Hello all! I’ve got one more example of propagation via seed for you today. We’ll see how the beautiful Cranberry Hibiscus, or rosa de jamaica as it’s known here, is propagated.
When we ask question 1 in our Intuitive Plant Dialogue, “What is the most obvious thing about you?” we see that well, yeah, the red foliage, but also this beautiful flower here. The flowers of this plant are used in stonger doses tomake a medicinal tea, and in weaker doses as a refreshing drink. If we follow the flower after it dies off, we see that there’s a big seed pod that’s left after the flower. When we break open this seed pod (and remember: it always goes flower – fruit – seed) inside we find a viable seed. We’ll collect some of the seed and take it over to plant that in our nursery.
Unfortunately, due to the timing of this video and it being the middle of rainy season, this particular seed pod is full of immature seeds. So I’m not actually going to plant any of this, but what you would do is wait for these seed pods to dry out, and then the seed will be well developed, firm, and quite hard inside, and then you would plant them in the bags. One recommendation: the bag is a great thing for slower growing plants and for all asexual propagation methods. For seed I would probably plant coffee in the bag as opposed to the box; because it’s a slow growing perennial plant it can stay in the bag for several months before it needs to be transplanted. On the other hand, for annuals like peppers or tomatoes I would prefer to use a tray or a box. We us wooden boxes that have about a half-inch or inch of space in between each slat of wood. This way the soil still stays in but it has very good drainage. Again, generally speaking, slower growing perennial seeds go in bags and faster growing annual vegetable seeds go in trays. Happy planting!
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