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Germination media summary
The following table is a summary of the effectiveness of the various media on the germination of seeds for me that I’ve tried so far. Sometimes the shortage of seeds has meant that I couldn’t do wider experiments, thus some media haven't been tried with all seeds. The peat/compost column means the medium I use - Levington Multipurpose.
Green means O.K. I’ve got consistently good - though maybe not brilliant - germination. Yellow means very good germination. The first figure in the square means the minimum time in days that I’ve achieved for germination, from putting the seed in the medium to actual germination. As I tend to inspect seeds every two days, this could be out by 1 day, but no more. Don’t be put off by it - as I would have been when I started - there are often ‘early bird’ germinators in very fresh seed in the right medium, and they are not at all a good indicator of what might be expected. The second figure, if there is one, is the average sort of time expected for germination. Its not easy to calculate the second one as there may be a considerable range of time - up to a year or more between germinations, and averages are then of course, meaningless. But overall I’ve tried to make this the sort of time you would expect to have to wait. Vermiculite didn’t work well for me in the early days of trials, but I know that other palm growers are successful with it, and I’ve started to try it again. I haven't got all the seeds I’ve tried on the table. This is because I have sometimes only had a few seeds to try, . You might like to look at the ‘methods with some seeds’ in the germination section.
Germination mixtures.
I used all sorts of mixtures as recommended in various books. At first I eliminated all but Levington multipurpose peat based compost for convenience. Now I’m using damp sphagnum moss. This is the stuff that you buy at garden centres for hanging baskets. Its very water absorbent. I’ve been more successful with this than anything, though I’ve found its not the best for every seed. I’ve tried using perlite for some seeds too, it works well for some seeds, and I’ve tried vermiculite with some success.
