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Jarmination

3/6/2022

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Milkweed seed germination in a jar

Materials

Method / Process

Clip the Milkweed Seeds if appropriate. See blog on Clipping.
Add water to a container and soak seeds 24 hours.
Remove the jar’s lid and sprinkle milkweed seeds on the surface of the soil.
Add four tablespoons of water over the seeds.
Sprinkle the included Coconut Coir (dust/sand) evenly over the wet seeds and soil.
Place one 6x6 Cellophane Sheet over the jar with the butterfly hole centered. Put the ring of the jar lid back on.
Place the jar on a sunny window sill and watch your milkweed grow.

Tutorial with Pictuers

1. Clip the Milkweed Seeds if appropriate.
See the document on clipping for details about the clipping process and which seeds are recommended to be clipped or unclipped. Generally, small seeds do not benefit from clipping. Large seeds can benefit a great deal from clipping. If you are familiar with cold moist stratification (CMS) and have already stratified the seeds, clipping can be skipped with stratified seeds. I like to take seeds from dry storage to planting without stratification. Clipping bypasses the need for CMS which is wonderful.

Nail clippers have clipped off the tip of an asclepias speciosa seed.

Clipping asclepias speciosa

2. Add water to a container and soak seeds 24 hours.
Grab a glass from your kitchen cabinet. Add either tap water or distilled water. Place the milkweed seeds in the glass for the next day. You do not need to replenish or freshen the water during this period. Just let the seed soak up the water for a full 24 hours. If you clipped the seed in step 1 there is a very slim chance the root begins to grow before sowing. If you read about Water Germination this process should be familiar to you. Rather than do multiple water changes. We will plant the seeds in step 3 and let the jar do the work. Jarmination lets you plant the seeds next and not have to handle the seeds again till it is time to plant the rooted seedlings.

25 seeds soaking in water in a plastic cup.

Soak seeds in water 24 hrs

3. Remove the jar’s lid and sprinkle Milkweed Seeds on the surface of the soil.
Leave the soil dry for this step. You are taking the seeds that have been soaking in water for 24 hours and planting them in this step. Do not overthink this step. Dry the seeds if it helps. Drop the seeds onto the surface of the dry soil. If you can, distribute the seeds evenly around the soil inside the jar. I like to plant about twenty five seeds in each jar. I will discourage you from planting more than fifty seeds or fewer than five seeds in each jar. Twenty to twenty five seeds is a manageable amount that yields good results.

4. Add four tablespoons of water over the seeds.
Now it is time to add a measured amount of water to the jarmination container. Gently pour one tablespoon of water per two ounces of container size. Directions are written based on the assumption you are using the Ball Regular Mouth Canning Jar 8 oz. Adjust watering based on your container size by using the chart below.

4 oz. jar = 2 tablespoons water
8 oz. jar = 4 tablespoons water (recommended container size)
12 oz. jar = 6 tablespoons water
16 oz jar = 8 tablespoons water

After the initail watering. Do not water for three days.

5. Sprinkle the included Coconut Coir (dust/sand) evenly over the wet seeds and soil.
In step 3 we sprinkled the seeds on the surface of the soil. In this step we thinly cover the seed with Coconut Coir. Not more than one tablespoon of Coconut Coir. The seeds do not need to be fully covered. Enough Coconut Coir to hug up against the seed is good. Do not water until three days has passed.

6. Place one 6x6 Cellophane Sheet over the jar with the butterfly hole centered. Put the ring of the jar lid back on.
Try not to drop or shake the jar from here on out. Grab one Cellophane Sheets with Butterfly Holes. Place the cellophane sheet over the jar with the butterfly holes centered over the opening. Hold the cellophane in place with one hand. With your other hand grab the aluminum lid ring. Twist the lid onto the jar while pressing the cellophane down against the jar using even pressure. The cellophane sheet is now secured in place between the lid ring and the jar. Setup is complete!

7. Place the jar on a sunny window sill and watch your milkweed grow.
This is a Spring and Sumer activity. If it is getting warm outside then it is also warm inside your home. Jarmination works best during warm weather. Place the jarmination container on a window sill. If you want to do jarmination during the fall or winter then you will benefit greatly from placing your jar on a Seedling Heat Mat. The most common failure point in jarmination is temps not being warm enough.

Direct sun is not required. Place the jarmination container near a window with bright but indirect sunlight.

Jar Selection Tips

Selecting the correct jar is important.
Don't select a jar with a top narrower than the bottom. The opening at the top of the jar is called the mouth. The mouth of the jar must be as wide or wider than the rest of the jar. If the mouth of the jar narrows, even slightly. Don't use that jar. Removing the plants can become impossible when the mouth narrows. Use the examples below as a guide to select the correct jar shape.

Can you see the YES jars (below) have mouths as wide or wider than the jar's bottom?

YES

Can you see the NO jars (below) have wider bottoms than the mouth? The narrowing at the mouth of the jar is a NO. Do not use a jar with this shape.

The honey jar below is an example of the wrong jar shape. The jar bottom is wider that the jar mouth. In order to remove the plants from the jar I had to shatter the glass. Not only is breaking the glass unsafe. It made the glass impossible to recycle or reuse. The goal of jarmination is to reuse the materials indefinitely.

The Ball Regular Mouth Canning Jar 8 oz. is the recommended jar for jarmination. These jars are in most grocery stores. The jars mouth is slightly wider than the jars base. Removing the plants for transplant is easy. Water the soil to add weigh. Tilt the jar on it's side and with a light shake the roots and soil come right out of the jar.

