Week 2 - Planting the seeds

Yes, I was supposed to plant the seeds last Tuesday, but it was in the middle of my exam week, so I let the seeds cold stratify for an extra week. I think that ought to be okay. Today I finally took them out of the fridge and decided it was time to plant them. The planting process is pretty awesome - the bonsai kit comes with this small disc of dehydrated peat soil, wrapped in a plastic mesh. You have to rehydrate the soil disc first, before planting the seeds in it. If you've ever watched one of those little dehydrated sponge toys grow in water over time, it's pretty much like that, only way faster. The disc expanded about 4x in size, in the time span of probably 7 minutes or so, from a little less than 1cm to 4cm! Here's the dry disc before hydrating:

The directions said to pour 1000ml (32oz) of warm water slowly over the soil disc in a large bowl, and then to let it sit until it has expanded to about 4-5cm tall. I realized quickly that 32 oz is actually 4 cups of water, so I decided to do this in a large mixing bowl. Ready? Here goes!

How cool is that? :) I measured it to be about 4.5cm at the end. The mesh kept it from expanding in width, so it still fit perfectly inside the clay pot from the bonsai kit, with some room to spare. I was surprised that the soil would be taller than the pot by a lot, because it looks kind of funny in my opinion, but I guess that's how they want you to do it. I put the soil into the bonsai pot and placed a collecting dish underneath it, as the directions tell you to keep the pot in 1/4 inch of water. Then it was time to plant the 2 seeds I had been cold stratifying all this time.

There is conveniently a hole at the top of the mesh that encloses the soil, so all I had to do was gently push the seeds into the top of the soil and make sure they were lightly covered. Here's what the soil looks like inside the mesh - this photo was an exercise in learning to use the manual focus function of my Canon A720 (one of the reasons I bought it!)

And that's it! The next part is to place the pot in a north or west-facing window (mine faces north) and wait patiently until the seeds sprout. The directions don't give any guideline as to how long it should take the seeds to sprout, but I'm thinking if I don't see anything within a couple of weeks then I will probably start germinating some of the other seeds that came with the kit. I'll keep you updated!

Day 2 - Cold Stratification

With the overnight soak in water completed, it's now time to say goodbye to my seeds for a whole week while they undergo cold stratification in the fridge. What is cold stratification you ask? I did a little research on it and it seems to be a way to encourage seeds to germinate, especially seeds of perennial plants. The purpose is to trick the seeds into thinking that it is the end of winter, and therefore time to germinate and grow. In the past, people would plant their seeds in the fall or winter, and the natural progression from winter to spring would be enough to get the seeds to grow. What the seeds need is a moist environment and cold temperatures, simulating the end of winter and the beginning of the spring thaw.

My bonsai kit instructs me to wrap the seeds in a wet paper towel and seal in a ziplock bag. They are to sit in the fridge for a whole week before they can be planted. I'm slightly regretting not soaking the rest of the seeds now, as I was reading about cold stratification and it seems that a lot of seeds tend to die during this step, and that's the reason why plants often produce so many seeds each year. Well, I guess we'll see if these 2 seeds work! I'll update again in a week when it's time to plant the seeds.

Day 1 - Germinating the Jack Pine Seeds

After a small initial ordeal involving opening my box and noticing that the clay pot was shattered, my friend who gave me the gift managed to get it exchanged and today, I now have a kit in working order and I am finally ready to start growing my bonsai!

The kit comes with "everything you need to grow your own bonsai garden", which is a clay pot with a draining hole, a small disc of peat soil that will be rehydrated later, a pack of 5 Jack Pine seeds, and a pair of small trimming scissors. The instruction book that comes with the kit mostly describes the art of growing bonsai in general, with the last 2 pages dedicated to instructions on growing the Jack Pine bonsai in the kit. So here we have the entire ensemble upon opening:

And step 1 of this process is to first soak the seeds in water for 24 hours. After that, I'll be sticking them in the fridge for a whole week to "cold stratify" them, which is apparently for the purpose of tricking them into thinking it is winter. I've heard that some people have good luck with germinating the seeds, but some don't, so we'll see how mine goes. Luckily, there was a piece of paper inside the kit that tells me they will send me replacement seeds if I can't get mine to grow. I also only soaked 2 seeds instead of all 5, just in case things don't work out and I need to retry this step. When you are planting the seeds later, you only plant 1 or 2 anyway, so I didn't see a point in germinating all of them. Here they are soaking.