Germinating Seeds

[empireo22]

Hi all! Im rather new to this and I was wondering what is the best way to germinate palm seeds successfully. I have Brahea Armata, Dypsis Cabadae, and sabal palm seeds. Just wondering about temps, soils dampiness and such to germinate them properly. I have tried before without any luck. Maybe yall can help? :)

[PalmatierMeg]

I use the baggie and orchid moss method.

1. Soak seeds in water for 24-72 hours, changing water every day.

2. When ready to bag, soak a few handfuls of orchid moss in water for 1 hour.

3. Drain and rinse seeds, then drain again. I like to spritz seeds with cleaner w/bleach to kill off microbes. If you do, rinse well again afterward.

4. Obtain freezer baggies, mark with species names and date.

5. Squeeze the water from orchid moss until it is damp but not soggy.

6. Place some moss in bottom of baggie, add seeds, top with more moss.

7. Place bagged seeds in a warm place (over 80F). I kept my baggies in a small basket on top of the fridge during winter. Now temps are up outside I keep them on a shelf in the garage where highs get 90-100 during summer.

8. check baggies every week or so for signs of germination.

I get little to no germination during winter but seeds germinate readily from now until late fall. Be aware that sometimes palm seeds can take 3+ years to germinate. Anything less than 1 month is stellar. The Sabals are easy germinators.

[Jason in Orlando]

I too use the baggie method sometimes, but my preferred method is the "container" method. I use Sterilite containers with lids; generally about 2-3 gallons in volume. I use a mix of peat moss and perlite, 50-50 ratio. I prep the seeds the same way Meg does and then sow them on the top of about 3-4 inches of the medium. Like the baggie method, the medium should be slightly damp, but not wet. The whole container and seeds are treated with some Daconil, then the lid is put on. I like this method because the seedlings can develop a bit of a root system before being transferred to cones or pots. They also get to develop straight stems.

Jason

[empireo22]

I use the baggie and orchid moss method.

1. Soak seeds in water for 24-72 hours, changing water every day.

2. When ready to bag, soak a few handfuls of orchid moss in water for 1 hour.

3. Drain and rinse seeds, then drain again. I like to spritz seeds with cleaner w/bleach to kill off microbes. If you do, rinse well again afterward.

4. Obtain freezer baggies, mark with species names and date.

5. Squeeze the water from orchid moss until it is damp but not soggy.

6. Place some moss in bottom of baggie, add seeds, top with more moss.

7. Place bagged seeds in a warm place (over 80F). I kept my baggies in a small basket on top of the fridge during winter. Now temps are up outside I keep them on a shelf in the garage where highs get 90-100 during summer.

8. check baggies every week or so for signs of germination.

I get little to no germination during winter but seeds germinate readily from now until late fall. Be aware that sometimes palm seeds can take 3+ years to germinate. Anything less than 1 month is stellar. The Sabals are easy germinators.

But closing them in the back cant that crearte mold? and when they sprout when you transplant them isnt it easy to damage the seedlings and or get damping off? Id like to try a few different methods. Thanksss

[TheMadScientist]

I agree with each contributor. This is a little project I started 12-1-2011 for Canary Island Date Palm. The following picture is my donor palm. I got permission to harvest some of these seeds prior to all dropping onto the lawn and being thrown away by landscapers. I cut enough strands of seeds to fill (3) 5 gallon buckets, got home and stripped them (with gloves) off the strands which filled (1) 5 gallon bucket with just seeds. All of this was done on 12-1-2011.

Spent 6 hours with a pearing knife and cleaned 900 seeds. Based on those numbers, I have approximately 5,000 seeds in the bucket and approx. 250,000 seeds still left on the donor palm. These seeds look exactly like a Pygmy Date seed but 5-7 times larger.

Here is my incubator: old ice chest lined with aluminum foil, wire rack inside to keep the 40 watt bulb drop light raised, thermometer, and a 1" spacer to keep the lid open just enough to maintain 90-95 degrees F 24/7.

[TheMadScientist]

If you consider the attach point as the north pole, remove the polar cap without cutting the seed, then start the tip of the knife at the north pole down to the south pole and around back up to the opposite side of the north pole. This allows the skin to peel off with ease. Be careful to lay large quantities out on a cookie sheet to dry for about a day. If they are fresh and put into a plastic butter tub, they will turn to mold very quick on the bottom. I put my first batch immediately into the water soak for only 2 days as they turned from the light tan color to a dark brown in that time. I would think that if they were left dry for a period of time, perhaps 4 days would be necessary. Next, I quickly added the 10% bleach and made my first mistake....only a few minutes of soaking and not the 10-15 minutes in the bleach solution. Within 1 week, I HAD MOLD. By that time, 1 lone seed had sprouted. But now I had to RESTERILIZE THIS BATCH IN THE BLEACH SOLUTION WHICH KILLED THE LONE SPROUTER. I am starting a new batch each week and trying to keep only about 100-150 seeds in a baggy. Most of these have sprouted within 3 weeks with a 2 inch tap root. It is now 12-27-2011.

