Southern hemisphere seed

Johannes-Ulrich Urban johannes-ulrich-urban@t-online.de
Sat, 01 Jun 2013 12:29:00 PDT
Hello Nicholas,

Welcome to the PBS, you will find a lot of inspiration and information
here!

Why hesitate with seeds from the Southern Hemisphere? Amaryllid seed
which has a short life span only should always be sown immediately on
receipt. It is no good idea to store it until a presumably good moment
in our northern hemisphere will come.

Seed of southern hemisphere origin, if sown immediately will germinate
when it wants to, most Amaryllid seed will germinate very quickly if the
seed is good. The seedling will not go (fully) dormant during the first
year in most species so the time of sowing does not matter anyway. Also
you have good conditions, maybe too warm for some of them but this will
show. After its first year, sometimes even later the seedling will
automatically adapt to the seasons where it is actually grown and will
then be either winter or summer growing. If you want to sow winter
growers at the wrong time of the year it is important to keep the seed
pot as cool as possible especially if the seed germinates. 
Iridaceae seed, Araceae seed and even some Amaryllid seed have a longer
life span than we often think and if there is enough seed it is always a
good idea to keep some seed for a later sowing if the first one fails.
Also it is important to know that a lof of species have seed dormancy
that need specific conditions to be broken, sometines it takes more than
one or two years from sowing to germination, do not throw such pots away
too early.

All the best and good luck


Uli



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