[Tanan]

So as some of you know I had ordered these http://www.aliexpress.com/snapshot/315687164.html. And they finally arrived.
Now I need the best way to plant these seeds so they can germinate. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
I've seen the eriocaulon germination thread in here and it had confused me a little.

 

[Tugg]

Yours were seperated and labeled... nice I still need to setup a pan or something to plant mine in.

 

[Tanan]

I ordered different product Tugg. The labels are pretty useless. Unless someone knows what golden grass, pondweed, water soldier, babybreath, wideleaf grass, goldfish grass, cowhair, shortpearl, purple grass, and fairy maiden rain are.
Desmodium is a terrestrial plant. No?

 

[miremonster]

Thx for sharing! I'd say, the names are not very telling, but not fully useless.
I'm curious, could you make closeups of the diverse seed grain types? Maybe the most are terrestrial ornamental grasses, but the appearance of the seeds together with those common names could be informative.

[edit]Yes, Desmodium species are terrestrial.

 

[miremonster]

p.s.
That are likely literal translations of Chinese popular plant names.
I've tried it with Google translator:
English: Goldfish grass => Chinese: 金鱼草 => retranslated: Snapdragon
Image search: https://www.google.de/search?q=金鱼草&...e7ygPYgoHwAw&ved=0CAkQ_AUoAQ&biw=1920&bih=950
Not very aquatic

 

[Tugg]

At least it's very pretty

 

[Tanan]

Mire. Please don't burst my already very shrinking bubble!
And if you search a bit like pondweed and water soldier. You do get potamogeton crispus. So all is maybe not lost. But aren't all potamogetons true aquatic plants? How are true aquatic plants gonna grow emersed?

 

[Tanan]

Here are the pics.

 

[miremonster]

The others are tougher for me...
The blue pearls look again like the NPK fertilizer mentioned in the other thread - or are that coated seeds? Desmodium seeds are very flattened with roundish, bean-seed-like outline. Maybe Desmodium species are used as green manure (leguminose, nitrogen fixation), and due to some confusion in the translation the fertilizer is labeled "Desmodium"...

I know "Water soldiers" as common name of Stratiotes aloides (Europe, West Asia), but I could imagine that gathering seeds of that would be very difficult...

Yes, all Potamogeton are aquatic, but the name "pondweed" is surely ambiguous and used for several plants.

The seeds of "Purple Grass" look to me really like ones of a grass (family Poaceae).

 

[Tanan]

Mire please tell me I have some hope. Even the slightest will work. You see any seed that might look like Erio seeds? That's the only plant I wanted.

 

[Tugg]

I guess we just need to grow these bad boys out to see what we have. I keep meaning to get a little platic bin going, but 3 young kids are a bit of a distraction.

 

[Tanan]

Do I soak all these seeds in water at room temp for 24 hours before I plant them or not?

 

[Tanan]

So I tried mire's way and translated english to chinese and then ran a search on the chinese word. The results are;
Cow hair is E.acicularis,
Short pearl is either glosso or HM,
Foxtail is

,
Wide leaves grass is Erio

,
Purple grass is Lithospermum purpurocaeruleum,
Pond weed is potamegatonacaea,
Babysbreath is

.
I have soaked seeds in water. Will plant them tomorrow.

 

[miremonster]

OK!
I'd suggest for every species 3 ways of sowing (3 portions of each seed):
1) in normal soil, not wet, only moderately moist and drained, as usual for sowing of terrestrial plants.
2) wet, but not inundated.
3) covered with water.

I suspect that the most, if not all, are common ornamental garden plants, despite names such as "pondweed".

Still puzzled by the plant in the last pic that you've found by googling...

[edit] Blue stuff: please test it by crushing some pearls. Are seed grains in it, or is it fertilizer?

 

[Tanan]

Yep. Blue stuff has seeds in it, soaked it in water for an hour or so and the coating came off. The yellow foxtail grass has turned into mustard powder kinda thing after being soaked. The whole water smells of spices. I've already setup two setup 1st and second. I'm a bit skecptical about the 3rd one as I'm setting up the first 2 on window sill where they get good 3-4 hours of sunlight. If I cover them in water it might be infected by algae in no time.
Do I need to cover all three to increase humidity?

 

[miremonster]

Yes, covering of sowing with glass, transparent plastic foil or similar is helpful to keep humidity. For variant 1 (normal humidity, not wet): if you know someone who has experience in sowing flowers, herbs, vegetables in pots indoor, you could ask for advice. I guess that the most of these seeds could be sown also in a garden bed.

Sowing under water: I've sown Echinodorus berteroi e.g. in a jar with some centimeters garden soil covered with washed sand, filled with water, set on the windowsill. Yes, some filamentous algae, but the seed did germinate and the seedlings grew.

"Foxtail grass": that may also refer to Setaria or Pennisetum species (grasses with small, millet-like seed grains).

"Cowhair": if Eleocharis, it's not necessarily E. acicularis, there are many Eleocharis species. The seed of E. looks like that: http://www.efloras.org/object_page.aspx?object_id=10133&flora_id=1

 

[Tanan]

Planted seeds on 8/2/14
The pics are of today (11.2.14)
Only 2 plants has started to germinate. The wet soil, open system didn't lead to any germination whatsoever. I flooded it today with 1.5" of water and threw some more seeds in it.

 

[Tanan]

More seedlings! First I thought they were worms. LOL

 

[AleksandraMNE]

Hallo!

First, I am new here, and I am not from USA so my english is not very well.

I bought seed like this from China and now I dont know what to do with it! How to plant it? Any help is welcome!

regards,

Aleksandra

 

[Tugg]

Your english is fine. Probably better than the average Americans.

You're question is basically what we're looking into. Miremonster had a few good ways to start a few posts back. Since diffrent plants likely have diffrent triggers to cause them to germinate, we basically need to divide up the supply and try a few diffrent ways with each one. If I can ever find the time, I plan to get mine going too. I have no clue what my $7 got me.