It's 1-17-2012, this appears to be the right time to start taking the most advanced seeds and move them into a small community pot. You can see that the tap root on some is 3-4 inches with vertical green growth appearing. These larger tap roots are really brittle and can snap off. I have premixed my dry soil blend; 1/3 rich top soil, 1/3 potting soil, 1/3 sand. I am going to put these into 3 liter soda bottles that have had the tops removed and drain holes put into the bottom supports. I have taken a sauce pan full of water and raised it's temperature to around 150-170 degrees...not boiling. I've put 2 batches of soil blend into a bucket and poured enough water to create a hand mixed 'slurry'...not clumpy and not standing water. The temperature is now about the incubator temperature of around 90 degrees. I am suspending 4 sprouts inside the 3 liter soda bottle and having help dropping the slurry down into the bottle. It fills all voids without injuring the tap roots up to where the green starts. All bottles are being put into the heater room, hot water heater top and bookshelves near air vents. I have all bottles sitting on lids to catch any draining water.

It's 2-2-2012 around 10:30 am....I've taken an assortment of community pots to show the growth progress. It is obvious as to which ones are the oldest. I am about to take the community pot seen at 3 o'clock (oldest and tallest palms) and transfer them into their individual 3 liter containers as the roots are about to get so entangled that damage could easily occur. MY BAD AGAIN, started to move another batch of sprouted babies into a community pot. A HONEY DO came up, I set the cloth wrapped sprouters back into the incubator (NOT THE SEALED BAGGY) and within 3 hours, cloth was dry from the heat and all 50 sprouters were dry, dead and 4 weeks of work gone. Don't get distracted or keep them always in the sealed baggy.

Transplanted 2 community pots into individual 3 liter containers. The roots at this stage are around 6 inches, touching the bottom of the container with most diving straight down. No entanglement had occurred at this point. My soil blend must have a little more clay or less sand than it should as I took a screw driver to pry each root with soil still attached. I think this was a benefit as the block could be put into the middle of the new container, slurry of soil blend dropped around the perimeter without disturbing the root structure.

Here is the start of my Canary Island Date FOREST.

[mike in kurtistown]

After reading all this advanced-science advice, I thought I might mention how us ordinary folk do it. Just fill a pot with potting soil, wet it down to remove air pockets, put the seeds on the surface, cover (just barely) with more potting soil, wet it down, and put a ID tag in the pot, keep the surface moist, and wait. When sprouts appear, wait till they get a second leaf, then dump the pot, separate the seedlings, and pot separately.

Sterilizing with chemicals agents is usually pointless, because the seeds/seedlings are going to have contact with all kinds of microbes as the pots sit, as they would also in the natural environment.

The specialized techniques are useful when the seeds are very rare or irreplaceable, or when the seeds are unusually difficult to sprout or especially vulnerable to microbes or fungi. But the species you mentioned are pretty tough.

[empireo22]

After reading all this advanced-science advice, I thought I might mention how us ordinary folk do it. Just fill a pot with potting soil, wet it down to remove air pockets, put the seeds on the surface, cover (just barely) with more potting soil, wet it down, and put a ID tag in the pot, keep the surface moist, and wait. When sprouts appear, wait till they get a second leaf, then dump the pot, separate the seedlings, and pot separately.

Sterilizing with chemicals agents is usually pointless, because the seeds/seedlings are going to have contact with all kinds of microbes as the pots sit, as they would also in the natural environment.

The specialized techniques are useful when the seeds are very rare or irreplaceable, or when the seeds are unusually difficult to sprout or especially vulnerable to microbes or fungi. But the species you mentioned are pretty tough.

I have tried the "ordinary folks" method many times but with little success. Most of the time they never germinate or when they do germinate they die from damping off soon after. Seems like my biggest problem is damping off. I get it all the time, even with my vegetable garden when i transplante seedlings to the ground or bigger pots. Maybe i overwater and im just to rough with the plants???????? And lack patience for the germination of the palm seeds???? Anyway im soaking the seeds i mentioned now in water for 3 days then I will sow them Im going to try in several different methods. Normal way. Plastic bag and moss. maybe also paper towl. and i thought about sowing some sabals dirrectly in the ground maybe??? anyway hopefully something will sprout. if not i probally will give up on palms and stick with tomatoes.............

