Soil mix and pine bark

From: "Cooper, Susan L." SLCooper at scj.com> on 2002.04.03 at 21:26:46(8451) Wow, Thanks to everybody who pitched in with their knowledge and suggestions. I know this list has gone over the soil mix time and time again, and some members may be bored, but not me! As thanks, here is my tip: Dr. Mohammed Fayyaz of the University of Wisconsin- Madison planted some Amorphophallus titanum seeds very shallowly, and then covered them with silica sand. He also planted some without covering them with the sand. He told me the only ones that germinated were the ones covered with sand. Dr. Mo has written a paper on the cultivation and flowering of "Big Bucky", the 8ft 5inch inflor. which tied the "world record". Hopefully this can be published in either Aroideana or the newsletter in the future. Mo is in charge of the University greenhouses, and is an extremely enthusiastic educator. +More Susan

From: Betsy Feuerstein ecuador at midsouth.rr.com> on 2002.04.03 at 23:28:11(8452) No intent to undermine a good job well done by Dr. Fayyaz, but years ago I received from Jim Symon collected seed of Titanum and I simply put them on top of Metro Mix BX and all of them sprouted. After that I distributed them all so from there on, I do not have a report. I put the container under grow lights where it was warm, so maybe that warmth had something to do with the germination rate. +More "Cooper, Susan L." wrote: > Wow, > Thanks to everybody who pitched in with their knowledge and suggestions. I > know this list has gone over the soil mix time and time again, and some > members may be bored, but not me! > > As thanks, here is my tip: > Dr. Mohammed Fayyaz of the University of Wisconsin- Madison planted some > Amorphophallus titanum seeds very shallowly, and then covered them with > silica sand. He also planted some without covering them with the sand. He > told me the only ones that germinated were the ones covered with sand. > > Dr. Mo has written a paper on the cultivation and flowering of "Big Bucky", > the 8ft 5inch inflor. which tied the "world record". Hopefully this can be > published in either Aroideana or the newsletter in the future. Mo is in > charge of the University greenhouses, and is an extremely enthusiastic > educator. > > > > Susan

From: SelbyHort at aol.com on 2002.04.04 at 04:31:47(8457) Susan, When I was at Selby I planted quite a few of their Amorphophallus titanum seeds from the pollination in 1999. I placed some seeds on NZ spaghnum, some on top of sand, some lightly covered in sand, some on top of fine perlite, and virtually every seed germinated. They were all placed on the mist bench with bottom heat. I even planted some seeds that looked like the "runts" after having mailed out all the plump beautiful seeds, and even they came up! I talked to people later who had received the seeds (packed in slightly damp newspaper) and many had germinated during shipment. This is one species that we should not have any trouble propagating from seed, the challenge is finding space to house the mature plants!!! Donna Atwood +More In a message dated 4/3/2002 4:27:26 PM Eastern Standard Time, SLCooper@scj.com writes: Dr. Mohammed Fayyaz of the University of Wisconsin- Madison planted some Amorphophallus titanum seeds very shallowly, and then covered them with silica sand. He also planted some without covering them with the sand. He told me the only ones that germinated were the ones covered with sand.

Note: this is a very old post, so no reply function is available.