Great that you found something that works for your daughter! One of the reasons I want landrace gardening to work for me is to reduce the amount of time needed to have a productive garden, leaving more time for family while still feeding them healthy foods. Good luck with your daughter’s continued progress.
Thank you! And yes, I completely agree! More time to spend with my family is a high priority.
Yay!
After 13 days, planted the seedlings into the soil of the greenhouse.
Germination of PI-438572 = 14/20 = 70%.
Nothing visibly germinated in the other accession.
Its been 15 days for me and i cant see any signs of germination😬 the corn that i planted in the same spots is germinating. I am still holding out hope that it will just be a slightly slower germination since i started them outdoors
Out of the ones I planted outdoors after seeing signs of germination, I now have four visible cotyledons, one of which now has a true leaf. #5-#8 haven’t popped up yet, and #3 barely popped up yesterday and #4 just appeared today. So, I think there’s a very good chance your seeds are growing roots and just haven’t put their leaves up yet.
Are you still open to volunteers for this project? I have plenty of space.
Sure! If you PM me your address, I’ll ask Bob at GRIN if he can send you an accession! (Do you want one, or do you have enough space that you could easily have the isolation space grow more than one?)
I put 11 sprouting seeds in soil. None of them have popped above the surface. I’m worried something went wrong, but hoping they’re just slow.
I’m hoping they’re just slow, too. It may be that they’re good at growing deep roots before they sent up cotyledons. That can happen with squashes, and it’s common with varieties or species that are super drought tolerant.
Woo hoo hoo! Congratulations!
I got 438571, wild, Guatemala, from 1979. The seeds appear healthy, none flat or cracked.
Apparently at some point they were stored in newspaper, because they still have black lettering on them.

Hee hee, that’s a fun detail to notice. They look nice and healthy, especially for old seeds!
I asked Bob at GRIN how the seeds had been stored, because I was curious. He said this:
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Hi Emily,
Those seed were initially stored at 4C (refrigerator) and about 25 years ago were moved to -20C (freezer). Under the correct storage conditions they remain viable for quite a long period of time (per your results). We have very little to no data on the storage life of those materials as there are so few seed remaining that there are not enough to use for periodic germ testing. Nice to hear that you recovered some plants.
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So, cool! With them having been stored at such low temperatures, that’s a hopeful sign that all of the accessions we receive will have some viable seeds.
We have germination, after 2 days in the bags. 8/20
I scraped the edges of 15 out of 20, but those not scraped have germinated at the same rate.
I noticed that a few of the seeds started showing “bruising” almost immediately. Basically they were absorbing the water very quickly.
I marked those with a small dot on the bags. It appears that 7 of those that have germinated were in that group.
14 out of 20 now.
I think I have to conclude that I’ve killed all my plants. Nothing has come out of the soil even though they were growing when I buried them.
Awww. (Hugs.)
I got four out of twenty that survived. I think I would have had 8-12, but most of them got eaten by a swarm of pill bugs. (I have now thoroughly learned my lesson: mulch only belongs on the soil after seeds have germinated.)
I checked yesterday, and it looks like one of them may have died in the last few days. Aww! Hopefully it’ll recover, but it’s in a bad way. The other three all look good. I don’t think it was drought, because we’ve had really heavy rain twice in the past week, and there’s mulch on the soil, and the soil is staying damp. Well, whatever the cause, I hope at least those three live, and it would be great if the fourth one recovers.
Hello, all. I need some advice. My plants are growing, albeit slowly. I had planted 2 seeds per hole thinking that there would be some loss. But all the seeds germinated and so there are two plants very close to each other in most spots. Some plants seem a little more yellow than others. The soil is a sandy loam and has not been amended. Our highs have ranged from the low 70’s to the upper 80’s, with light showers from time to time. I’ve been watering about once a week. In another post, @ThomasPicard mentioned that they like water:
Should I give more water? Some fertilizer? Should I thin to 1 plant per spot? In this instance, I assume that we are trying to get seeds without much selection pressure. Thanks for your help!