Hi everyone,
these are my seedlings so far.
This is like this from middle september. I put it in a pot but it seems it's not growing:


These other two are still in vermiculite, I planted seeds on 13 and 16 september. The tallest one is the one that sprouted later.


I don't know if they are fine or not, and why none of them is putting new leaves.
What do you think?
Many thanks!

hi Sabrina,

are they outside or in the house?
I don't know about the north of Italy, but over here it is definitely getting colder and the days are getting a lot shorter .

I'm a first time seedling-mama as well so I'm not 100% sure, but I guess those are the reasons your (and mine) seedlings are slowing their growth.
I think if they are put in a warmer place and/or (?) under a growth lamp they would start growing again.

I was wondering myself how in a seedling the impulses for growing and going dormant (if it is that type) work..
Will a seedling go dormant under the 'right' circumstances and resume it's growth in Spring?
And will the 'food' that is stored in the seed still be ok at that time?

Sabrina, do you know if the parents of your seedlings are dormants?

edited: I don't grow my seedlings in vermiculite, but put them in earth as soon as they sprout.
Also I feed them once a week with a diluted liquid fertilizer, so they get an extra boost here.
It will be interesting to see whether that all makes a difference. :-)

Mayo

Hello Mayo, thanks for your reply!
The seedlings are outside for now, we get around 20°C by day and 15°C by night.
I put them under sunlight, since they're in small pots in the morning they are on the terrace hit by sun and in the afternoon I bring them in the garden.
We have sun and rain.
The last seed I planted has already sprouted, I will prepare a pot for these three (the first is from another cross).

I fertilized the one in soil only once, since it rains almost every day and the soil is humid. I tried a new potting sil, without peats, what kind of potting soil do you use? Do you think it will be safe to put them directly in the ground with cold approaching or are they too small?

None of the parents are dormant, they are a mix of SEV and EV.
All the parents are growing now, with many new leaves and some new fan.

They look healthy. It's not unusual for seedlings to temporarily stop growing for a while a few weeks after germination. I might speculate it's because they've used the food storage in the seed and need to start producing their own food by photosynthesis before they can grow some more. Or maybe they're focusing on root growth for a while. Whatever the reason, as long as they're as green and healthy looking as they are now I wouldn't be worried about them.

Edited to add that you also transplanted the first one and that too may cause it to take a break while it recovers depending how much, if any, root damage ocurred in the process.

Thanks Sue, I keep on moving them where the sun turns, weather is very unstable here.
The one I transplanted had no damage to roots because it was in vermiculite too, it had very very thin roots and all came out perfectly.
I really don't know why the first of the second cross is so small, anyway I will wait until the third grow some more and transplant all three seedlings in a pot.
I still have four seeds of the same cross which didn't germinate yet, even the treatment was the same for all of them.
Many thanks!

20°C by day and 15°C by night?
That's very nice weather!

Over here it has been 16°C by day and 6°C at night, with it going down to 13°C by day / 3°C a night next week.
Usually we have a nice, balmy September and October, but this year September was wet, wet, wet and October is cold

Still, my seedlings seem to be doing fine.
They are quite a bit larger than yours, but I started them earlier (August).




I do plan to keep them in their pots over the winter...
They are on a part of my porch where the cats (and the slugs!!) can't come and they are close together, so I can easily cover them with some gardenfleece if it should freeze at night. And should it get reálly cold, I can put them in the garage

I sprout them in a ziplock baggie in Perlite and some water.
As soon as they have a root and about an inch of green showing I put them in a seedling tray, in earth.
(I make a mixture of compost, peat, vermiculite and sand)

After about 4 weeks I repotted them in 1 gallon pots (4 liter), using the same mixture earth.

Mayo

Thanks Mayo! That's quite a number of seedlings!!!!
I hope mine will grow as yours. The weather it's not so bad, personally I'd prefer more hot (I can't usually stand temps below 22°C) but I guess for DLs it's a nice temp.

I always supposed larger pots should be preferred to high and shallow pots, but now seeing yours I guess it really don't matters.

There are tiny root "hairs" that you cannot easily see with the naked eye and however careful you are, and vermiculite does make it easier, there may be some root damage when they are transplanted. But they look fine.

I think you said that you damp chilled the previous seed/s for about two weeks? Some need longer than that which is why we usually say 4-6 weeks, 3 weeks minimum. That could be why the others haven't germinated yet if everything else is the same. If they haven't had enough damp chilling they can takes weeks or months to germinate. Some daylily seeds germinate with no stratification and some with only a few days, but there's no way to know that in advance for an individual seed. The current temperature also makes a difference.

Edited to add a picture of daylily seedling root hairs:

my pots are 15 x 15 x 23 cm, so they are not thát small
But still, I think the seedlings will really need replanting come Spring!


Mayo

maybe right now they are just busy growing roots and will grow more top later after some root development

Sue - yes, it could be I didn't see those hair roots, so surely the little seedling needs some damage recovery.
I damp chilled the seeds all together, 7 seeds from the same cross, for about two weeks, three germinated and the other four not. There's one that is very wrinkled maybe it's not viable. So at this point I don't know if I should put them again in fridge and wait until spring.

