CYCLAMEN WITH EVERYTHING
Have you ever noticed that when you sow your precious seed and carefully nurture them, that nothing happens, especially the ones that you most want? They never germinate in spite of your best efforts. Well I have found a way to get them to grow, dump them.
No sooner will you have dumped the lot in a compost heap or spread the seed compost in some part of the garden, than up they come, like grass or some pernicious weed. But why not sow them in the compost heap or some part of the garden first and save yourself all of the trouble minding seed pots, watering, shading and all the other things that people do to try and persuade some alpine seed to germinate.
Well I can tell you now it won't work. You must go through the procedure to fool the seed into thinking that you have given up and disposed of the lot, otherwise it will sit for years and sulk. But once you dump it the attitude changes immediately, sometimes within a few days, you can be guaranteed almost 100% germination. So if you have seed that has refused to grow, just dump it, and be careful to put the label in the same place or you will not know what is germinating.
This brings me back to the problem that I have with cyclamen seed. As you know from previous articles I recycle all my potting compost, because it contains Aldrin dust to deal with Vine weevils, and lasts for years in the soil. As this product is no longer available I cannot add any more to the new compost, and this it is the only way I can effectively deal with the pest. So each year at spring cleaning time I examine all my seed pots, and anything that is two years in a pot and showing no sign of germinating goes into the recycle compost bin. This is then mixed with new compost when I am potting on plants, and usually results in good germination especially of cyclamen.
Now I have cyclamen with Lewesia, Campanula, Primula, and even Dionysia, as a matter of fact I have cyclamen with almost everything. They are even coming up in between alpine plants in the scree beds. As I am fond of cyclamen this is not really a problem, in fact is fun sometimes trying to identify them. But as they all flower at different times it is not really a problem, only when they cross breed and produce hybrids. Then it is not so easy as one would expect.
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