Seeds - cheaper than airfare

Seeds are another gateway drug. Heck, I'd put dahlias into that category too. Seeds are definitely the Doritos of the plant world. You can't plant just one. Seeds are relatively cheap, easy to store, last a while, and when they grow, they make you feel awesome. I wish antidepressants made me feel as good. (Maybe you have to add water and warm soil to make antidepressants work?)

Seeds are cool. For less than $5.00, you can get a pinch of seeds that let you attempt to grow a real plant. No guarantees. Chances are, you'll kill more than you grow. At least at first you will. In a perfect world, all those dead seedlings will teach you something. Either you should have stuck with accounting, or maybe you need to learn some basics about plant biology. I love folks who think gardening is easy. 

Seeds come in so many flavors, shapes and sizes! I had a conversation with a friend the other day and we were talking about 'kid seeds'. Things that young kids (and newbies to gardening) can plant easily, and usually produce a decent plant, fairly quickly. If you want to hook 'em, there needs to be something to show for the effort. Save the tough seeds for retirement when the high point of your day is yelling at the television (or NPR). I am only half joking here. 

Seeds have stories. Because they travel, you can order seeds through the mail/internet/whatever. They show up at your door in a cute paper or foil package. In most cases, those seeds came from a big seed supplier who grows them for LOTS of companies selling seed. What excites me is when I get seeds from someone who actually grew the plant. Sometimes they picked up the seeds originally from a family member, or they found them on a trip... there's history. There's a story! 

Today I watched a second year seedling iris siberica send up its very first bloom stalk. It grew right in front of my eyes. No joke. The seedling survived winter, shrugging off some pretty wicked winter chill this year. Normally, Siberian irises start blooming the last week of May and into early June. This seedling has a story. I purchased the seeds from SIGNA (Species Iris Group of North America) a few years ago. I planted them over the winter in a gallon jug in very gritty potting mix in December of 2023. They came up early last year and were transplanted first into module trays in June and then moved again into a seedling bed in July.  

These seeds were labelled : "22SB065:: sibirica SIGNA 15SB070 coll. Hungary selfed HP". At first glance that code is off-putting. As someone whose organizational notes look like a crossword puzzle having a seizure... seeing something like this is almost formulaic. The seeds were shared with SIGNA in 2022. SB means that it falls under the category of Siberian irises. Calling it sibirica indicates that it is likely a species collected in the wild. Listing SIGNA in the name also indicates that it was shared by someone else previously (in this case 2015)... and that it collected in Hungary... and that it was crossed with itself, by hand. No bees were harmed in the making of this iris. The original seed was sent to SIGNA by Kalaszine D. Ilona, Budapest, HUNGARY back in 2015. That's so cool! It was worth growing for Kenneth Walker... and it grew well enough that he saved seed from it and shared those seeds. 

 

What knocked my socks off though is how early it is trying to bloom. Keep in mind that most irises wont bloom until year three. This is quite a surprise! We are barely mid-May and are only just seeing the start of SDB season around here. We grow primarily beardless irises... except for one SDB that a friend gave us last spring ('Cherry Garden'... and WOW! It is a wonderful surprise this time of year!) The sibirica is acting more like bamboo. I swear I could almost hear it growing this afternoon. 

So, why did I even want seeds from this iris sibirica? 

Species irises are a way to go back to the basics. I want to know how it behaves. What can I learn from the species that I can't see as easily in the hybrid Siberian irises? Last year we learned that the species iris sanguinea have the most interesting behavior: their central leaf comes up and hangs an abrupt right turn. Every single sanguinea that we planted showed this behavior. No clue why. We also saw it prominently in hybrid Siberians where at least one of the parents was close to being species sanguinea. The more generations that had passed from that cross, the more normal and grass-like the leaves became. Mind you, this was observed in seedlings. No clue whether or not this will be visible in mature plants after 3-4 years. 

Back to seeds.

Seeds are easy to make. You can let the bees do the hard/fun part. Then you end up with bee pods. At that point you will know the mother plant/pod parent, but you have no idea who the pollen donor was. Father's Day gets confusing real quick when bees are involved. Alternately, you can get right in there, mix pollen among the pistils, tweezers in hand... and if everything aligns, you'll see the signs of a successful cross in a few weeks as the pod sets seed. Then you get to watch/wait for the pod to dry enough to harvest and store. Along the way, you can keep records and notes and detailed drawings on the back of a 4x5 card. 

Seeds last a while. People are often told that seeds lose viability very quickly. Probably true with some commercial seed crops, but if it were true across the board, we would have died out as a species before figuring out how to make beer and bread. Seeds last a long while. Keep them dry, dark and labelled. Iris seeds are funny things. They have a germination inhibition coating on the seed. Washing that coating off, lets the seed (eventually) absorb enough water to swell and sprout. But first, it needs some chilling time. Ideally, it wants to relax outdoors over winter. Some hybridizers toss their seeds in the fridge for a few months to control "winter" conditions. We tried it for the first time this year... and WOW! What a huge difference is germination. Suffice to say I will be following this new protocol for a while. 

Seeds are educational. There's so much learning that happens as you get to know whatever seed you're growing. Does it like bottom heat, or cold conditions? Does it need light to germinate? Does it require the soil to stay moist? All of that gets passed along to the next person who grows that seed. 

Seeds are most importantly a sign of optimism. In every tiny little seed there is a kernel of hope. It might seem silly to point this out, but there isn't really a way to be a pessimist when it comes to planting seeds. And if you think a watched pot doesn't boil, you should see a gardener waiting to see their seeds germinate. I think I strained my eyeballs last weekend counting the first tiny seedlings from my newest batch of iris seeds. We're talking tiny green shoots, not much thicker than a hair. Not even as thick as a blade of grass. But oh yeah, when they started coming up... I was checking on them multiple times throughout the day!

 What have you grown from seed? What surprised you? What do you look forward to seeing come up from seed in the spring or summer? Are there seeds you've never tried?