Mayo - those are not small pots for sure!

Frillylily - after explanations it seems that they are concentrating on their root system, so I will wait for them to grow with peace of mind!

Possibly the ones that germinated did not have seed dormancy while the others did and two weeks damp chilling was not enough for them. At this point I would either put the ungerminated ones back in the fridge damp for 4-6 weeks and then try again, OR take them out of the vermiculite and drop them into a solution of 1:9 household strength hydrogen peroxide to water (that's assuming the H2O2 there is already diluted to 3%) until they germinate OR leave them where they are and wait it out. I would not put them back in the fridge at this stage and wait until spring.

If you try the peroxide soak it should be at room temperature and out of the sun.

They already are in a peroxide solution, out of the sun and at room temperature.
I put in vermiculite the ones that germinated in the solution, the others are still in there happily bathing!

So you're chilling them in the fridge on damp kitchen paper for two weeks first and then soaking them in peroxide at room temp? You shouldn't need to do both, they're two different methods for breaking seed dormancy. If they've been in the peroxide for more than two or three weeks they may do better out of the peroxide and with more chilling in the fridge.

I'm not a daylily grower, but grow others seeds. Vermiculite has little readily available nutrients in it so unless you are providing some sort of dilute fertilizer (around 1/4 rate [I make it even weaker the first few times that I fertilize seedlings just to be safe]) then plants will stall. You do have to be very careful not to burn seedlings with too much fertilizer. The nutrients in the seed get used up pretty quickly. Photosynthesis produces oxygen (released) and glucose (for energy) but a plant needs other elements (nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, etc) to actually create more cells and maintain physiological processes. If there are none of the required elements in the growing medium, then the plant can't do much growing.

For the one that you potted in soil and fertilized, the constant rain may be leaching the nutrients away faster than the little seedling can absorb them. That's just a guess , though.

FWIW this is a quote from the American Hemerocallis Society's 2002 Handbook chapter on daylily anatomy and physiology section on seedlings:

"For several weeks following the first flush of leaf expansion, no more leaves are apparent. Root growth, however, remains very active unless changes occur in environmental conditions."

Vermiculite does contain some nutrients (calcium, magnesium, potassium), and it also has a high CEC which helps hold on to added nutrients. But having said that, daylily seedlings do fine in vermiculite without added nutrients for at least a month after germination. After that I would certainly start a weak fertilizer or move them to a growing medium with fertilizer, which I think Cybersix is doing? (Edited for clarity).

Sue, yes, I damp chilled the seeds then put them in peroxide solution, it worked with the first seed from the first cross so I did the same. I didn't think they're both ways of breaking seed dormancy! I think it's almost ten days now. So do you think I'd better to damp chill them again?
You're right, after a month I put the first seedling in potting soil. I still don't know if it's a great soil, it has no peats (the soil comes form compost) but it has perlite and coconut fiber.
-For fertilizing I used a 7-3-5 diluted fertilizer. I don't have access to many resources locally, so I have to plan a trip to the nearest garden center and every advice is welcom for what I should look for.

Danita, the little seedlings in vermiculite are not getting lot of rain because they are near the house, but both vermiculite and soil are humid so I don't add anything because I'm afraid to watering them too much!

I would leave them in the peroxide a little while longer since they've only been in 10 days (maybe change the solution for fresh - is it around 1:9?). Daylily seeds don't need to be soaked to germinate so the only reason for the peroxide soak is to speed up germination if they haven't been stratified (assuming the solution is strong enough). Stratification seems to be more reliable so if they don't germinate in the next week or so then maybe put them back in the fridge. This all assumes they are viable of course.

Even in a batch of seeds that mostly have seed dormancy there wll be a percentage that don't and will germinate immediately even if you just put them in medium without pre-treatment. This can make it appear that a pretreatment worked when in fact they didn't need it. Or else those first seeds didn't need much stratification or responded quicker to the peroxide. But, to break dormancy in all the seeds, the damp chilling should be for at minimum four weeks.

Sue, I'm afraid the solution is a lot weaker than 1:9, I added one table spoon (about 15 ml) to 500 ml of water. So I need to increase the peroxide quantity, it should be 55 ml peroxide to 500 ml of water, correct?

Yes, that's around 1:9 although it's not critical to be totally precise. I tested several strengths and germination within four weeks in peroxide:water started to become less at around 1:13. The weaker the solution the less beneficial the peroxide soak. Soaking in plain water actually slowed them down compared to not soaking at all, so at some point between 1:15 and plain water the solution presumably becomes weak enough to start being inhibitory rather than helping but I didn't test at what point that was.

Looking at my notes it took around two to three weeks for about half of the test seeds to germinate, and most had germinated by four weeks in the peroxide solution, until it got down to somewhere between 1:13 and 1:15 peroxide to water, which is where germination started to lessen.