The Potted Patch

This is how today felt...cold, dark & wet. Only 3months until Spring......

Nature busy doing its thing.....

Dahlia Seed Collection Experiment...

Today I tested picking seed pods at various stages of maturity to test the difference in seed production quantity and quality. The results definitely surprised me. Usually, I would wait for the seed pod to be dark and dry before harvesting seed. While this process is always effective, todays test has demonstrated it might not be the most productive.

The following is a summary of the findings along with photos of each of the stages described.

For comparative accuracy, seed pods were all picked from 2 x plants of the same variety (Oberon), with pods at 3 varying stages of development: fresh/early pods / mid development pods and end stage dry pods. A total of 9 pods were picked - x3 of each at the same stage of development.

QUANTITY RESULTS:
The dry seed pods produced the lowest quantity of healthy, mature seeds. 3 x pods produced 7, 9 and 14 seeds.

The fresh/early stage pods each produced 16, 18 and 21 healthy seeds.

The mid development pods produced the greatest number of heathy, viable seeds......by a significant level. These 3 pods produced 28, 31 and a whopping 41 seeds.

Quantity summary: the mid stage pods produced the highest quantity of heath viable seeds, significantly higher than the other samples tested.

QUALITY RESULTS:
As expected, the dry seed pods produced the most mature hardened seeds, just less of them. They were easier to separate from the dry chaff compared to the under-developed pods.

The fresh/early stage pods each produced a much high number of small, young green under-developed seeds, however, as per above still produced much higher viable seed numbers than the dry seed pods. The fat bellied seeds were lighter in colour but still firm. The skin of the seed was definitely softer to the touch than the more mature seeds and they were slightly smaller (but not too much), so it will be interesting to see how they go in storage until planting time......watch this space!

The mid development pods produced firm, well coloured seeds which were the same size in comparison to those taken from the fully dry seed pods. There were a few younger, under-developed or thin seeds, but even after disposing of these, the quantity of healthy seeds really surprised me.

Quantity summary: the mid stage pods produced the highest quantity of heath viable seeds, significantly higher than the other samples tested, with quality slightly less mature/hardened than the fully dry pods, but visually very close.

OVERALL SUMMARY:
Having all been sampled from the same 2 plants of the same variety, these finding were really fun to discover and will likely change the timing of my seed harvesting in the future.

The next part of the testing will be to see how the seeds store over winter, then in Spring I will test the differences in germination rates and growth variations.....so stay tuned!

Happy growing everyone.