The "cup of tea" method for germinating seeds

[Susann]

Tim, very interesting extra information. And, I understood everything you had written

[Lesley Cox]

Lesley,  How long is the normal time for the germination of Iris ensata  ?

Lily-Anne, if the seed is fresh, they will come though here in about 3-4 months. Add a year to that if it has really dried out. Their seed is not hard like that of many irises but quite large and sort of leather-textured. It may be that they are relatively lightweight too, because of the species' predilection for water, the seed perhaps being distributed that way. Recently I sowed a few seeds of species from the American swamp habitats such as the Everglades, II. fulva, nelsonii and a couple of others. Their seeds are large and almost spongy and will float on water. Two seeds, all I had of Iris ? were very large, the size of a marble but almost weightless. (Sorry about the query mark.) I've forgotten which it was. It's past midnight now so I'll look in the morning and modify this post.)

[Lesley Cox]

How about an infusion of fresh Camella sinensis leaves?

Well I have many camellias here so could try it I suppose. I wish this were the cup of coffee method. Save me making two potsful each morning.

[johnw]

On the subject of tea the results of a recent CBC test on teas may raise a few eyebrows.  Here in Atlantic Canada we drink large quantities of tea so these results are deeply disturbing.  My brand is the local King Cole which I understand is even shipped out to the Empress Hotel in Victoria, BC for their famous high tea.  I wonder if one can assume that Red Rose tea is not blended from many different tea strains.  One also has to wonder why the mosquitoes still bother me.  Looks like a change is in order.

http://www.cbc.ca/marketplace/blog/full-tea-test-results

johnw

[SJW]

On the subject of tea the results of a recent CBC test on teas may raise a few eyebrows.  Here in Atlantic Canada we drink large quantities of tea so these results are deeply disturbing.  My brand is the local King Cole which I understand is even shipped out to the Empress Hotel in Victoria, BC for their famous high tea.  I wonder if one can assume that Red Rose tea is not blended from many different tea strains.  One also has to wonder why the mosquitoes still bother me.  Looks like a change is in order.

http://www.cbc.ca/marketplace/blog/full-tea-test-results

johnw

Black tea is the most popular over here, of course. Don't know about current levels of pesticide residues (although tea has been tested over here in the past) but this is my cup of choice: http://www.yorkshiretea.co.uk/. A lovely brew - the only known contaminant being just the merest trace of modesty.

[graham]

A couple of things ocurred to me after reading the thread - prompting a web search or two:
1. extraction of gibberllins with boiling water (i.e. tea making) - how temperature-sensitive are the GAs and how water soluble are they ? I couldn't find much of an answer to the first - other than the general thought that large-ish origanic molecules tend to be less stable at higher temperatures, not exactly a major surprise there but I could find no indication of how sensitive (although the extraction methods that I did find tended to advise extraction for log periods). However I did note that while there are a few articles about aqeous extraction of GAs there are far more that use organic solvents. I did find one interesting (but uncorroborated in my search) comment that GAs are soluble is alkaline solution - and black tea is somewhat acid (pH5 ish so I found) see:
http://www.hydroponics.com.au/issue-11-gibberellins-plant-growth-hormones/
the quote is "According to Pinto, a key factor to extracting gibberellic acid is to raise the pH of the water to about pH8 (slightly alkaline) – at this pH the gibberellins are soluble in water." look in the 'Extracting Gibberellic Acid' section; however the overall method is, while not a major undertaking, neither is it trivial (needs acetone, Iso-propanol, etc.etc.). Of course whatever solubility GAs have in cold water, it is likely to be greater in water at 100 deg. However my searching did make me wonder whether reducing the tea (or whatever plant material is used) to a powder or paste in a blender or mortar and pestle and then soaking in slightly alkaline water at room temperature for a few days may extract more GAs.
2. I noticed a reference to chamomile tea: I have had this advised to me a mild anti-fungal and a web search does find a number of articles stating that it is quite sulfur-rich. I also found a few references to the 'fact' that herbal teas tend to be alkaline. I must admit that despite trying the tea (and it tasted fine) as an anti-fungal on some seedlings I was not greatly impressed by its effects.

graham

[annew]

Wondering whether to have a go with my narcissus seeds, which I will be sowing rather later than I usually do, I chickened out at the thought of 150 little bags of seeds soaking! However when reading the description of the original method, notably the repeated draining and resoaking, I wonder if it's nothing to do with GA or anything like that, but rather the leaching out of inhibitors to germination.

