🌱Growing With Ben🌱 ~ The Chonicles of the Troublesome Seeds

[All4Eggz]

Feel free to share tips, tricks, and give us updates on how your garden and plants are doing, in this thread. Share tips on growing plants from seed and be sure to post pics. All are welcome.

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After multiple attempts at growing a lemon tree from seed, I have failed yet again. I have tried every method possible, and have had no luck.


Here’s what I did after scouring the internet to find the best methods for sprouting these various seeds.

Lemon

Get a lemon from the store.
Preferably a Meyer lemon.

Extract as many seeds as you can. Be careful not to damage them. I extracted 10 seeds from this lemon.

Rinse seeds to get all the slimy fruit off.

Soak in warm water for 1 hour.

Lay out a wet paper towel and spread out the seeds onto it.
Fold paper towel a couple times and place into a Ziploc bag and seal it closed.

Let it sit in a warm, dark area (sock drawer, cabinet above the oven, etc.) for 5-7 days.

Yet again, I failed. No sprouts after 7 days. A couple even got moldy.

Orange

Some requested I grow an orange tree along with the lemon tree (in my other Lemon growing thread), and this time around, I found a pot and decided to finaly give it a shot.

Get an orange from the store.

Cut and extract as many seeds as you can.

I have no idea what was wrong with my oranges, but I got only 2 (.5?) seeds from one orange, and I found zero in the other one.

Rinse seeds.

Soak in warm water for 30 minutes.

(in the photo- orange seeds on the left, lemon seeds on the right)

For the orange, they say to plant the seeds directly into soil after soaking, about two inches deep and make sure the soil is moist.

No luck with the orange either. No sprouts after a week.

Cherry
This is the one I was most excited for.
It also happens to be the one that takes the longest to sprout.

Eat some cherries, then rinse a few pits and get all the slimy fruit off them.

Use a wire cutter or can opener (I used a can opener) to crack open the pits GENTLY to get the tiny seeds inside.
Be careful not to damage the skin of the seeds.

After you get a good amount of seeds, soak them in some warm water for 2 hours to rehydrate them.

Next, soak a paper towel in water and lay it out flat.
Spread the seeds onto the wet paper towel and sprinkle cinnamon onto the seeds to prevent mold development and growth.

Fold paper towel a couple times and wrap in some aluminum foil.

Now store then in the fridge for at least one month.

Cucumber
Heck, this one’s short.

I opened up at least 5 cucumbers, bit and small, from the garden and found no viable seeds. I tried cucumbers that were a little older, and still no luck. They are all not developed enough to be planted.

Anyone have luck with getting seeds from cucs?

Instead, I made this delicious, 4 ingredient salad.

Cut up the cucs.
Mix in some sour cream.
Add salt and pepper to taste.

If you grow just cucumbers, or haven’t gotten any other veggies from the garden yet… try this salad. It’s a Slavic favorite.


Feel free to follow along as I attempt (in the future) to grow a lemon tree, after I get some tips from y’all.
Has anyone had success growing a lemon, cherry, or orange tree from seed?
How did you do it?

Tips for growing in general are welcome and encouraged.

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[NC_Quail]

I noticed you collected store bought fruit seeds to plant. You may already know this, but many store-bought fruits (At least where I live) are either hybrids, or grafted onto a root stock. Hybrids are infertile (not 100% sure this is always correct, but 80% sure), and seeds from grafted plants usually won’t grow in the ground outside (hence why they are grafted onto a different root stock). We usually buy saplings from the nursery, but I haven’t done much research on growing fruit trees from seed and where to get reliable seed.

I hope I didn’t discourage you to much, good luck in your endeavors! I will be following, I love gardening of all kinds.

 

[All4Eggz]

I noticed you collected store bought fruit seeds to plant. You may already know this, but many store-bought fruits (At least where I live) are either hybrids, or grafted onto a root stock. Hybrids are infertile (not 100% sure this is always correct, but 80% sure), and seeds from grafted plants usually won’t grow in the ground outside (hence why they are grafted onto a different root stock). We usually buy saplings from the nursery, but I haven’t done much research on growing fruit trees from seed and where to get reliable seed.

I hope I didn’t discourage you to much, good luck in your endeavors! I will be following, I love gardening of all kinds.

Thanks for the info!
I have heard so many people have had success growing fruit with the seeds from store bought fruit, so I thought I’d give it a shot.

 

[R2elk]

Anyone have luck with getting seeds from cucs?

Cucumbers have to be fully ripe before their seeds are viable. This usually means letting the cucumber turn yellow on the vine.

The same thing with green bell peppers. If the pepper is green the seeds will not be viable. Green bell peppers typically turn red when they are mature and the seeds become viable.

