Vigna Caracalla

I just received some snail vine seeds from S. Africa. Can anyone tell me how to germinate them?

Thanks, Patricia

Here's what I've done before... Nick the seed coat (just a teeny spot where you can see the white underneath the brown outer layer is sufficient) and soak for several hours until the seed swells. You can add a bit of hydrogen peroxide to the water (1 tsp per cup is plenty), but I don't know that it's strictly necessary. Heat will really speed germination. I've got a couple of seeds now that I just soaked and sowed and put on my heat mat, set to 79 degrees. However, the last time I tried these I didn't have a seedling heat mat, so I put them in my oven with only the oven light on and with the door propped open a crack with a kitchen towel -- and I got 2 out of 2 seeds to germinate! 80 degrees is ideal, but you might need to experiment for a day or two with your oven light or other heat source, because I've been told that temperatures over 84-86 degrees F can kill a seed.

It's unlikely that temps of 84°F or 86°F would kill a seed. Most seeds, especially tropical seeds, are exposed to these temps on a regular basis due to the temps of the areas where they are growing. I would guess that the temp would need to get considerably higher to actually kill the seed.

Seeds can also take freezing temps just fine, even if the seeds are from tropical plants. I received gesneriad seeds in January and they sat in my mailbox all day at -20°F and they germinated just fine.
My .02
Mike

Mike, that's good to know! Sorry, that was a piece of info I've seen a few places, and while I'm sure it doesn't apply to all seeds, I do think I've killed some tomato seeds by roasting them... and I figured it was best not to take chances with a "special" seed.

One of the V. caracalla seeds that I nicked, soaked, sowed, and put on the heat mat 2 days ago is already starting to sprout!

I didn't do anything special. Put them in jiffy strips,placed them on heat matt and darn near everyone(out of 50)germinated.

P

50! Oooh, your customers are going to be so thrilled with them! Are you going to sell them when they're small, or wait until they're large and blooming?

Thank you all. My greenhouse stays at least 80 so they should germinate fine in there. Do these seeds need to be sown a certain depth?

Thanks, Patricia

I poked them down a good quarter inch. Good luck! :-)

A good rule of thumb is to put the seeds under the medium by about twice their diameter. For a flat seed, like beans and such, you would use the thickness of the seed when it's laying on its side. Very fine or very small seeds should just be sown on the surface of the medium.

Thanks for the advice. They are getting planted today.

Patricia

Mine just germinated a couple of days ago! Woo hoo! Out of all the seeds I am starting this year, this is the one I want to bloom the most. Tamara

Zonegirl, I have a plant that is 5 years old, and it doesn't bloom until late summer. I just wanted you to be aware that from seed, you might have to take it indoors when it gets cold and place it in a brightly-lit window to see blooms.

Thanks for the info! That changes my plans for it. How big of a container do I need for 2 seedlings? Tamara

Tamara,
You can't go wrong with a nice big pot. My plant only flowered the second year. The first there wasn't all that much growth, but boy, now it really puts out a lot of growth each year. My Plant gets trimmed in winter, but keep in mind that the flowers appear sooner on the older wood. As soon as temperatures rise, new growth appear on the old wood, and before you know it, the first flower buds appear...
Here in S.A. I have flowers for about 5 months of the year.
Remember it is deciduous, so don't worry if all the leaves start falling at more or less the same time! The first Autumn I thought my plant had enough and decided to die on me...

Good luck,
Elsa

Hi Elsa,
Thanks for that important info. I purchased seeds of V caracalla and due to my zone 4a climate (lows of -34°C), I will need to grow this plant in a pot. It's good to know that it's deciduous.

Also, I now know where Canna 'Pretoria' got its name - I wasn't aware that Pretoria was the name of a town/city in South Africa.
Thanks again for the info.
Mike

Elsa, how big is your "nice big pot?" If you could give us an approximation of height & depth, that would really help. I'm thinking that my older snail vine might need something bigger than the deep 8 inch pot it's now in, and perhaps that's why it's not thriving.

My plant is growing in the garden, but I would say a pot of about 1m high will do the trick. The ones I have in my garden needs 3 1/2 bags of potting soil to fill it up nicely -about 100dm3.
Remember that they are really vigorous climbers. Mine covers a fence of three meters and it climbs into a Solanum rantonetti standard that is growing close to it. That part gets chopped every winter when Iprune the Solanum back.

Hope it helps.
Elsa

1 meter high!?! Wow, that's 3 feet tall... I don't think I have any pots that are waist high!

I found a conversion chart that told me that 100 dm3 was about 26.5 gallons... So that is a *really* big pot.

I was thinking that a 3 gallon pot might do the trick... LOL... I am off by an order of magnitude! I have a half-barrel planter in the corner of my deck, and I think I will try my older plant in there once the weather warms a bit. I have a couple of new seedlings too, and I may try putting them right into the ground, possibly in a bottomless pot (or a pot with several openings for roots to go through, sunk mostly into the ground) to make them easier to lift in fall.

I'm sure a half-barrel planter will make it happy! Maybe you can just trim it back a bit once the growth gets out of hand. I do agree anything bigger than that gets impossible to move around. I struggle to move them once in a blue moon when I feel like a change, and DH really has to show off his muscle power... He usually isn't very impressed when I get restless.

Boy...my Hubby's gonna be thrilled when I tell him he has to carry in a half barrel planter in the fall...then out again in the spring....lolol If it's deciduous, can I still keep it indoors during the winter? Here, they are long and cold.....

This message was edited Apr 7, 2007 3:34 PM

I got this info off the internet:

Vigna caracalla – Corkscrew flower/Snail bean
Highly fragrant, creamy white, 2 inch flowers with lavender wings and keels that coil backward like the shell of a snail. Blooms late summer until fall. Slender green pods in fall. Fast-growing to 15 feet long. Full sun. Lift and winter over as you would a fuchsia or ivy geranium—in the second year, when it comes back from tubers, it will produce even more flowers. From South America.

Another article read:
When the temperature falls below 40-50 degrees the ends of the vine will die off, but eventually the vine will come back. In more temperate climates the vine can be grown as an annual. It must have full sun. It can also be wintered over if you treat the vine like you would a dahlia. The roots of Snail Flower are actually very fleshy, similar to the tubers that dahlias form. If you dig the Snail Flower roots up in the fall and cover them with peat moss and leave them in a dry, dark cellar, they can be replanted in the spring. Snail Flowers produce blossoms from mid to late summer.

Maybe you can give this a try. Is definitely easier than having to carry such a heavy pot !

ahhhhhh......well...that makes it easy!!! I keep dahlia tubers every winter with no problem. Thank you so much!!!

Thanks so much Elsa! That's what I'll do too! Tamara

I grow some in the ground and some in 3-5 gal pots with round tomato cages for support. They do fine and I even got a pod the first year. I'm waiting to see how they do this year.

Thanks, it's good to know they can "make do" with a container that's not quite so gi-normous!