrid Lupin (said to get 6 feet im prime conditions)
Magnolia Kobus var. Borealis (speculation on the name)
Arisaema consanguineum
Dypsis Albofarinosa
Canna jaegeriana
Philodendron ichthyoderma
Cerasus tomentosa (= Prunus t.) (Nanking cherry)
Theobroma cacao (Yellow) (Cocoa, as in chocolate!)
Rice paper plant (round 2)

canadianplant

Did the Tetrapanax not set viable seeds the last time or did they damp off?

johnw

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johnw coastal Nova Scotia

Either not viable/dryed out or i messed up planting them and they rotted. I trust this supplier more

Canadianplant, have you ever considered growing the ever-bearing strawberries from seed?

They might be one of the easiest plants to start from seed, and bring outside in the spring due to their hardiness, and ability to adapt to changes to light. I have 1 tiny plant from last spring which turned into over 40 plants over the course of the year, but unfortunately, it only produced fruits once making the species useless for the rest of the season. Ever-bearing types are pretty much a must so I will likely replace the 1 time producing type I already have.

There are also ever-bearing raspberry species which can be useful all season long, but will require deer protection.

One more seed to consider is the arrow root or Maranta arundinacea which is a plant that produces multiple starchy edible tubers in a similar way to dahlias.

Dwarf papaya trees or dwarf lime trees also sound interesting to grow.

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http://stevespeonygarden.blogspot.com/

Funny you mention strawberries from seed, because that seems to be the only way I can get them to grow. I have 3 plants of Mackenzie seeds "patio temptation". Usually produce every few weeks in summer. The berries arent huge, but they are super sweet. No runners unfortunately, I want a good ground cover of strawberries.

I did get a pack of F. vesca. Theyre native round here. I also grabbed a few pots of "everbearing strawberries" (thats what they were labeled as) from walmart, which did pretty good. Im hoping to get as many types as I can.

I also have 2 patches of "heratage" raspberries. They produce a small crop in spring, and a larger one in fall. Second year canes were 5.5 feet tall. The berries were semi sweet, great "typical" raspberry flavor. The good thing is, im pretty much downtown, so deer arent a problem, just birds. Although... deer are in the city, less then a mile from where I live.

Since were on the topic steve, I recommend you try "chester thornless blackberries". Last year was its second year, and I have 5, 10 foot productive canes. Excellent blackberry flavor, doesnt even get full sun all day, and is even planted next to my foundation and will produces quite well.

I had a pot of arrowroot. The local conservatory let me take a plant. Too bad i let it freeze, and im 90% sure its dead

I have 2 key lime seedlings and one lemon seedling. Slow as hell for me. Ive thought about papaya, but I dont eat the fruit, and ive read how anal the plants are in pots.

Also forgot to mention the bags in the fridge:

2 kinds of peach (dark and light seed)
2 kinds of plum (apparently yellow/green plums have a good chance or producing close to the seed parent)
a bag of hazelnuts

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Moso-Bamboo-Phy ... 337e8e16e9

Here's the 1000 seed moso for 13.99 which is much higher than it was 2-3 years ago when it was usually in the $8-9 range, but it still appears to be the best deal for bamboo seeds on eBay. I think moso is one of the easiest bamboos to grow from seeds once you figure out its micro-nutrient, and light requirements.

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http://stevespeonygarden.blogspot.com/

Personally I'm very distrustful of ordering seeds off of Ebay. It might be better for a variety of reasons, just to order direct from China and send them cash for payment.

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Southern Indiana. Theoretically the same climate as 'needmore' & 'Eastlandia'.
My Bamboo List.

"Take Dog apart. Disinfect. Reassemble."

If you have Goliath already breaking the 1 inch mark, then you don't need a whole bunch of moso seedlings which probably take 7+ years to get to what you already have. With the mild winter which seems to be likely now for the next 2 months, your moso might get up closer to 2 inches for next year. Around here, it has rarely dropped below 20F this winter, and my unprotected moso seedling is not seeing any damage so my guess is that yours is also keeping its green.

The only good thing I see in growing from seed is that you tend to get variation, but it is probably not that common to get a unique clone that holds more value than the current variations. For example, I managed to get 2 moso goldstripe clones that had minor culm striping, or variagated leaves. They didn't compare to moso bicolor so I just sold them away. I was hoping to get something special like yellow culms and random green stripes like vivax aureocaulus, or anything that made them look really special.

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http://stevespeonygarden.blogspot.com/

What seems to happen, in my knowledge, is that when you order any bamboo seeds of ebay, you either get grass, Borinda fungosa, or Moso. THis is probably due to horrible taxonomy, coupled with availability.

Moso wouldnt stand a chance here...... not with what im willing to do to protect it.

I agree with foxd. The thing is, you wont know who is a good reliable seller until you order from them a few times, and wait to see how well/if the seeds even germinate. Even from china can be a bit iffy.

