We started a bunch of seeds last night. One of the seed flats (104 cells) is just cactus, I harvested those seeds when I was in Arizona. I only need 6 cactus for my plan for a rock garden but have heard they are very difficult to germinate so 2-3 seeds per cell. I have never had cactus and really no clue about growing/germinating them other than what I've read so we will see. If I end up with more cactus than I need then the wife will gift them and/or I will make a post to give them away. I also started 20+ citrus seeds; lime, tangerine and lemon. Hoping they will germinate as I want 5 or so trees at the house. Another 50 or so flower seeds. Since we have properly fenced and gated in 1/2 our front yard and side yard we have a bunch of nice areas for flowers. The wife has already started a ton of plants and it is really looking nice. We just had to fence off the area as the big dogs can be really destructive, our little dogs are allowed out there and really enjoy it. The rest of the seed starting is veggies; mostly cherry tomatoes, eggplant, okra, cucumbers, melons and some ghost peppers. I only purchased 10 ghost pepper seeds and am excited to see how many we can germinate. Personally I love growing peppers, tomatoes and okra...those are just the plants I seem to do best with and ones I end up eating more that anything else. We do really well with peppers and will probably have to remove some plants we have currently to fit in the ghost peppers. If things work out we will have more veggie seedlings than we can use in our small areas so the wife will gift them to friends or send them to family in the village to grow out. We used a 50/50 mix of vermicompost and rice hulls as our seed starting mix. First time using the rice hulls so hopefully it works well for seed starting. We have had great results using vermicompost as a soil amendment in the past so thinking the seed starting mix should work out. Shawn
excellent excellent, one piece of advice to give, from my own experience using those little flowering\seedling trays, you'd want the hands of a surgeon and the patience of Joab, the eyes of an owl and thats just for setting them..............drama will be trying to get them back out without damaging them and into the soil ........I have found that using the egg trays from the tyangee, so much easier, when times comes to plant, just cut as a single and plant the single egg tray as is, no root shock, and the egg tray is paper so its a win win............as for the citrus, best if you remove the hard shell of the seed, could wait forever for them to germinate, if you dont remove first
i think i would assume importing of seeds from another country to be illegal unless you have approval or know better than me
The seed flats are definitely small and will probably require replanting, unfortunately when we went looking that was what we found. Do like the idea of using egg cartons. I did read to remove the outer shell of the citrus seed or scarifying them. Went the second route as it was easier. Hopefully most will germinate. Shawn
The customs forms I've filled out mention live plants and meat, not seeds. I could be wrong as I've never thought to research it beyond what is on the customs form. Shawn
hey i hope you are right and i love gardening. would like to know how all of this turns out!! (but i would check the rules and perhaps not post publically till you are sure--)
Well...over the past decade+ I've posted about seeds on this forum that I brought back from Turkmenistan, Korea, Singapore and the US so broke that one already. I am a gardening fanatic, being in containers when in limited spaces, raised beds or straight in the ground. My next project is in Puerto Rico and depending on where I rent I will be growing something, probably in containers but I will definitely be growing something. Seed varieties in the PI are quite limited in my opinion; you'd never find the cherry tomato type I have had good success with over many years in a couple different countries; they were started the other night. Speaking of seeds, the older post about a seed exchange lost traction but I do have a lot of seeds that I can't use all of and would be more than happy to gift or trade. Shawn
I too travel a lot, and also do exactly what you do, buy some fresh veggies, exclusively for seeds, never considered the customs, also have purchased plenty of seeds from ebay, and never had a drama
Basically 8 days now and have pretty good germination so far. Obviously peppers and tomatoes take a bit longer than some others we started (and apparently some of the flower seeds). I've read that under ideal conditions it is 2-3 weeks for cactus but can take a month or more. Citrus is similar from what I've read. Again, I've never grown or started cactus or citrus trees from seed so it is a learning experience for us. Some of the seeds we started could have definitely been direct sown but wanted to get a head start as I finish up the raised beds this week and the lovely wife decides on what she is going to do with her veggie garden in front of the house. There are also a number of seeds that will be direct sown once their companion plants get established and larger to shade them. I believe the experiment to go with a 50/50 mix of vermicompost and rice hulls worked well for a pretty inexpensive mix option to start seeds. Shawn
One thing to remember about seeds here is keep them in a clip lock box in the fridge etc as the humidity will kill them. Ive tried seeds from here and most are not good unless fresh but everything i get sent here has germinated well.
