Germinating Aloe polyphylla - An Alternative Approach

In an earlier article, I posted the method given to me by the South African grower of my original batch of seeds.  Here they recommended 1 or 2 cold periods followed by a warm period to break the dormancy.

Since then I have been trialling small batches of the seed in order to test other methods or to prove that one.  Using the double dormant method, I was seeing around 50% germination - very uneven though and taking many weeks were the chances of getting a fungal infection on the seed was very high, especially given the removal from sale of most of the effective seedling treatments.

This season, I was lucky.  A grower in the UK who had seed from my orginal certified batch, was able to offer me in excess of 3000 seeds from his own plants that he had hand pollinated.  Armed now with a surplus of seed I may not be able to sell in a single season, I decided to to try a more radical method I had read about.

The seeds - in my case 30 seeds (1 percent of my stock) get put in cool water.  A jam jar in my case, in my kitchen on a granite worktop which sits at an even 12 Deg C.  At first the seed floats, this remains the case for the next 6 days, then they start to slowly sink.

Between 12 days and 14 days the first seeds germinate - by day 16 I have four potted up in compost and put in the warm in one of my mini propagators.  By day 24 a further 6 have germinated  and then by day 30, all the seeds are showing signs of growth. 

So I now have 30 seedlings - of course they are very small, a single leaf and a single root, so the trick will now be to keep them going until I get a second/third leaf and I can breathe a bit more easily around my delicate and valuable charges.

I really did doubt that this method would be as successful as the fridge method, after all, it doesnt seem to make a lot of sense - until you consider how wet and cold it is in their home on the mountains of Lesotho.  The germinate on steep slopes in the cold and very damp grass in their homeland, so why not in my kitchen given a similar treatment.  This avoids having the seed dry out (fatal), the introduction of fungal spores (almost always fatal) and the rapidly changing condtions on the surface of the soil in a propagator (often fatal).  So 30 seeds, now 30 seedlings - it will be interesting to see how they grow from here on in.

So for the instructions:

1. Clean jar
2. Cold water
3. Seeds on top of water, place some where cool and even temperature, around 10 - 14 C
4. Stir seeds daily, change water every 3 or 4 days
5. Once they sink, change the water.
6. From day 10 watch for a little green leaf out of the seed or perhaps a white root
7. When you have a root and leaf, pot up in cactus compost and continue to grow bright, warm but shaded from full sun.  Do not let it dry out, do not overwater it.
8. In a few months the new leaves will show and by 6 months to 18 months you will see the spiral form (clockwise or counter clockwise).
9. In 6 -7 years your plants may flower and if you hand cross you will get seeds that are worth a small fortune (quite literally thier weight in gold).