Germination Test #1 Chinese Long Green Long Beans

[VA_LongBean]

I have a trove of frozen Chinese Long Bean seeds in my freezer, inherited from my parents' house before they moved last year. My family has been growing this, formerly nameless variety since 1974; it was given the name Chinese Long Green by a Gardenweb member I traded it to. My fault for not naming it for the original donor when I had the chance. Anyway, I have maybe a pound and a half of old seed in three lots (sandwich bags) and I do not know how old they are, hence the need to germination test them.
There are also 4 lots of fairly new seed that I saved and labeled so I am not likely to lose the variety any time soon.

The plan was to use 100 seeds from each bag, but somehow I miscounted on at least two so there were either under or over 100 seeds being tested. Simple test, put the 100 seeds on a moist paper towel, fold it over and place in a ziplock bag. Close the bag and label it, check after day 3 and every day till day 6. I consider a seed sprouted if either it has a root coming out of it, or if the hilum? has split and a root is visible inside the seed coat. I am also trying to keep track of those that went moldy, but my tally of those is poor and the number has been small.

Today was test day 5.

Lot 1 is at 67%. The seed coats were very dark when I began the test so my assumption is that these are the oldest seeds.
Lot 2 is at 69%. This baggie holds maybe a pound of seed. Lot 2 and 3 were both the same shade of reddish brown with swirls.
Lot 3 is at 64%. I thought this might be the newest of the old seed, but the germination rate is lagging behind the others.

Interestingly, when the seeds had a day or two to soak they not only became 2-3X larger than dried seed, but they all became a very light reddish brown, like they were when the seed were originally harvested.

Tomorrow night is my cutoff date. Hopefully I will see germination reach 80% in all batches. If I end the test with no remaining seeds in the bag, but do not have "100%" germination I will round the result up to 100%.

Next Week: 15 year old Bloody Butcher corn.

 

[so lucky]

I usually only use a small number when testing germination. 15 seeds germinating out of 20 can be extrapolated to 75%. Helpful if you are running low on seed, but apparently you are not.
Has the corn been in the freezer all this time, too? It will be interesting to see the germination on it.

 

[VA_LongBean]

There is abundant long bean seed to play with even once I give it to those I have promised it to, and the unsuspecting I will spring it on. This variety produces lots of tasty, green pods. MY experience in Virginia is that it produces beginning in mid summer and keeps going until frost, but mileage may vary in other climates. The seeds are kind of widely spaced, I never counted how many per pod on average, but they produced so many pods we always missed a lot and had plenty of seed left over.

The corn was sitting in a bushel basket for over a decade and was the third or possibly fourth grow-out of seed purchased, from possibly Shumways, in the mid 90s. I separated the seed from the cobs in spring 2014 and planted, and planted, and planted, and soaked a bunch that failed to sprout (they began to ferment instead), and planted and finally got a very small number to grow. Part of the problem was undoubtedly how darn cold and wet it was, even in Virginia, last year. So this year I want to continue to grow out my old seed and reserve the new seed for corn muffins and last resort variety saving.

 

[thistlebloom]

I'll be keeping an eye on your Bloody Butcher corn test Long Bean.
Is that a flour corn?

 

[VA_LongBean]

I believe so thistlebloom. I remember reading about it in Organic Gardening magazine when I was a preteen. The idea of a red cornbread seemed really cool.

 

[thistlebloom]

I believe so thistlebloom. I remember reading about it in Organic Gardening magazine when I was a preteen. The idea of a red cornbread seemed really cool.

Was that the article by Mike McGrath? The one where he grew a test plot outside his office? That was the first time I'd heard of it, and the image has stuck with me all these years.

 

[VA_LongBean]

The very article. There were lots of good articles when he was editor.

 

[thistlebloom]

I totally agree. I lost interest in the publication when he left.

Isn't it funny that we both remember that so well?!

 

[VA_LongBean]

The older copies my grandmother had on a shelf got me interested in amaranth. If only I could figure out the threshing process. :/ I have 7 garbage bags full from last season.

 

[VA_LongBean]

Final results:

Batch 1, 78% germination. Some seeds went moldy. Moderate germination.
Batch 2, 84% germination. However, this represents all seeds left in the bag, minus a few that molded. I'm calling this 100%.
Batch 3, 66% germination. Very poor outcome. These seeds may have been damaged at some point by careless handling, or they may be very old seeds despite the light starting seed coat.