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Re: growing Echinodorus from seeds.

On Monday 11 March 2002 01:48, Edward Venn wrote:

> Which brings us to the enjoyable part of this missive. I received a small
> plastic baggy filled with E cordiofolia seeds. At what temperature should
> these seeds be germinated? In what type of soil and at what depth of water
> should they been sown? I7d really like to know as daytime temperatures in
> Tokyo area are reaching 20<C. I'd like to get an early start on growing
> these plants outdoors.

I was holding off on this question because I've described my method before 
and I hoped that someone else could offer some alternatives.  Aside from my 
experience I think the archives hold one other account of growing echinodorus 
from seed.  That was a few years ago by (as i recall) someone in Singapore.

What I did was prepare a bed of mixed aquarium gravel, sand and peat with a 
teaspoon or so of DTPA chelated iron.  I spread that in a lidded, clear 
plastic carton that originally had cherries in it and kept just enough water 
on it to bring the water to the top of the soil.

I sowed the seeds on that and set it in a sunlit window sill.  I kept the lid 
loosely closed to reduce evaporation.  I didn't seal the lid otherwise the 
sunlight would have cooked anything in the carton.

The seeds started germinating in about two weeks and continued for about a 
month afterwords.  Ultimately about 10% (guestimated) of the seeds actually 
produced plants.  The low germination rate was consistent with the experience 
reported by the first writer.

Once the seeds germinated I started raising the water level in the carton to 
keep the plants covered.  I transplanted the plants to an aquarium once all 
the plants had leaves at least 1-inch long.  That took a couple months to 
happen.

There are a few things I would do differently a second time around.  First, I 
would probably use a clean, wet, fertilized sand bed to germinate the seeds, 
then transplant the seedlings to a CO2-enriched aquarium as soon as the 
plants had more than 4 leaves.  The seedlings look like tiny E. tenellus.  
The  first leaves are thread-like and delicate and I don't think the seedling 
could be moved immediately.  On the other hand I don't think I got very good 
growth by leaving the seedling where they germinated for as long as I did.

Also, I would try to keep the germinating beds from getting very cool at 
night.  Mine got quite warm during the day, but cooled into the 60's F at 
night.  I might have had better early growth if the nighttime temperatures 
were warmer.

No matter what, I don't think there's any way to keep the process from taking 
a long time.


Roger Miller