On Monday 21st May (Chelsea Press Day), when various bloggers were tripping home from Chelsea with tarwi seeds, I decided it was time to sow mine. The above photo, which shows the tarwi beans in all their glory, is primarily aimed at Bugs and her bean-stroking cohorts. I know it’s only 2D, but it will have to do ;)
The instructions I was given was to soak them in warm water for 24 hours. I’ve always wondered whether those instructions mean that you should attempt to keep the water warm for 24 hours, but in this case it didn’t matter because it was sunny and the windowsill was warm.
24 hours later, 4 of the 5 beans I soaked had swelled, and the tiny little runty one I had few hopes for hadn’t. I sowed all 5 onto damp cotton wool, as instructed, and left them on the sunny windowsill in a propagator. Two days later they went to Malvern with me, by which time the most precocious bean had germinated. I potted it up on Saturday morning, and it’s in the greenhouse in Malvern.
By Monday morning, two more beans had germinated.
Including the runt! Its first root (radicle) was growing well into the cotton wool.
So I potted them up when I got home from Malvern, and this morning they have both broken through.
Which leaves two more tarwi seeds sitting on the window sill, and I don’t know whether they will germinate now or not. We will have to wait and see.
The budding botanists among you will no doubt have noticed that Lupinus mutabilis displays epigeal germination, with the seed leaves (cotyledons) appearing above soil level.
Rhizowen wrote:
...on Thu, May 31 '12 (358 days ago)