cinemike
04-22-2009, 07:14 AM
Hi,
I am new to this group, so please forgive any ignorance exhibited...
In addition to having banana seeds to plant, I have a load of palm seeds as well... Now I KNOW that Musaceae and Palmae are different families, but they seem to share the same resistance to germination except under fairly rigidly controlled conditions.
However... I found the following link A Practical Guide to Germinating Palm Seeds (http://www.palms.org/principes/1999/palmseeds.htm) in which the ziplock baggie method, apparently beloved of banana growers is also mentioned. (I have used this method for most seeds after reading Norman Deno's remarkable work on seed germination).
In this short article, the authors, who seem to be fairly authoritative in their field, advocate filling the baggie not with soil, but with sphagnum moss. To me, this is very logical. Unlike many palms, most bananas seem to be native of 'jungle-type' environments, where moss grows on more or less everything. Ergo, I would have thought, banana seeds would benefit even more so in being germinated in this way...
Just a thought... (and thanks for the good advice that is to be found in such generous quantity in these pages...)
Mike
I am new to this group, so please forgive any ignorance exhibited...
In addition to having banana seeds to plant, I have a load of palm seeds as well... Now I KNOW that Musaceae and Palmae are different families, but they seem to share the same resistance to germination except under fairly rigidly controlled conditions.
However... I found the following link A Practical Guide to Germinating Palm Seeds (http://www.palms.org/principes/1999/palmseeds.htm) in which the ziplock baggie method, apparently beloved of banana growers is also mentioned. (I have used this method for most seeds after reading Norman Deno's remarkable work on seed germination).
In this short article, the authors, who seem to be fairly authoritative in their field, advocate filling the baggie not with soil, but with sphagnum moss. To me, this is very logical. Unlike many palms, most bananas seem to be native of 'jungle-type' environments, where moss grows on more or less everything. Ergo, I would have thought, banana seeds would benefit even more so in being germinated in this way...
Just a thought... (and thanks for the good advice that is to be found in such generous quantity in these pages...)
Mike