2016-04-30 18 days after planting Moso into the soil

Just few photos to document every step:

JoGi

2016-04-28 Bamboo GROW BOX project

Grow box project was started due to several reasons:

1. Too much space was taken by bamboos on the window sill;
2. Temperature flow was added from the bottom of the plants. This influenced fast evaporation of water from the soil;
3. Temperature at the rooms was too low to get fast growth;
4. Humidity was too low.

So we figured out that we need a grow box. The process is shown in pictures down below:

Few hours and the box is ready to use. 

Engineering JoGi

2016-04-28 First Fargesia yunnanensis shoot

Woohooo. First Fargesia yunnanensis shoot occurs after 14 days (2weeks) in the soil. We think that the main thing was temperature and steady high humidity. We used just simple plastic bag on the top of our water heating box. We will keep this plastic bag placed on the pallet for longer time because the instruction is saying not to give up :))

And the sprout looks like this:

I think this one will my favorite one :))

Cheers. 

JoGi

2016-04-26 Some moso (Phyllostachys edulis) seeds still in germination process

Germination on a plastic bag looks like now the best way for the seeds. We were thinking about germination process in sunlight permeable boxes. This should work better. So we took the seeds from wool and plastic bags and placed them onto toilet paper into nutrition boxes:

And the process amazed us. Two days later we can see how the seeds are growing:

Actually we see molds on our Phyllostachys edulis but some of them looks really pretty.

We will see what we will do with these lagged seeds. Maybe we will plant them straight into the soil because the spring is next door.

JoGi

2016-04-26 Phyllostachys edulis - 2 weeks on a windowsill

Moso bamboos are growing good.

We see that the seeds that were planted into 100% of perlite are growing faster. Much faster.

Some pictures are down below.

JoGi

2016-04-25 Too moist? Too cold? No fresh air? What is the problem?

I think we made a mistake while germinating Spectabilis seeds. First of all we placed all the seeds into germination bags as previous Moso seeds. Moso germinated just fine with something like 60 % germination rate. During Spactabilis seed germination we get the instruction for germination but this was too late to make everything like it was described in the instruction. We replaced all the seeds from ziplock bag to transparent food box. First of all we washed seeds with water/salt mixture to kill all the diseases. This was my idea. hope this was not the worst idea ever :)

We left the boxed slightly opened to let in the fresh air from outside.

We placed seeds on the heating pad and covered them with transparent plastic bag.

I have the feeling that heating pad is working better when something is clamped. To press the boxed i used my sport weights.

I think this will be enough to eliminate the main problems of ventilation, low temperature and too high humidity.

By the way - one of the seeds looks really good. I will add zoomed in photo of it:

Lets wait and see what will happen.

JoGi

2016-04-21 Phyllostachys aureosulcata 'Spectabilis' germination

After we found out that germination is better and faster in light-permeable cases we placed our Spectabilis seeds into the same box as the other our seeds are placed.

We took advantage of the seller's instructions: Keep moist, not dry, not wet, under diffuse light (not direct sunlight) between 25-30C constantly for 1-2 weeks for coleoptiles to appear. 

Everything was done as seller said, but i guess we failed.

After some time mold appeared on our seeds :(

I think that mold could appear because of few causes: Too cold, too moist, no fresh air.

We will think what to do about this.

See you later.

JoGi

2016-04-19 Welcome new device!

We bought a water sprayer! :D

2016-04-19 MOSO bamboo after 1 week in soil

I will place just few photos of our MOSO bamboos.

I see some brown leaves, but I feel that Moso will survive.

JoGi

2016-04-18 New toys 2

THERMOMETER!

This thermometer can measure one digit after dot. It can calculate mean temperature of the time period. It is WORKING and this is the main parameter :)

We will measure air temperature, heating pad temperature as well as soil temperature. 

2016-04-18 Fargesia yunnanensis is still silent

One and a half of the week passed after we placed Fargesia Yunnanensis into the soil. still nothing is visible.

I think that temperature is too low to germinate these seeds. 

Our water heater box is working at the highest temperature of 32oC. but the temperature on the upper boundary of the box is only ~28oC. 

The idea is such: remove plastic hood from the box and replace it with nutritional thin film.

So we did this. you can find the result in the following picture.

I know that heat transfer coefficient of this film will be much better than plastics. So the temperature will be greater than before.

As well I placed plastic bag on this device to make something like germination box. I guess this will make better conditions for seeds - humidity and temperature. I found one photo:

Keep working. 

JoGi

2016-04-14 Placing Fargesia yunnanensis seeding into the soil for germination period.

We get the instruction to place Fargesia Yunnanensis seeds directly into the soil instead of working on them on wool or any kind of propagator.

Using the instructions for this kind of bamboo we made a soil mixture of nursery compost and perlite  (70/30) (actually  we would love making the mixture to be 50/50 but perlite was over :))

We boiled water and cooled it down to the temperature of the room. We soak the seeds into water and salt mixture. We left seeding for 24 hours in this mixture. Afterwards we placed seeds into the soil and placed the pallet on our water heated box.

We will see if this germination method will work for us.

JoGi

2016-04-14 Planting MOSO seeding in the soil

Finally I get back to this blog. I will try update it every time I have a minute. This is a promise for myself :)

We planted the seeding into the soil. The experiment of germination is over - new experiment - "soil fraction and conditions".

We have made 3 different fractions of the soil:
1. Nursery compost  + Perlite (50/50)
2. Flower planting compost + Perlite (50/50)
3. Perlite (Only perlite)

Every type of the soil was bought in plantings shop. It is totally sterilized - so we guess we will not have any typo of fungus on the soil during growing period.

Perlite was immersed into the water and fertilizer mixture. We choose tomato fertilizer cause it fits most of the plants. Today i really don't know what kind of fertilizers should be used for bamboos.

Afterwards we made 3 different mixtures of soil and perlite as described above.

We dig a small holes for seeds in every container with soil. we inserted seeds just a half of centimeter depth. The pictures are bellow.

All of the pallets where placed on our new heating mat.

I hope everything will be good and we will see the progress shortly!

JoGi

2016-04-13 New toys 1

I went to flea market and I found really nice stuff: HEATING PAD.

I was dealing with the guy and he sell this think for me for 6 Euros.

I tested it and it is working. Woohoo

As you can see from the picture it is quite big and we will be able to place pallets with seeding on it. As well it has 2 gears - low and high temperatures: 1st gear produce 26C and 2nd 32-34.

We are looking forward to planting my our seeds.

JoGi

2016-04-12 Some of Moso seeds stay for a longer time in wool

Due to low germination rate during first 10 days we decided to leave some of the seeds in the same conditions as before and wait for new sprouts. We packed them into new ziplock bags with new wool. We changed wool and plastic bags because we are afraid of fungus and mildew. We placed bags back on a heating pallet and wait.

The most of seeds that did not germinated were from Germany seller. The overall germination rate from German seller is only 33%. At the same time and conditions China sellers  seeds germinated at rate 58%. At this stage we mixed all the rest seeds into one mixture because the germination test is finished. We decided that germination rate is the best then seeds are soaked into water and salt mixture (50g. of water and 4.5 g. of salt - its something about 1:9 rate).

All the rest seeds will be planted as well as the first seeds but just after some time.

Lets wait for new sprouts of MOSO!

JoGi