Q: How long do I need to dry the seeds from a Thai chili before planting?
Mi Vuong,Vancouver
A: Dry them until they resist when you try to bend them. If they do bend, they need drying even more. But not all Thai chili pepper seed is suitable for sprouting.
Seed from some grocery store chili peppers may not grow at all depending on their handling. If they’ve been subjected to high heat to make them mature artificially, or perhaps were sprayed or given a gas process, the seed could be damaged.
The best kind of grocery store source for Thai chili peppers is an organic store, or perhaps an ethnic store where people know how their chili peppers have been treated.
These chili peppers need to be completely ripe before the seeds are close to being ready for harvesting. The mature colour of the peppers may vary. It’s usually red but could be purple, orange, brown or black.
After cleaning the seeds with water, you need to store them in a gently warm place. The top of a refrigerator or water heater should be OK. They shouldn’t be in direct sunlight, not above a heat vent and not in an oven. Shake or stir the seeds a little bit as they dry.
Q: I’ve tried sprouting some camellia cuttings in a bucket of water since September. I put some others deep in root hormone before I stuck them in pots. But all those with growth hormone died. After three months, one of the camellia cuttings has two sprouts that are still alive but it looks like they’re stagnant. I really want to save them.
Addy, Vancouver
A: It’s very rare to succeed in rooting a camellia in water. Virtually all need rooting in soil. An acidic sand-peat mix is best with modest amounts of rooting hormone. Huge amounts of rooting hormone are very hard on plants.
For rooting plants that do succeed in water, rain water is much healthier than city water or well water. Tap water can contain additions such as chlorine while well water may contain various minerals.
Camellias love humid, moist conditions but do need to be rooted in soil. About three, four or five stem nodes is a good length for cuttings, but stems this long won’t contain enough nourishment to support whole leaves and make roots as well. So the leaves should be snipped in half to reduce the drain on the cutting’s energy.
Once the cuttings are planted in soil, they should be misted and placed in a large plastic bag (or propagator) to hold in the moisture. It would be useful to place them on a greenhouse heat mat. Camellias love bottom heat but it should come from a plant mat that’s manufactured especially for plants. Heat mats for people are too hot for plants.
Your camellia pots are best in a warm shady-but-bright place that’s kept gently misted and moist but not drenching wet.
You might experiment by taking one potted cutting and standing it outside against the north or east side of your house wall. The temperatures and humidity at this time of year are very like camellias natural habitat. Be sure to take it in if frost threatens.
Anne Marrison is happy to answer garden questions via amarrison@shaw.ca.