As far as ive seen, if you order moso, and check the reviews, you should be ok.

Most plant species have varied offspring, that is one of the reasons why our fruit crops are almost completely, if not totally, grafted trees. Some species have a higher rate of variation than others. You need a pretty massive amount of seeds to really see any variation in seedlings as far as ive read.

When F. murieliae and F. nitida flowered (1999 & 201 resp.) here we grew lots of seedlings. As they were both solitary clones the seeds would have been selfed and therefore one would not expect to see much variation as you say.

However, with murieliae there was a terrific range in heights, dwarves and giants and everything in between. The nitidas all seem to be much the same in vigour and height but there is a lot of variation in culm colours. Maybe it's their juvenility but they seem less evergreen than mama nitida.

There are some real shysters out there selling on ebay. In the snowdrop and cyprepedium world they abound. One guy near Stuttgart was selling rare snowdrops and cyps for fantastic prices and shipping common old stuff - read garbage. The worst part is that there is virtually no way to have ebay heed warnings about such activity andhave him bounced; this particular fellow goes under all sorts of names making him hard to track for a few weeks. A buddy got his real name and he lives in a low rental housing unit with not a greenhouse or bit of arable land in sight on google maps.

I'd say the ABS probably has a handle on which species are currently flowering and where so might be best to check with them to verify the seed is at least possibly available, taxonomic mixups aside.

Caveat emptor.

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johnw coastal Nova Scotia

One thing about eBay is that its seller fees have increased exponentially over the years to the point where these sellers are making little or no profit. For example with the 13.99, it probably takes them around $5 to hire people to harvest the seeds, another $4 to ship/send the seeds, and the total fees on eBay have made a change where they also charge fees to the shipping cost on top of the cost of the item. The listing fees given that the item sells are usually around $1, and final value fees are at least 9% now, so on top of paypal fees, I'm guessing they are paying another $1.50 to eBay. This leaves them with around a 2.49 profit, so I can see why it was absolutely necessary for products all throughout eBay to raise their prices. Many times, most of the money you pay to someone on eBay goes to eBay, and not the seller.

I used to sell on eBay so I know about the outrageous fees which made it no longer feasible to get bamboos out to hundreds of people at good prices without selling at a loss especially since it is a larger item that can't be shipped via media mail. My main point in this is if you ever happen to buy bamboos or anything else from someone on eBay, you may be able to get a 20% discount or better if you contact them by email and do business outside of eBay to create a win-win situation . I know there are many small sellers out there that would be more than willing to negotiate, and that's how I got many of my itoh peonies at well below the listing prices. It is however important to make sure they are a very legitimate, and looking at their feedback history should be enough to ensure they are legitimate vendors.


As far as clear mutations in bamboo seeds, I think it will happen in about 1 out of every 300 seedlings where there is something consistently different about it. As far as random striping that tends to disappear with age, that may appear as frequently as 1 in every 25. I'm guessing a desirable mutation might be something like 1 in every 4,000,000 or so which only becomes feasible to try if you have a bamboo grove that flowers and produces viable seeds.

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http://stevespeonygarden.blogspot.com/

There is going to be a range of variations in the characteristics of the seedlings unless they are clones of the parent. This is why I think we should try things like planting a few thousand seeds of Moso or Chusquea culeo in borderline areas to select for those that have the right genetics to survive in those areas.

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Southern Indiana. Theoretically the same climate as 'needmore' & 'Eastlandia'.
My Bamboo List.

"Take Dog apart. Disinfect. Reassemble."

foxd - You're so right. As bamboos flower at such lengthy intervals my guess is that they had better have a lot of genetic variation in that big one-time-only seed lot. Only with variation would they be able to maintain their dominance in an area and even move into other areas - both warmer and colder - and not be run out be annually-flowering competitors. Oh to have the acreage to line out 100,000 culeous!

-8c at 11:15.........

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johnw coastal Nova Scotia

I was wondering, do the tropical clumpers tend to flower more often than the running specie excluding moso? It seems like there is always a large availability of clumping types either in dendrocalamus, or sometimes even the cold hardy clumpers.

Here's one of the largest seed catalogs. I've never bought from them so I can't say that they are legitimate, but it appears that they test germinate their seeds, and understand about the short viability of seeds. For all the people in zones 9 through 12, it might sometimes be better to start from seed since tropical clumpers tend to get up in size very quickly, even from seed.
http://thai-bamboo-seeds.blogspot.com/2 ... ffers.html

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http://www.flickr.com/photos/31489820@N02/

http://stevespeonygarden.blogspot.com/

My understanding is that if you get actual bamboo seed from Ebay it is usually P. edulis (Moso), P. heteroclada or D. strictus. If the seller says it is something else it usually isn't.

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Southern Indiana. Theoretically the same climate as 'needmore' & 'Eastlandia'.
My Bamboo List.

"Take Dog apart. Disinfect. Reassemble."