Hidden Valley Hibiscus Forum

Hi,

I have never done any crossing with hibiscus, but have been bitten by the bug like many others.

i crossed moonstruck with black dream, ms being the pod parent. the cross was on 11/10 and i harvested seeds from a walnut size pod on 12/26, just about 6 weeks of pod maturing.

i harvested 13 nice plump black seeds and have planted most of them today. i nicked the seeds carefully and planted them in peat pots in a tray over a heating pad. the tray has a clear plastic cover. my questions are: how long does it normally take to sprout and when do you take the plastic cover off as not to rot the seedlings. the temp in the tray is around 75, last checked

it should be interesting to see how many will germinate, if any at all.

photos will be posted when they sprout and tiny cigars will be passed out, cyberlly :)

louis

Louis, I hope to be sat in my garden enjoying one of them cigars with a cold beer very soon [ha ha wont be cyberlly either]. Good luck.

Louis, that's great news. I only got 3 seeds from my Cindy's Heart seedpod. I planted them immediately and didn't nick them. Ten days have passed and nothing yet. I think it takes 10-14 days for germination. Good luck.

We are getting internet connectivity about 2 hours a day right now but expect a new service to be installed later today. Meanwhile, good job Louis! Assuming you did not nick the seeds they should germinate in the next 5-10 days after planting. Temperature is good but once they germinate you will want to place the cover off center so some fresh air gets inside the dome. Once they are all germinated you can take it off altogether to prevent damping off disease from killing them.

If you can keep them warm and sunny all the time (sun more important as they get older) you might get first blooms next summer.

Doll, germination depends a lot on temperature. Any gentle heat source under the tray will help speed it up. Seeds can germinate from days to weeks after planting if they do not rot first.



Charlie

WELCOME or how to gather seeds they must be dried if you can sow immediately after harvest, and now I sow?

hello ewa, welcome to you also,

read charlie's posts and he describes in detail how to sow the seeds.

louis

Louis, did any of your seeds sprout yet? Here is a pic of my lone seedling at 2 weeks.
(http://i53.tinypic.com/fc8as.jpg)

hi doll,

yes they did, i am going to post some photos tonight. they are doing good.

louis

I have never seen a plant pot like that, it looks like its made of Weetabix. You must be so exited to grow your first creation, maybe update the photo now and then.

David, it is a coir pot. Coir is the outer husk of a coconut.

Wow!!!, I wonder why know one has thought of that here, there is certainly enough coconuts. In fact I have just come back from my morning swim and there are hundreds of coconuts just rotting on the beach.

Hi all,

here is a update on my attempt to cross pollinate and grow the seeds.

i have planted a bunch of seeds from various crosses, staggering the planting times. most all are coming up, in stages. my first batch was a cross between moonstruck and black dream, ms being the pod parent.

out of 12 seeds planted, 10 have sprouted so far. i planted the seeds two days after harvesting the pod. i nicked the seeds carefully and most all have come up, in various times. i think where you nick the seeds determines how fast it will sprout. is there a proper place on the seed to nick the outer covering??

reading through the forums and various sites on raising seeds, damping off is a major problem. charlie mentioned that sphagnum moss will prevent damping off. i had a brick of moss and with the trusty old cheese grater, i grated about 2 cups of dried moss to the consistency of sawdust. after planting the seeds in peat pots, i placed about 1/4 inch of moss dust on top. hopefully this will prevent damping off, so far, so good.

a strange occurrence is happening, the moss is turning green and starting to grow. you can see it on the bottom right of the single seedling,

the crosses that i have are:

moonstruck and black dream, ms being the pod parent.
wild grape and purple magic, crossed both ways.

tigerama and moonstruck, ms being the pod parent.



louis


(http://www.imagesct.com/web/hib-misc/seedlings.jpg)

(http://www.imagesct.com/web/hib-misc/sprout.jpg)

John, getting 1 out of 3 from a particular cross can be great results or poor results, it's hard to know with any given cross how the seeds will do. Some sprout at close to 100 percent and others closer to zero. Getting 1 of 3 means the conditions are good enough for germination to happen and growth to take off. It's still possible the other 2 may do something. There are plenty of stories around about seeds sprouting months  later. Odds are they have rotted by now but you never know unless you can find the seed.