[PalmatierMeg]

I tried the container method back in 2008/09. But I had no idea when or if my palm seeds germinated until the first green spike appeared. And I didn't dare disturb anything by looking for fear of damaging sprouts. Nor could I risk removing some seedlings for potting and losing ungerminated seeds. Also, as the containers did not drain sometimes the seeds stayed too wet and rotted. But when I tried baggies and damp orchid moss, I could examine seeds for germination, pot germinated seeds then return others to their bag. I found that the only seeds that rotted or developed fungus were old/damaged/infertile seeds in the first place.

But for genera like Sabal and Coccothrinax, I will pot up the seeds in my potting mix, then leave them outdoors in FL heat, sun & rainfall. Those species sprout when they are ready. I don't have to move them to larger pots till their roots escape the drain holes.

If you do go with containers, I suggest you use containers at least 6" tall to allow room for seeds to send down deep radicles. Sabals and other palmate species need lots of root space.

[Tropicgardener]

After reading all this advanced-science advice, I thought I might mention how us ordinary folk do it. Just fill a pot with potting soil, wet it down to remove air pockets, put the seeds on the surface, cover (just barely) with more potting soil, wet it down, and put a ID tag in the pot, keep the surface moist, and wait. When sprouts appear, wait till they get a second leaf, then dump the pot, separate the seedlings, and pot separately.

Sterilizing with chemicals agents is usually pointless, because the seeds/seedlings are going to have contact with all kinds of microbes as the pots sit, as they would also in the natural environment.

The specialized techniques are useful when the seeds are very rare or irreplaceable, or when the seeds are unusually difficult to sprout or especially vulnerable to microbes or fungi. But the species you mentioned are pretty tough.

This is the exact method I always use and I generally get a very good strike rate with most seeds.

[mike in kurtistown]

I might add that I use the bag method with cycad seeds, since there are usually only a few (and very expensive) seeds and I really want to know what they are doing so that I can get them into a pot as soon as possible after germination. And I know some people who put most of their palm seeds up in a pot, but put a smaller number in a bag so that they know when they start to germinate (usually also about the same time in the pot).

But the ultimate destination for the young plant is the pot. There are just different routes to getting there.

[DavidLee]

How long does it take for Roystonea borinquena seeds to germinate?

[Steve Mac]

We have had most success with the plastic bag and potting mix method,and we like it mainly because it is so quick easy and cheap. Also if we forget them for a few weeks or months they never dry out. and when you think that all of the viable ones have all finally sprouted, put them aside and then check them every 6 months or so, and you will probably still get some more. Before we did this we used to recycle the potting mix back into pots and we found that we had unidentified palms coming up everywhere for years. We have also had success putting Kentia's and Burrawang cycads straight into the ground and forgetting them, and they come up a year or 2 later. You could probably do that with canaries. If you drop them on the ground here they grow.

And also in my opinion your slurry should be used for laying bricks and replaced with potting mix. Just 100% potting mix.

Edited March 31, 2012 by gtsteve

[PalmatierMeg]

How long does it take for Roystonea borinquena seeds to germinate?

If they are very fresh, I would say 3 months or less, which has been my experience with R. regia seeds.

[Trópico]

Or if you delid you can measure the germination times in hours rather than months!

[DavidLee]

How long does it take for Roystonea borinquena seeds to germinate?

If they are very fresh, I would say 3 months or less, which has been my experience with R. regia seeds.

They were fresh from the fruit. I planted them around the end of December. I am not actually there to witness them sprout but my mom is taking care of them. I ask her everytime I call. Planted them in pots which are kept outside. So there might be a delay due to winter. Thanks for the help.

[PalmatierMeg]

Winter will hold them up for sure. Getting hot now so they should be up soon.

[Matthew92]

I'm currently trying to germinate some in containers with plastic wrap over the top. It makes a steamy greenhouse effect inside. I germinated my first palm seeds (Sabal palmetto) this way several years ago. They sprouted in about 2 months. Also during that time, for kicks, I sowed some of the same directly in the ground. My soil is sand and very fast draining. This was during peak summer conditions and we had plenty rain: It took a couple or few months longer than the ones in containers, but they came up! although didn't do very well after. Just kind of yellowed and never put more than 2 small leafs out.