[Matt T]

Wondering whether to have a go with my narcissus seeds, which I will be sowing rather later than I usually do, I chickened out at the thought of 150 little bags of seeds soaking! However when reading the description of the original method, notably the repeated draining and resoaking, I wonder if it's nothing to do with GA or anything like that, but rather the leaching out of inhibitors to germination.

Perhaps Anne, that's a good point. The experiment I'll be running includes the "cup of tea" treatment using water only i.e. 4*24 hour soakings. If it is the leaching of inhibitors instead of GA then there should be similar result between the water and tea treatments. I'll start the soaking process next week and be sowing seeds a week on Sunday. Thereafter, it's wait and see what happens... Will post updates on any exciting developments here.

I do have to admit to pre-empting the experiment and having used tea for any seeds that needed soaking (24 hours only though) before sowing this year...well, it couldn't do any harm. 

[annew]

It may be that the slightly acidic nature of the tea increases the leaching effect. Maybe you should try weak vinegar as well.

[Matt T]

It may be that the slightly acidic nature of the tea increases the leaching effect. Maybe you should try weak vinegar as well.

Too may pots!! I'll not have room to sow any SeedEx seed this year if I do
If we find no discernible difference between water and tea, a second iteration of the experiment could be run next year trying a range of different agents to remove/neutralise the inhibitors.

[graham]

Assumptions (can't be verified/measured with the means available):
- any effect of the "cup of tea" method is due to the presence of giberellins (rather than any other factor)

I've been doing some more searching and find a number of source of GA itself, so perhaps another set could be run actually using the real thing, it would also show whether those seeds are susceptible to GA treatment although there does seem to be quite a degree in variation of the concentration in the treatment solution. But it does appear to be quite readily available, e.g.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Gibberellic-acid-90-10-Gram-Kit-International-/321111505724
and bearing in mind the dosage required it would be far cheaper than tea. I am very tempted to order some now in fact...

graham

[Maggi Young]

Kristl Walek of Gardens North Seed also sells
GA3 - Gibberelic Acid (100mg)      GA3
Contains one 100mg packet of 90% pure GA-3, each packet being sufficient to treat about 50-100 packets of seed.   $7.50
 on  http://www.gardensnorth.com/site/  under "other products"

Kristl contributed many great threads  under  "My piece of heaven" titles over the years. Kristl now posts more regularly on her gardens north facebook page : https://www.facebook.com/pages/Gardens-North-Seed/130083313745756?hc_location=timeline

[graham]

Not, you must understand, that I am an obsessive, but I have found this subject somewhat interesting and have continued searching. Now I have found:
http://www.jlhudsonseeds.net/GibberellicAcid.htm
and J.L.Hudson do claim "We are the original home of GA-3 and GA-3 Kits made available to the public for seed germination", well I cannot vouch for that but I have cetainly seen the wording that they use in a few other places on the web in the past couple of days searching so...
But I would strongly recommend anyone interested in the subject - and here I mean growing from seed - to read that page and to have a look at the downloadable book by Norman Deno linked to from the Hudson page - it does look very interesting and will be my reading for a good few hours - well, quite an amount of it is experimental results and being a PDF it is searchable so you don't have to read it all to get at the species in which you are interested but just a quick look reveals a good deal of information collected in one place.

graham

[Maggi Young]

We have several discussions about GA3 and Deno's writings around the Forum.

Here is one relevant forum  link  http://www.srgc.net/forum/index.php?topic=5209.0

These links below to Dr Deno's "Seed Germination: Theory and Practice" and the two supplemental books are free downloads at the USDA National Agriculture Library online site. I know this book is out of print and nearly impossible to find. I hope this information is useful.
The books of Norman Deno are in the Public Domain so they are free for download.

National Agricultural Library Digital Collections
pdf s to download are linked to on each of these pages from the US site :

Seed germination, theory and practice
http://naldc.nal.usda.gov/catalog/41278

First supplement to the second edition of Seed germination theory and practice.
http://naldc.nal.usda.gov/catalog/41279


 Second supplement to Seed germination theory and practice.
  http://naldc.nal.usda.gov/catalog/41277


For those that haven't got Deno - much of the information in Deno is summarised in the seed germination section of the Ontario Rock Garden Society site
http://www.onrockgarden.com/page/germination-guide-overview
http://www.onrockgarden.com/germination-guide/plants

[Robert Pavlis]

There is an indirect way to, maybe, validate that the effect is due to GA3. If the seeds used are Podophyllum hexandrum, they should produce a leaf shortly after producing the radicle, instead of waiting a year. I had tried GA3 on podophyllum hexandrum this year and it worked like a charm. It resulted in faster germination compared to seeds without GA3, and the first leaf started forming 2-3 weeks after the radicle started.