SEED SOWING TIME AGAIN.

The middle of October is my busiest time for seed sowing as the various seed exchanges start sending out my selections from the lists that arrived a few months back. Cyclamen (the hardy species) are usually first to arrive from the .Cyclamen Society and as these are one of my favourite plants great care is taken with the preparation f the seed before sowing.

I have often quoted before my procedure for sowing this seed but I will give you a brief update. Cyclamen seed is notoriously difficult to germinate once it has dried out and can take one or two years before it shows, if at all. With fresh seed gathered from the garden and sown immediately there is seldom a problem, but with seed from the exchanges obviously this procedure cannot be followed.

Some of the seed can be months old and indeed some may be a year old before it reaches the grower, so various methods are used to help speed up the germination process. The procedure that I use is called the Reading method which was developed at Reading in England and works quite successfully for me.

Once the seed arrives the first task is to identify the names from the list of numbers on the seed envelopes with the names in the catalogue. Then they are carefully listed in my seed book which has columns for seed name, number of seed, type of compost used, and source of seed, date sown, date germinated and number germinated.

While this takes a little time it is a worthwhile task for reference purposes, for if a label goes missing it is quite easy to check which one it was. The next task is writing the labels which is done from the seed book. Then when each label and seed packet has been matched an equivalent number of plastic drinking cups are laid out on the potting bench. Each lot of seed together with the label is placed in the cup which is then about half filled with warm water to which a few drops of washing up liquid has been added.

After twenty four hours the seed has swelled to normal size and is ready for sowing. A suitable seed compost for cyclamen is then prepared, which consists of John Innes no 1 soil based compost, chopped bark, and leaf mould, perlite, coarse sand, and peat based compost. This compost is fairly coarse and light weight, free draining yet holds the moisture well, and the cyclamen love it.

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