Sowing Seeds Part 1

   Sowing the seeds from your Adeniums can be a rewarding activity in the keeping of desert roses. Although in my experience so far it has been a bit difficult to get my seedlings to live past a year of growth I still feel I'm learning a lot through trial and error that when I finally do succeed it will be so much more rewarding. Over all it has been a great learning experience.


   In the many years I've kept Adeniums, I've only began attempting to grow them from seeds the last two years. The first year of which I lost all of my seedlings, about 130 seeds due to a damping off, because I kept the sowing trays to wet  for to long after they sprouted.

   The second year I fared a very little bit better. of about 180 seeds I've currently got about 8 that are still alive, again damping off seems to be the major contributing factor, but I also had an outbreak of caterpillars when the seedlings were about an inch tall that I didn't catch until about 30-40 plants had been eaten. It seems these caterpillars like eating the tops off the seedlings. Oddly some of the plants that were eaten, seem to remain alive but have never budded leaves again, although the little caudex's remain firm and continued to grow until I culled them this spring due to limited space. Although I fixed the moisture problem this time, by not watering as much, I think the reason they damped because the pots they were transplanted into were to large, allowing the roots to stay wet for to long between watering. I also think it may have been because I didn't fertilize them at all as seedling, preventing them from growing strong, so they would be more resilient after they are transplanted.

To Be Continued......

"It's better to get things right than to get them fast."
— Christopher Long (A Shot of Poison: An Insider's Tales of One of Rock's Most Outrageous Bands)