As winter approaches, my summer project on British botany (see below) becomes less do-able, although I’ll keep looking for new species. As an excellent way to spend my time a few nights ago I learnt how to distinguish hairy bittercress (Cardamine hirsuta) and wavy bittercress (Cardamine flexuosa). Mostly I now know hairy bittercress isn’t as hairy as you think it is….and wavy bittercress is hairy.
Anyway, winter posts will hopefully go back to talking about orchids and carnivorous plants, but I still want to grow something else in the meantime….so
Project 1.
Grow cyclamen.
I got a bunch of cyclamen coum seed. This comes dangerously close to gardening and there are people out there much better than me at writing about that. The short version however is first soak the seeds for 24 hours on a wet kitchen towel with a tiny drop of fairy liquid to rehydrate the seeds and wash off the germination inhibitors.
Then plant in seed compost and cover with a layer of fine vermiculite. Keep them dark (mine are wrapped in black bin bags) and at a temperature of around 16degress C.
More will follow once things germinate.
Project 2
So from germinating the ‘normal’ way to using sterile media to (hopefully) germinate orchid seeds. The larger pod is a hybrid of two supermarket phalaenopsis orchids. I’m hoping that if it gets to that point (in about 5 years) it should have large purple flowers. The smaller pod I’m quite excited about, its my own masdevallia hybrid and currently unregistered in the RHS list so if I get it to grow I can register it.
I have microbox containers and suitable media ready, so once the pods are ripe I’ll need to work on getting everything sterile and then crossing my fingers.