Gardening Tidbits Sans Nostalgia

Coontie cones making more seeds for moi.

See the grooves? That's "scarification" ... not the Halloween Steven King kind ... rhymes with "carification" (carification = your teen's need to borrow the car keys). Scarification is when you abrade or cut the seed coat of a stubborn germinator like the coontie seed above. It allows moisture to get in there and wake up that little embryo sooner. I hope that was a clear clarification of scarification vs. carification.

Yesterday, after a memorial service and seeing some good old friends, I was a little too in touch with my feelings, so today I'm back to guyness and just want to talk about gardenacious stuff.

I have an abundance of mature Coontie (Zamia sp.) plants on my property. Some were growing here when I got here, some are from seeds I collected on Rattlesnake Island, and the prettiest ones are from my Papa's old homestead, before the family finally walked off the property for the last time.

(That wasn't mushy nostalgia, just a factual statement of their origin)

Back in April, I planted a new nursery bed of coontie seeds, but this time, instead of just burying the seeds and waiting a year for them to sprout, I talked to my Dad who has a legendary green thumb just like his Dad did. (No, that's not nostalgia either ... just the facts Maam)

He told me he scarified his coontie with his Case pocket knife to speed up germination and he peeled off the orangey fruit around the seed. Turns out the orange covering is a growth inhibitor.

Some internet research agreed with his advice, but the pocket knife method seemed to slow so I fired up my dremel carving tool and gently wounded each seed before planting in the seedbed you see above.

Then I waited.

In the meantime, I experimented with planting some Pindo palm (a real palm) and Sago palm (not a real palm, but a cycad like coontie) in these buried pots. The problem with black pots in Pure Florida is they get mighty hot in our intense sun, so burying them up to their necks seems like a simple way around this.

I just did these pots a few weeks ago, so don't hold your breath.

I'll let you know when they sprout.

The cool thing is that while I was installing them next to the April scarified coontie seed bed, I accidently dug up a coontie seed.

AND (never start a sentence with "and", I learned that from Mrs. Simpson, my favorite English teacher ... still not nostalgia, just giving her credit) IT HAD ALREADY GERMINATED!!!

A 4 inch long taproot was already snaking out of the seed.
Spectacular!

Coontie is a hot commodity in the xeriscaping world as it's native, not bothered by pests, and as tough as nails ... good American nails ... not those imported bendy kind. Coontie fears no drought.

It occurred to me a while back that with my acreage, a semigreen thumb, and a nephew that owns a huge nursery, I could be the coontie king of Florida. This could be bigger than Hoss's dung beetle business.

In other dirty news, I've got two new baby satsuma trees to plant. I haven't decided where to put them. I may just repot them in bigger pots and baby them through this winter. They're only about 2 feet tall so they may stand a better chance of surviving this winter's freezes if I give them a little headstart before planting them in the ground.

I also found some coral bean seeds I had tucked away in an old film cannister. I planted them in a seed bed this week. These were at least a year old and I did not scarify them, so we'll see how long it takes.

The last little bit of gardenesque news today is it finally rained here last night. Not a little useless sprinkle, but a tropical downpour with spectacular "yabetterunplugeverything" lightning and accompanying thunder.

This morning the frogs down at the "pond" are singing and the deer are everywhere browsing the still wet grass.

They have to eat grass now, since they finished my vegetable garden a long time ago.