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.