Chinese Wisteria

Good morning, I have had some seeds for a while and I have had alot of trouble starting them. THe paper says to keep in a propagator or a warm place to maintain a temp of 55-60. I am finding it hard to find anyplace that would keep that low of a temperature....any suggestions... Z

I'm a little confused about their directions...the 55-60 temp makes it sound like they need some cold treatment first in order to germinate (people usually put seeds in the fridge for cold treatments, although the temps in there are probably colder than 55), then after the cold treatment you would put them in a propagator or warm place. Although honestly 55-60 isn't really cold either, but typically when they tell you to keep the seeds in a warm place they mean 70-80 degrees, not 55-60. I'm not familiar at all with growing wisteria from seed, so I don't know if they're one of the seeds that requires cold treatment to germinate or not. The one thing I do know is that they take many years to bloom if you grow them from seed, so if you're looking for something that'll bloom for you quickly you should try to get some cuttings instead.

I also have some white wisteria seed pods that a friend wanted me to try to germinate. I know nothing about this! I just looked at them and there were some that were dried/brown. I put a few between a wet papertowel, and I put a few in a pot with just a bit of soiless mix over them and watered them.
I hope its ok zappa that I am piggybacking on your thread..if I can get these going, it will help you and vice versa!

I can tell you zappa, that though its helpful to havae a starting temp in which to germ seeds, its not always a must with the seed. I am getting ready to germ about 100,000 pansy seeds, and while the germ temp is about the same as the wisteria seeds, I can't do that, the lowest temp I can get is about 75-85 degrees and I still get upwards of 90% germ. Hopefully, the wisteria will behave the same

ecrane, can you do cuttings of the white wisteria? If so, I will tell him to just do that. What part of the plant provides the best cuttings?

I don't see any reason why the white one would be different than the purple so I'm sure cuttings would work, however I've never done them myself so I'm not sure which part is the best to use or what the recommended time of year is. Hopefully someone else will come along who can provide some advice on that (I'm actually really, really terrible at cuttings...I have yet to ever successfully get anything to root even after reading up on it in books and here and trying every trick I've heard of. Everything else in the garden I can do pretty well, but not that!)

shoot, they can be easy as pie!! lol depending on the plant of course.....here is a thread I did for cuttings of coleus, but essentially I use the same process with most plants. http://davesgarden.com/forums/t/596774/ Are there any particular plants that you want to try?

I don't have any to root right now...I just moved to a new place so I tried a bunch of cuttings from plants at the old place that I wanted to keep. This batch I'm doing in the rooting gel since I had tried a bunch of other approaches previously, most of them have died but there are still two or three that are alive and green after almost two months, although none of them have roots on them yet. Most of my problem probably is that I'm not rooting things at the right time of year--most of my attempts have been because I broke off a branch of something and I figured I might as well try to root it, or this recent attempt was driven by the upcoming move and not having access to the plants afterwards, but I took the cuttings in May and that was probably the wrong time of year for some if not all of them. I also have only tried tree/shrubs, not perennials, and I imagine they're probably harder to root than perennials would be.

Dirr recommends taking Wisteria floribunda cuttings from June through
August. A rooting hormone is not necessary although a weak hormone increases the number of roots. Place the cuttings in a peat moss-perlite medium under mist. He also says hardwood cuttings root readily by collecting them in December and storing until spring. He suggests they may be rooted by the time they are planted. Finally, you may try layering them by taking the new long shoots in the spring and weighting them down on the ground. I also put a small amount of potting soil around the growth nodes. They will develop roots and new shoots - you then separate them from the mother plant for new plants. The information from Dirr and Heuser is taking from "The Reference Manual of Woody Plant Propagation". I use this manual routinely because my hobby is propagating woody plants. Good gardening. By the way, he says growing from seed results in variable plants and slow flowering.

Well it has been about 2 weeks since I planted the rest of the seeds. THe temp has been about 75ish and the humidity has been about 60 or so. I planted 6 seeds and so far only one has sprouted and is about 4 inches and looking very nice. I am going to go back and pick up some of the seeds that did not make it and try them over the winter. I think a big part of the problem was the medium was always wet with the system I was using so this time I did not put any water in the resevoire and just misted it with a peroxide soulution. But I must say having only one come up has not given me the impression I have figured out starting from seeds but it is a start... Z

Some plants are harder than others to germinate, and some take longer too so it's not necessarily a comment on your germination skills that only 1 out of 6 has germinated so far. I haven't grown wisteria's, but there are many trees/shrubs that can take months to germinate, and sometimes you'll have a few seeds germinate quickly and the others from the same batch will take much longer. Or it's possible that some of the seeds were no good in the first place. I know if I get a few to come up and they were all exposed to the same conditions, I blame it on the seeds and not on myself! If none come up, then I question my skills.