chuckwood
Addicted to ArboristSite
- Joined
- Jan 26, 2008
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- Location
- near the Great Smoky Mtns. Tennessee
I'll let you know after my final seed collection. I have created a bottle neck in my Dr. Martin seed supply. I planted about 60 seeds and only one survived to maturity so all of my seed stock if from that one plant. That's not very good plant breeding and my not be representative of what Dr Martin really is. It does look just like Dr Martin and my even be superior in some ways but I have no way of knowing. It is true Dr Martin though and it is what I will be growing from now on. Maybe in a couple of years I'll buy some Dr Martin and plant a small plot and do some comparisons, maybe not. At the present time I have about 60 perfect Dr. Martin seed. These seed are hard to get to come up as the seed is so big that it is not lifted out of the ground on it's own power. I plant Dr. Martin so the eye is down and the back of the seed is at 1/4 inch below ground level. Went the start to come up I can seed the soil crack and then I 'birth' them by pushing some soil away from the seed so it is exposed entirely with the radicle growing firmly in the ground and the seed halves (cotyledons) exposed. On may the seed coat (testa) must be pealed off by hand or the cotyledons never separate from each other. Then I put chicken wire cages over the new plants so rabbits etc. don't get to them. Sometimes I start indoor is styrofoam cups. This is a more sure fire method.
https://www.boundless.com/biology/t...zation-190/development-of-the-seed-725-11954/
My doc martin seeds, all ten of 'em, are in the freezer right now. I'm going to order more of them so I'll have enough to plant on my 90 feet or so of trellises next year. This year's lima crop didn't produce as much as I'd hoped, although I got around seven bushels of beans. I got greedy, planted them too close together at around 18 inches, and got huge masses of leaves and vines but not as many beans. It also took a very long time for the beans to mature at around 5 months. Next year I'm planting pole limas at least three feet apart and a couple weeks earlier than I did this year. Today I'll be canning lima beans. The instructions that came with my small packet of doc martin's said to first soak the seeds in wet towels and get them germinating first before planting them.