 

[Artichoke Lover]

Thanks for the info!
I have heard so many people have had success growing fruit with the seeds from store bought fruit, so I thought I’d give it a shot.

I can happen but only with certain vegetables and what you end up growing may or may not be edible. If you are set on grocery store vegetables your best bets are colored bell peppers (red/orange/yellow), winter squash like butternut or pumpkins and dried beans and popcorn. Though I wouldn’t recommend eating any of the pumpkins or squash. It’s too late in the year for most of the list I’ve given unfortunately.

 

[Artichoke Lover]

If you want things to try this year you might try getting seeds for things like lettuce or radishes those will grow quickly and are very easy to grow.

 

[R2elk]

I noticed you collected store bought fruit seeds to plant. You may already know this, but many store-bought fruits (At least where I live) are either hybrids, or grafted onto a root stock. Hybrids are infertile (not 100% sure this is always correct, but 80% sure), and seeds from grafted plants usually won’t grow in the ground outside (hence why they are grafted onto a different root stock). We usually buy saplings from the nursery, but I haven’t done much research on growing fruit trees from seed and where to get reliable seed.

I hope I didn’t discourage you to much, good luck in your endeavors! I will be following, I love gardening of all kinds.

That isn't how it works. If the fruit is mature it may contain viable seeds. Most veggies from the store are not ripe enough for the seeds to be viable. Hybrids are not infertile in most cases.

The problem with seeds from hybrids is that they will not be what the hybrid is but will be something else.

The reason for grafting trees is that the desired tree is a hybrid. The seeds will not produce the same tree that they came from. They take cuttings from the desired tree and graft in onto a different root stock so they can reproduce the hybrid tree. Many times the root stock that they use is a dwarfing root stock.

I have plants and trees coming up all over the placer from seeds from hybrid plants and trees that the birds plant. They will grow but they won't produce the exact same tree or plant that the hybrid was.

 

[NatJ]

After multiple attempts at growing a lemon tree from seed, I have failed yet again. I have tried every method possible, and have had no luck.

Did you try just putting the seeds in a pot with some other plant, and leaving them to do their own thing? I'm pretty sure I had success with that at some point in the past.

The reason for putting them in with another plant is so they get watered (because I'm better at watering plants than I am at watering pots of bare-looking dirt.)

I think I had lemon and apple at one point, and someone I know did some kind of citrus more recently. I have no idea how many seeds were planted each time to get one or two plants, and I have no idea how long they took to sprout.

No sprouts after 7 days.

I have not specifically researched lemons, but I know that some kinds of seeds take MUCH longer than that to sprout.

A couple even got moldy.

Definitely time to throw those ones out.

Get an orange from the store.

I have no idea what was wrong with my oranges, but I got only 2 (.5?) seeds from one orange, and I found zero in the other one.

They call them "seedless" oranges for a reason

I opened up at least 5 cucumbers, bit and small, from the garden and found no viable seeds. I tried cucumbers that were a little older, and still no luck. They are all not developed enough to be planted.

Anyone have luck with getting seeds from cucs?

They have to grow a lot more before you can get good seeds out of them.
By that point, no-one wants to eat them, so you do not see them in the grocery store.

The problem with seeds from hybrids is that they will not be what the hybrid is but will be something else.

Not the same variety, but it should always be the same species (so pepper seeds grow pepper plants, apple seeds grow apple trees, and so forth.)

There is no danger of planting a pepper seed and getting an apple tree. But you might get a pepper (or apple) of a different size, shape, color, and flavor than the parent fruit.

 

[AmeraucanaHank]

Lemon

Get a lemon from the store.
Preferably a Meyer lemon.

Extract as many seeds as you can. Be careful not to damage them. I extracted 10 seeds from this lemon.

Rinse seeds to get all the slimy fruit off.

Soak in warm water for 1 hour.

Lay out a wet paper towel and spread out the seeds onto it.
Fold paper towel a couple times and place into a Ziploc bag and seal it closed.

Let it sit in a warm, dark area (sock drawer, cabinet above the oven, etc.) for 5-7 days.

Yet again, I failed. No sprouts after 7 days. A couple even got moldy.

My brother once successfully sprouted a lemon, it lived for 2 years before he forget to water it and only got about 6 inches high. Have you tried scraping off the outer layer of the seed to get only the black inside and then planting it?

 

[R2elk]

Not the same variety, but it should always be the same species (so pepper seeds grow pepper plants, apple seeds grow apple trees, and so forth.)

There is no danger of planting a pepper seed and getting an apple tree. But you might get a pepper (or apple) of a different size, shape, color, and flavor than the parent fruit.

Of course if you plant a plumcot seed you are likely to get either a plum or an apricot instead of a plumcot.