Lou, those seedlings are looking great so far. I always had good luck with the sphagnum moss but have to admit I never saw it turn green and start to grow! For those who don't know about sphagnum moss, it grows in the cold and wet areas of the world and is abundant is places like Canada and Ireland. When it is collected fresh and dried it is called sphagnum moss, but when it is collected from bogs and swamps after it dies and partially decays it is called peat moss, the most commonly used potting mix ingredient. Lou must have got hold of some moss that was not totally dead and was revived by water. As sphagnum turns into peat it does not completely decay due to some interesting properties that the moss has, including its highly acidic nature. When used in potting soil it is amended with limestone or other ingredients that bring the pH up closer to neutral.

Lou, you have some excellent crosses there. I can't wait to see what comes from them.

Charlie

WHERE TO BUY SEEDS LOUIS
EWA

Hello Ewa,

i dont know of any place in particular to buy seeds. i would do a search on the internet.

louis

Hi Ewa
You can buy them on ebay & they usually ship them to all different country's especially in the spring they have a bunch of them on their all the time. Just enter in the search bar hibiscus seeds, instead of hibiscus plants. most of the places aren't in the USA and it's harder to get them into the USA than other country's .

Louis, your seedlings must be really growing fast in your greenhouse. This is my Cindy's Heart seedling now at 7 weeks.
(http://i55.tinypic.com/e6ywdf.jpg)
It should be warm enough to move it outside in a few weeks. My first Cosmic Gold seed germinated today.  :)

hi doll,

my first batch of seedlings, 8 all toll, are about the same size as yours. i have re-potted them in 4 inch pots and have taken them out of the seedling incubator.

i have lots more in various stages of growth and some still sprouting/

will post a photo when i have a chance.

louis

There are many fraudulent seed sellers out there. We recently uncovered a "nest" of them selling on 9 different web sites around the world. They claimed to have crosses of HVH varieties but called them "hardy" which of course they are not. They also showed photos indicating that the seeds would grow and make the flowers shown. The whole thing was a fraud and we managed to shut it down for the time being.

Ewa, make your own seeds - it is more fun and better than buying seeds.

Charlie

I was kindly sent some seeds and now after 1 year I have these 2 plants, they look ok and one seems to have strange copper color leaves, thing is no sign of any buds in what is quite a big plant [both a meter tall], so I was wondering do you always get buds? or do you sometimes get no buds.

Hi David - Those are some gorgeous seedlings you have there! The one on the right bears an uncanny resemblance to two Fijian hibiscus I have: H. Storckii and "Fiji Island," both of which have coppery colored leaves when they are young seedlings. As for budding: Sometimes it can take between one to two years before seedings flower... If growing hibiscus has taught me nothing else, it is to have patience.  ;)

I'm attaching photos of my Fijian hibiscus leaves: In the first one, H. Storckii is on the top left and Fiji Island the bottom right (Storckii is a tree at this point, and towers over FI). I'm curious to know if they resemble the leaves of your copper colored seedling (on the right)?

Deb

They are not really like yours Deb, mind you its hard to tell from a photo, just wait and see what happens. I had 20 seeds, 5 germinated, 2 plants are already in the bin and I have kept one, its ok but Charlie would have binned that as well, so fingers crossed for these 2.

David, the bronze will drop out by the time the seedling begins to flower. I've seen this hundreds of times and never yet had one hold onto the bronze into maturity. I suppose it is possible for a seedling never to bud up but it would be extremely rare. The conditions matter. For example, my first web master had some seedlings in Sweden that did not bloom for many years but that was because they did not get enough sun and heat. Not your problem! You could try to hurry them up by giving them a little more sun, assuming you are keeping them in mostly shade now. A meter is a little small for average size at first bloom, 1.5 meters is more common and I've had plenty that don't bloom until they hit 2 meters or more.

