plantbreeding@home #7 Spring is here, spring is heeeeere!

Dear Plantbreeders,

just as in the famous Sinatra song, spring is finally here and we can start to grow. I have distributed the first batch of seeds to all participants living in the EU. There are some seeds destined to go overseas, but there are some difficult shipping regulations in place (for Switzerland as well). I hope I can solve this quickly, sorry to those Plantbreeders I have to keep waiting!

Everything is ready for sowing!

But let's get down to business: Planting the seeds! I promised you a comprehensive guide suitable even for absolute beginners. I used the beautiful weather we had this weekend to take a few photos while planting the seeds. If you want to speed up the germination process, you can even start a few days before the actual planting by leaving the seeds in a glass of water for one or two days. This lets the seed soak up the water it needs very efficiently and should speed up the germination a few days. It is no requirement though, you can place the dry seed directly into soil, it just gives you a head start.  If you let your seeds soak in water, just be sure to plant them after one or two days, do not let them dry out again! 

Seeds of the small variety are barely visible- those are some tiny seeds! :)

The rest of the planting process is really simple: Put your seed into a pot with soil, place the seed in it, give it some water - done! As a rule of thumb, I put the seeds in a depth of around 2-4 times the seed size under the soil-surface. You can just place the seed on top and push it down with a little stick or a toothpick, this should work fine. You do not need to buy pots, a very suitable alternative is an old yoghurt cup. It can be easily transformed into a pot by poking or cutting a hole in the bottom of the cup to allow excess water to escape to avoid waterlogging. There is also no need to buy a little greenhouse as in the picture, there is a simple substitution for this! I use the lid of the little greenhouse only as long as it takes for the first seedling to appear. The lid (when placed in sunlight) lets the temperature rise (that is why atmosphere warming through certain gases is also called the greenhouse effect ). A temperature around 25°C-30°C is optimal for germinating most peppers and will speed up the germination progress. After I see the first seedling I remove the lid, as I do not want to get the seedlings accustomed to a high relative humidity, which is also present in the greenhouse. You can easily build an equivalent of this tiny greenhouse just by putting some clear plastic film (e.g. saran wrap) on top of your pots. This has the same effect! Just be sure to leave some space between the soil and the film. To sum up the planting:

Easy:

• Put your seed on the soil
• Push it to a depth of 2-4 times the seed size
• Water it - keep it moist until a seedling appears, but avoid waterlogging

Fast:

• Put your seed into a glass of water for 24 - 48h
• Take it out of the water, put it on soil
• Push it to a depth of 2-4 times the seed size
• Water it - keep it moist until a seedling appears, but avoid waterlogging
• place some sort of greenhouse equivalent on top, remove it when the seedling appears

Furthermore, it is not necessary to have 1 pot per seed at the beginning. You can put all the seeds in one pot and see how many of them germinate and later you can put them into seperate pots when they are already seedlings; this saves you a lot of space, especially if you only need one or two plants. Nevertheless, I would recommend to plant all the seeds I sent you. Surplus plants are a perfect gift for friends and family, maybe even new Plantbreeders? 

Most importantly: For the project, there is no requirement of a certain way to raise your plants. Whether you want to do it in pots, plant them into your garden (note that peppers do not tolerate frost!), plant them in a hydroponic system - this does not matter. As long as they grow, you are set!

What I would like to introduce at this point are optional and required measuring points. There will be very few required measurements, as this project should be easy and fun without much hassle. Therefore there are in addition optional measurements, for the more science-enthusiastic! :) As a little motivation I'd like to say this much: There will be a prize in Gridcoin (or alternatively SBD) for people who collected all optional data points!

Optional measuring points at this stage:

• time until germination (please note if you soaked the seedling in water or not)
• Germination efficiency (how many of your seeds germinated)

That is it for now, here are some additional pictures from yesterdays gardenening session: 

Last years "plantation" - Still with some peppers, as those plants yielded about 5kg of peppers, I had to give the last kgs away as we could not eat them by ourselves!

A pepper after the winter - only the waxy outer layer and some seeds are left

Our lawn is full of  beatiful Primroses - spring's greeting!

The remains of a Zucchini. Only a few fibers what was once a solid stem. This immediately reminded me of "Luffa" or"Loofah", a plant which belongs to the same plant family as the Zucchini (Cucurbitacea)

Enjoy planting/sowing your seeds!

Dysprosium

Sources: 

Pictures are all taken by me. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primulaceae

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luffa