Starting Iris Seeds - Do you think this will work?

Wondering if anyone has had sucess starting iris seeds this way.

I started soaking the seeds in distilled water yesterday and am planning to continue soaking them for ten days changing the water daily.

Next I plan to put the seeds in the freezer for 3-4 weeks before planting them outside in gallon sized pots.

I thought that I'd surround the pots with straw and put a little of the straw over the top of the pots too to keep the seeds from washing away when it rains.

Just wondering if anyone has tried starting them this way and if so, was the germination rate successful?

Cathy

1 Freezing will kill them after soaking Refrigerate
2. change water daily, soaking is to remove inhibitors
3. Fill pots to 3/4 inch from rim then cover with only enough soil to cover seeds
4. keep moist but not wet

I will have to call George Sutton again. I was thinking that it was soak them for the ten days, changing the water every day and then freeze them for 3-6 weeks that he had recommended to me. I did this method before a couple years ago and it worked, but I wanted to do a variation on this since he stored his afterward for a month or so in a garbage bag under his shed until the seeds started sprouting and I was just wanting to go ahead and plant after freezing them instead of putting them under the house and having to diligently check for sprouting. That last time I lost some by leaving them too long in the garbage bag and some of the sprouts rotted before I had a chance to plant them.

I may have confused which to do first the freezing or the soaking. Hmmm...Will have to find that out.

Don't you get enough freeze there like we do in OR...?

We remove seed from pod, plant and put outside....

D

Ok - I called George Sutton today. So glad I called. Seems my memory wasn't too good!

His method is to put the seeds inside panty hose and soak them in tap water (He's on a well so there isn't any chlorine in his water). Change the water daily and continue soaking the seeds for 10 days.

After the 10 days is up, rinse the seeds off in the panty hose and put them inside a black plastic bag. He puts the bag in the freezer for 2 hours. (Gosh it's a good thing that I called!) Then from the freezer he takes them out and puts them in a refridgerator in his shed.

The seeds will start sprouting in the refrigerator within 30 - 90 days. Best to catch them quickly after they start sprouting so the roots don't get too tangled up in the panty hose.

Mr. Sutton said he plants in a mixture of about three parts potting soil to one part perlite.

We get freezes - I just was hoping to improve the germination rating if possible by presoaking the seeds to remove the inhibitors so that most all the seeds would sprout up this spring.

Good information to know, thank's Cathy.

From my experience you might get more seeds to germinate but I found that those that germinate outside in their own time are hardier. Those that germinate inside do not always survive to line out time. I usually get about 80% in Dwarfs, 65-70% Tall Bearded and about 50-60% Arils, 80% beardless (except japanese and spuria). Of these I get about 95% to line out
:)
A

If the stronger seedlings survive to line out, it uses less space. Great seedlings which don't survive are such a downer. DH is a great fan of letting Mother Nature do the culling & too much work to get everything to do well can take a hobby into a heavy problem. Of course when we lost a whole years work because of constant rain with no germination at all it was a real downer.

Not a downer just a break to better enjoy the ones you have more
LOL
A

The last two years have been hard on us here in Tennessee. This year with summer months drought and the year before we lost lots of our irises to a late hard freeze that happened when most all our irises were in bud.

I had an old blue Iris and some hbrid Daylilies produce seeds summer of 2008. Neither will come true from seeds but for for the fun of it, I planted the seeds in October in my coldframe. These seeds are hardcoated and need stratification (cold treatment) to break dormancy. The freezer is chancey because it is the same temperature. What these seeds need is alternate low and high temperatue that Nature provides.

The seeds I planted in the coldframe will sprout when the temperature is right for them in the spring. I have started tree seeds the same, along with hardy perennials with high germination rate. Right now my coldframe is full of seeds sown in October. The only cover is wire to keep animals out. The seeds have gone through rain, snow, below freezing WY weather. It will not kill the seeds.

Caption: My simple coldframe.