Charlie

OMG Charlie what a shock, I just assumed they may get buds at around 2 feet like the cv's you send me. So would I be thinking right that should I get a nice bloom off one of these monsters I would need to grow a cutting from it to end up with a more manageable cv, is that sort of how it works. You know I bet a lot of the beginners are like me and don't realise that they may end up with 2 meter high bushes before they get a bloom, 2 meters is taller than me, its going to look well odd in the garden.

 :)  Yep, that's right, David. Many of my seedling plants tower over me. I have to reach over and pull the tops down to see the flowers. There are several ways to deal with this. First is that you can prune the plants at any time. Even when very small you can pinch the little growing tip off the main stem. This will cause them to bush out and grow less tall. I see that your 2 have already branched out which can happen naturally or perhaps you did prune them. They will probably not be as tall because of this. Anyway, later you can prune them for shape and they will grow back out very quickly, becoming even bushier and fuller. Seedlings are very vigorous by nature. They are strong and start out free of virus and fungus and usually do very well for several years.

If you really like the flower you may want to get some "clones" from the original plant in order to preserve it and to give it to other people. Another nice feature of seedling plants is that they will root far easier than will wood from clones several generations down the line. Looks like you will have plenty of wood if you ever decide to root a few new plants from these. The downside of seedlings are the many inferior flowers that are not up to the standards of the rest of the collection. But, magic happens sometimes and you can get some new ones that are as good or even better than hoped for - its just that it does not happen as often as one would like.

Charlie

I am still so surprised with this information and thanks Charlie, I will prune later [they are in full sun by the way], I think the word seedling is a bit misleading, they are hardly seedlings and I wonder how our other friends on the Forum cope, grow a few dozen of these and you will need a football pitch not a garden.

I was wondering because I'm growing some from seeds also , if I keep them in small pots say about 4 inches X 5 deep and don't pot them up another size, let them get root bound will that make them flower sooner ?   

Mike, I think it will delay the first flower to grow them in these pots. I start mine out in that same size but when they are approx 18 inches tall move them into 2 gallon pots. Their growth accelerates very quickly and they bloom 3 months later on average. However, I did have 1 bloom in the 4 inch pots when only 18 inches tall this year so its not impossible. If that is all the space you can give them then you just have to wait them out until they finally bloom. Those first blooms on small plants may not be as large as the flowers will be if the plants were larger but the colors should be close to what they are supposed to be.

Charlie

Hi Charlie
I ordered a plant last week called heavens glow it was shipped monday , the temperature this week is real bad 102 deg. to 106 deg. with a heat index of 115 . do you think the plant will do ok in that heat . I hope so ? My seedlings are only about 12 inches tall right now so the pots are still big for them . I thought that maybe they would bloom sooner if they were in smaller pots . because they say if you over pot a lot of these they won't bloom as often & I'm bad about over potting so I'v been trying not to do that as much . Trying to keep them in smaller pots , But the seedlings might be different than cuttings.  

Hi Mike,

We ship every day to all parts of the country and so far this year we have not had to replace any plants due to heat stress. All our shipments are timed to arrive by Friday of the same week they are shipped so they do not sit over a weekend. If a shipment is delayed and does sit in a hot truck over the weekend it can be stressed but even the few times that has happened this year the plants were saved by good care when the box was opened. If your plant looks wilty or stressed when it comes out of the box water it well and place it in a cool, shaded location until it looks normal - usually just a day or two.

12 inch tall seedlings are fine in the deep 4 inch pots. They won't bloom this year but are good candidates for blooming next summer. You might want to pot them up to 1 gallon size at the beginning of next summer to help insure that they bloom before summer is over. The more sun the better for getting seedlings to bloom. Each is genetically unique and some will bloom earlier and some later - that is natural but you can help by giving them plenty of water, sun, and fertilizer next summer.

Charlie

Hi Charlie
My plant came in today and it was beautiful  :D It was big & nice & green not one yellow leaf on it in excellent shape , even though the temp. was 100 deg. or above all week . thanks

Excellent! Thanks for letting me know.

Charlie