POLLINATING AND GERMINATING

May is really the month to get outside and get our gardens and landscapes into apple pie order. There’s so much to be done this month, it’s hard to know where to start!

POLLINATOR GARDENS

With the spring bloom comes the spring nectar flow. Consider planting an area of your landscape specifically for attracting a variety of pollinators. Give special consideration to butterflies and honeybees. Butterflies will need plants for both feeding and for laying eggs. The use of milkweed by monarchs is well known. But, other butterfly species will be attracted to your yard or garden if you plant the right things. Giant swallowtails will use citrus trees, spicebush swallowtails will use spicebush (Lindera benzoin) and sassafras (Sassafras albidum). Black swallowtails will use dill, parsley, fennel, rue, and Queen Anne’s lace (Daucus carota).

You may notice a more productive vegetable garden if you can attract bees. Beans, cucumbers, and squash always attract a variety of insects. For flower beds, bee-friendly bulbs include flowering onions (Allium sp.), grape hyacinths (Muscari armeniacum), and openpollinated varieties of daffodil (Narcissus spp.). Flowering perennials that will attract honeybees include anise hyssop (Agastache foeniculum), butterfly milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa), cornflower (Centaurea cyanis), goldenrod (Solidago sp.), and fall asters (Symphiotrichum spp.). Bee-friendly herbs include borage (Borago officinalis), lemon balm (Melissa officinalis), mint (Mentha spp.), rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis), rue (Ruta graveolens), and thyme (Thymus sp.). A surprising number of native trees are good honeybee attractors. These include red maple, American holly (male and female plants), black locust, eastern redbud, tulip poplar, magnolias, sycamore, and interestingly, Chinese tallow tree. Yes, it’s an invasive, exotic tree. But it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere anytime soon, so we might as well make the best of it.

POLLINATING BEE

The real stars of the show in spring are seeds. If you’re gardening for the first time or are still a relative newbie, locally purchased seeds are the way to go. Our local garden centers and hardware stores are excellent sources for quality seeds. Have you noticed the resurgence in popularity of many heirloom varieties of flowers and vegetables? Variety names like Georgia Rattlesnake watermelon, Brandywine tomato, Musselburg leeks, balsam Impatiens, and many more are all becoming more and more popular.

Seeds are remarkable things. They can be as large as coconuts or as small as grains of sand or smaller. One of my professors in graduate school explained that seeds were basically babies with a blanket and a bottle. That is, a seed contains an embryonic plant (the baby) that is supplied with a temporary source of nutrition (the bottle) and is enclosed in a protective coating (the blanket). So, the analogy seems pretty accurate.

I’ve always considered starting plants from seeds a daunting prospect. My grandfather, however, had it down to a science. He had his own little version of the Manhattan Project going on in his greenhouse, which was a greenhouse in only the academic sense. He could have tomato seeds germinated in as little as three days! But, when you think about some basic principles of plant biology, starting seeds shouldn’t be scary. Just as seeds come in a wide variety of sizes and shapes, seeds also have a wide range of environmental requirements for germination. Also, just because you read it in a book doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the gospel truth. For example, I can tell you from personal experience that certain bags of soil are labeled specifically as seed starting mixes, but they may not work out that way. A lot of that “organic seed starting medium” contains sticks and twigs and chunks of so-called soil that are so large that a germinating seed could never penetrate the surface. I’ve also encountered the other end of the range; some are so finely ground that the powder-like medium is impossible to wet. Water just beads and rolls right off. Also, in my opinion, your seedsowing medium, whatever it may be, does not have to be sterile. A sterile medium may be preferred, but certainly isn’t required. The soil in a forest surely isn’t sterile. Yet, plenty of seeds still germinate in a forest.

VARIETY OF SEED PACKETS

Depending on what plant you’re trying to grow, certain seeds have certain requirements for germination. Some require light for germination and should be sown by simply scattering on the soil’s surface and barely scratched in or otherwise sown very shallowly. Seeds of lettuce and celery are examples. Still, others require total darkness and germinate best when sown anywhere from 1/8 of an inch to 1 inch deep. Many seeds also require a period of stratification. That is, they need to be chilled for a certain period of time before germination. This can usually be accomplished by keeping the seeds in the refrigerator for a few weeks. Typically, by the time you purchase seeds, they have already been subjected to this simulated winter, a necessity for the embryo to break dormancy and become metabolically active. Many seeds also need to be subjected to scarification, which allows water to penetrate the seed coat, a process called imbibition, and for oxygen/ carbon dioxide gas exchange. This, in turn, allows the conversion of starches into simple sugars to take place so the embryonic plant can grow. Scarification can be as simple as soaking seeds in water for twenty four hours, like with okra and moonflower (Ipomea alba) seeds, or as complex as physically breaking the protective seed coat with a file or with nail clippers. My grandfather soaked his okra seeds in kerosene for two hours before planting them. The LSU AgCenter heartily suggests you not do this, especially if you like to puff a cigar while you’re outdoors like I do. Some seeds, and this is mostly in non-cultivated plants, will not germinate unless they’ve first passed through the digestive tract of an animal. So, if a persimmon tree or blackberry vine seems oddly out of place, remember that’s what fruits are for: to entice a critter with a sweet tooth to munch the fruit and disperse the seed in the process.

The seed packet should tell you everything you need to know in terms of germination requirements, so it’s worth a glance before setting yourself up for disappointment. Many seeds can be sown directly into the garden, be they flower or vegetable. And, don’t worry if you don’t see anything for a while. Some seeds take weeks to germinate. When they do, you’ll see the embryonic root, or radicle, first. Either one or two seed leaves, or cotyledons, depending on whether you’re germinating a monocot, like a grass, or a dicot, like a bean, will soon follow. Cotyledons are the baby’s bottle so to speak, and will nourish the embryonic plant until the first set of true leaves develops. Then, the alchemy of photosynthesis will take over feeding the young plant. Before you know it, that tiny seed will have produced a fully grown plant.

STAGES OF SEED GERMINATION

In a coming issue, I hope to have good news to report about some watermelon seeds that are almost twenty years old. More on that later!

So, let’s be grateful for spring’s renewal and take time to get outside, get your hands dirty, and watch the outdoors come alive again!

Good luck, and good gardening!