Complimentary Blueberry Juice

One aspect of plants is above and beyond, even magical: the seed.

The seed is promise, potential, hope and patience, all engineered into a tiny package able to withstand adverse conditions and wait them all out for the chance to start new life. Seeds come pre-packaged with everything the embryo requires to begin: protection, energy reserves and even the parent plant’s microbiome plays a major part in the health of the seed.

I’ve been fascinated by seeds all my life, and I even remember doing little “experiments” as a kid, planting something by the windowsill, just to watch it germinate. Today, I find them even more fascinating and a great example of the intelligence of plant life; from the development of the flower, to the fruiting strategy chosen to carry the seed, to the delivery strategy chosen to deliver the seed to its destination, to the seed’s ability to withstand many conditions, to the design of the seed coat itself, protecting the seed and permeating water to activate the enzymes that will catalyze the energy to get the germinating seed to put down a root, immediately developing symbiotic relationships with mycorrhizal fungi and bacteria, and put up the first “sun leaves” or cotyledons, which allows the plant, from that point on, to be entirely self-sufficient and produce all its own energy, and obtain all its own nutrients.

For us at our farm, it’s the beginning of the planting season, and over the next few months we’ll be planting tens of thousands of seeds in the greenhouse, and over the course of the year we’ll be seeding hundreds of thousands of seeds.

Seeds were not the first method of photosynthetic plant reproduction, this solution evolved some 300 million years ago as land plants became more complex. Today, flowering plants and seed dispersal is the most dominant group of living things on the planet. Without the seed there is no agriculture…and 100% of the kind of agriculture we do is seed-dependent.

This year I’ve ordered a few fun things for myself to try out. My livelihood depends on being able to germinate seeds, so I took on a few this year for fun that require a little more work and a lot more patience. I ordered four types of seeds that require periods of cold stratification (meaning they need to be kept at low temperatures for several weeks): the trumpet flower vine ( Campsis radicans), the eastern white cedar (Thuja occidentalis), a number of North American pitcher plants (Sarraceniaceae), and Ironwood tree (Ostrya virginiana). I’ve also got a bunch of cactus seeds on the go and some Camellia sinensis…otherwise known as the plant tea leaves come from. Some of these cannot be planted outside in a zone 4 but can be kept indoors or overwintered in the garage as bonsai.

Growing things is really rewarding and one of the most enjoyable part is succeeding at germinating some seeds.

Try growing something you’ve never done before!

Stay curious.

Graham

thanks for reading complimentary blueberry juice