2016-03-29 Germinating Moso bamboo seeds

After receiving our seeds we spent some time reading the articles about germination of bamboos or any other plants. The main thing to germinate seeds fast and with the high rate of germination is:

• Temperature;

And

• Humidity;

Taking into account this we started the work.

First of all we take of the shells from all the seeds.

We divided all the seeds into two parts - one part for seeds from China and another from Germany (we get approximately equal amount of seeds from two sellers).

 As well we split all the seeds into 6 different germination methods (actually bulking methods):

We decided to use simple cool water from tap and water + salt mixture (1/9) (we found this method somewhere online). Water is really good in this region where we live so it is not bad idea to use simple tap water (I think).

We left seeds near by the hot radiator (it is still winter here and we have snow outside so the radiator is hot) to keep the stable temperature.

 We left the house for one hour. During this time we bought some ziplock bags and cotton-wool.

We distributed all the seeds on the wool, moisten them and packed into the ziplock bags. 

 All the bags has numbers on the top to monitor the process.

3 bags with seeds were placed near by the radiator. The other seeds still soaking in the water. We pour hot water into the bottle and placed near the seeds to assure high temperature from both sides of the seeds. 

Next day we took all the rest seeds from water and placed them into a plastic bags using the same wool - water - ziplock bag method.

We hope to see something during upcoming week. 

JoGi

2016-03-23 Mails already here

Finally the mails are here. 

Funny thing is that the mails came to my neighbor and I guess she will never believe that we are starting growing bamboos. Thanks for her for accepting some of my mails.

The first mail was from China. I thought we will never get this mail. So I want to say big thank you for the seller from ebay. This seller gave us more than 100 seeds - if talking exactly - 112. 

I think this is because they were weigh grams of seeds not the exact number of them.

So big thanks for ebay seller  shinequip2010. 

The exact link is here: http://www.ebay.com/itm/111885632375

As well I want to say big thanks for our German seeds provider sbauer83

This seller have us 102 seeds instead of bought 50. i really appreciate this.

The link to the item and the seller is here: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/221312296122

All in all we have more than 200 seeds of Moso bamboo and we are very happy about this. 

Just one little thing what I want to mention - if you buy anything from internet - always get your tracking ID. We did not have any so we ordered double amount of  Phyllostachys edulis seeds. 

Now I really happy. Lets try to germinate them!

JoGi

2016-03-16 Delay of the post

I was waiting for two months to get seeds. Time was going fast. Winter almost gone from our country. Seeds still were not in our place.

Some ideas were on my mind:

• Seeds were stooped at the boarder of our country;
• Seeds were not sent from the sender;
• Seeds lost somewhere in the world;

I decided to buy some more seeds but now not from china but from European Union. We do not have borders here so I think the seeds wouldn't be stopped anywhere. As well the estimated delivery time was much shorter than shipping from China. 

I both 50 more seeds from Germany. Moso is coming to us! Spring is coming too!

Jogi

2016-03-08 Start

The start of this "project" (bamboo growing) was desperate. Once I sit at my work with lots of stuff to do but no inspiration was on my side. I started browsing the internet just to review how bamboos looks like and where they grow. 

Finally I got to ebay and started looking for seeds of bamboos. At that time I really do not understood the idea of bamboo growing even the number of species. I walked through the site and the most popular seeds that I found - were Moso (Phyllostchys edulis) bamboo seeds. 


I bought 100 bamboo seeds from China seller. Hope that they will grow well.



JoGi

2016-03-01 Hello world

Hello world!

We are two engineers bored about everyday live and decided to start growing bamboo as a leisure activity. Our idea to grow bamboos lasts for two years but only few months we finally started realizing this. 

We are based in quite cold climate zone so that will be something if we could do that. The climate, which is continental, is relatively mild. Average temperatures are −6 °C (21 °F) in January and 17 °C (63 °F) in July. During the summer, 20 °C (68 °F) is common during the day while 14 °C (57 °F) is common at night; in the past, temperatures have reached as high as 30 or 35 °C (86 or 95 °F). Some winters can be very cold. −20 °C (−4 °F) occurs almost every winter. Winter extremes are something about  −34 °C. But these extremes are rare: That could occur once in five years. This year winter was really cool, even some of mites stay alive for the whole season (I know this because I have a dog:)). I think this is due to climate change. We will try to use climate changes for our idea.

The main challenge will be to to survive the extremes of winters and summers. I guess we will do that ant we will have the northernmost bamboo forest in Europe. 

Lets start from the seed!

Cheers!

JoGi