YES

Examples

Free download ↩️

Jarmination.pdf
File Size:	4914 kb
File Type:	pdf

Download File

6 Comments

Clipping milkweed seeds

3/6/2022

1 Comment

Clipping is a simple process. Clip off the tip of the milkweed seed. Milkweed seeds are drop shaped seeds. A milkweed seed has a wide round end and a narrow, pointy end. Clip off the narrow, pointy end. This is where the root grows. By clipping off the tip of the seed you can skip cold moist stratification and germinate the seed fast. Usually in less then a week if the seed is wet and warm.

MATERIALS:

• nail clippers, scissor or a knife (I prefer nail clippers like you see in the photo below)

Process:

In a single clean cut. Clip off the tip of the milkweed seed. Thats all. Now plant.

A. speciosa before clipping.

A. speciosa is clipped.

A. speciosa after clipping.

DOWNLOAD GUIDE AS A .PDF DOCUMENT

Which milkweed seeds benefit from clipping?

Do clip (always optional)

Asclepias arenaria
Asclepias californica
Asclepias cordifolia
Asclepias latifolia
Asclepias speciosa

Asclepias syriaca
Asclepias purpurascens
Asclepias texana
Asclepias vestita

Which milkweed seeds do not benefit from clipping?

Do not clip

Asclepias angustifolia
Asclepias curassavica
Asclepias engelmanniana
Asclepias erosa
Asclepias fascicularis
Asclepias hallii
Asclepias incarnata
Asclepias involucrata
Asclepias linaria
Asclepias nivea

Asclepias oenotheroides
Asclepias ovalifolia
Asclepias perennis
Asclepias subulata
Asclepias subverticillata
Asclepias tuberosa
Asclepias verticillata
Calotropis gigantea
Calotropis pricera
Gonolobus suberosus

I have not been able to compare clipping and not clipping with every species of milkweed. The vast majority of milkweed in North America is hard to find, unless you are a butterfly. If the seed species is not listed above then it is unknown. As a reminder, clipping is always optional.

Unknown:
everything else

History Lesson

Asclepias cordifolia has been one of the most challenging milkweed seeds to germinate and grow. Through discussions with members of the Grow Milkweed Plants group on facebook and other social media channels. I was encouraged to pull off the tip of the seed jacket that covers the root radical. Clipping was born, April 3rd 2018, at least to me. Keep reading for more history going back over forty years.

Early success for me. Although not technically clipping as described in this blog. The technique was successful. The asclepias cordifolia seed had been cold moist stratified for nearly sixty days. Submerged in water the entire time. I alternated weeks between the refrigerator and freezer. In very rare cases such as with asclepias cordifolia the freezer may be used. By using tweezers I was simply removing the seed coat over the root embryo.

April 3, 2018 A. cordifilia

Having no formal education in plant biology. I did not even know this could be done without harming the seed let alone that it would help with germination.

True origin and additional education about milkweed germination

Written by Stephen Broyles,
SCoRER=Seed Coat Over Root of Embryo Removed.

"I have observed this technique of rapid seed milkweed seed germination evolve into “clipping” on Grow Milkweed since it was introduced on January 23, 2018. I have wanted to revisit the why and how of this technique for some time and make sure individuals do it for the right reasons and invest the time to perform the technique properly. Why? I started using SCoRER in the 1980’s while in graduate school. I was using enzyme electrophoresis to study genetic variation, hybridization, and pollen movement in populations of milkweeds. Enzyme electrophoresis worked best on actively growing seedlings. At the time, I was using seeds of A. amplexicaulis, A. exaltata, A. purpurascens, and A. syriaca that usually required moist-cold stratification for germination. SCoRER allowed me to overcome cold stratification and produce actively growing seedlings quickly when needed. I needed thousands of seedlings to be grown in an efficient and well-timed manner. If I simply need germinating seeds to produce plants and you are patient, then six weeks in moist soil placed in a freezer works well. Proper removal of the seed coat is tricky, time consuming, and requires some finger dexterity. If you are patient (Broyles is not), then cold-moist stratification for these species is easier and effective. The technique. . .(a) seeds were soaked on moist filter paper for 2-3 days to soften tissue, (b) a single edge razor blade was used to CAREFULLY cut into the seed coat to pop the seed coat covering off the embryonic root, (c) the seed was returned to the moist filter paper and placed under bright lights.

Green, intact seedlings, with a nice root would grow within 7-10 days. This was perfect for enzyme electrophoresis. However, if the embryonic root was damaged, then seed germination was not ideal and seedlings would not have properly growing roots. This happened frequently, but I also sowed more seeds than were needed.

SCoRER=Seed Coat Over Root of Embryo Removed by Steven Broyles

For those of you who use the methods of clipping using fingernail clippers, you are likely cutting through the root and ruining many of your seeds. I recommend modifying your technique to protect the root or choosing another method (cold-moist stratification) to germinate your seeds. Obviously, many species (e.g., A. tuberosa, A. curassavica, A. incarnata, A. perennis, etc) do not require any stratification to germinate and sowing in moist soil is easy and quick. While I have used the SCoRER method for nearly 40 years, the acronym was constructed in my early morning daze of 21 January 2022." -Steven Broyles

1 Comment

Jarmination

Materials

Method / Process

Tutorial with Pictuers

Jar Selection Tips

Examples

Clipping milkweed seeds

MATERIALS:

Process:

History Lesson

Site Search

Author

Blog Archives

Blog Categories

email Subscriber archive

EMAIL NEWSLETTER

social media

Site related resources

Jarmination

Materials

Method / Process

Tutorial with Pictuers

Jar Selection Tips

​Examples

Clipping milkweed seeds

MATERIALS:

Process:

History Lesson

Site Search

Author

Blog Archives

Blog Categories

email Subscriber archive

EMAIL NEWSLETTER

social media

Site related resources

Examples