I haven't winter sown azalea as no chill is required, but it might be interesting to see what your results are.

The usual germination suggestions are consistent moisture, warmth, surface sown on an acid based medium.

Here is a link that might be useful: azalea from seed

Dieter; 2 to 3 weeks and you should see them poking their
heads, then wait till the first set of "true" leaves,that's when you will know how succesful you have been.

Transplanting next into flats, light "feeding", and awaiting blooms in about 2 to 4 years.

good luck and it's a start of great things to come.

I sow mine on a 1/8" layer of moist sphagnum moss I've rubbed through a fine screen. The sphagnum layer is over a soiless potting mix that's very light (won't get soggy) and has a little Holly-Tone mixed into it. The container? Those disposable refrigerator containers you get at the grocery store. Glad makes them, among other brands. I just get whatever's cheapest and has a clear, rather than colored, lid. I buy the soup/salad size, 5 for $2, and punch lots of holes in the bottom for drainage with an icepick. I use only distilled water for all moistening and subsequent watering and feeding solutions -- this is important if you have alkaline water and/or use city water with chlorine.

I surface sow the seed, mist it, put the lid on the container, put the container in a gallon ziplock bag on which I've written all sowing/provenance info, and stick the whole kit and caboodle 4" under a fluorescent light. Fresh seed comes up without fail in 2 weeks.

It does work. Right now I have seedlings of 10 species and 4 naturally occuring hybrids. This method also works for other stuff, like Leucothoe, Oxydendron and Itea, by the way.

Oh, one other thing -- sift the chaff/woody capsule bits out of the seed as much as possible to avoid encouraging mold in the seed container.

HTH.

Soeur

Soeur,

What mix do you use that won't get soggy?

I have done this once or twice and have a lot of mortality among the little seedlings. Is that normal? I have wondered if my mix doesn't drain well enough. I have also gotten some algae on the mix, although I'm not sure that hurts. I have never used distilled water, and perhaps that's the problem.

I'd appreciate your thoughts and suggestion of what mix to use that will drain well.

David

Soeur's directions are excellent. Another method, closely related, is to use live moss - haircap moss is very good - rather than the dried sphagnum. Sow the seeds on the moss surface and keep in a closed container under flourescent lights as per Soeur's message. I have hundreds of rhododendron self sown seedlings appear each year, always on moss and never anywhere else. It is important to use distilled water, rain water or melted snow. All members of the ericacea can be grown this way and develop surprisingly fast.

Well, maybe my problem has been the non-distilled water. I would still be interested to know what seed starting mix people recommend. (Using moss, do you put it on something? Do they root in the moss?)

I get great germination on a standard mix (sphagnum + vermiculite + somethingorother), but then high mortality of the small seedlings. If mine don't progress quickly to about three pairs of true leaves, they tend to wither and die.

Hi David,

Sorry I didn't respond to your question sooner. I haven't been online here for a while.

As you've noticed, sharp drainage is critical to success. Make sure you've punched oodles of drain holes in your container. But because you want that seeming oxymoron of growing plants, "moist, well-drained soil", you'd do best to make your own. Here's what I do:

Ingredients are a good soilless potting mix, some peat moss, some perlite and medium vermiculite. Proportions are roughly 3 parts soilless mix to 2 parts perlite, 1 part screened peat moss and 1/2 part vermiculite. I put it together like this, wearing a disposable dust mask: First, perlite goes in a container (a 5 gal bucket is fine) and is thoroughly moistened with distilled water. Stir it to get every particle moist. Add the screened peat and mix well. The water clinging to the perlite will moisten the peat in seconds (dry peat moss is water repellent and can take days to moisten up by other methods). Add the soilless mix, vermiculite and a little Holly-Tone fertilizer, maybe 1/4 cup to a full 5 gallon bucket of mix. That's it. If you still have drainage issues, up the perlite content.

The screened, moistened sphagnum goes on top of this soil mix in a 1/8" layer. The seedlings germinate on the moss and root down into the soil below.

Soft acid water is essential. Distilled water, or rain water, or snow runoff is fine. Most well water is hard and often alkaline, coming as it does from bedrock. City water systems have chemical components that you want to avoid, and that water is often quite hard and alkaline, too.

Soeur

DO ANY OF YOU HAVE A FEW SEEDS TO SHARE??? I JUST MOVED HERE TO TN FROM TEXAS AND DON'T HAVE ANYTHING TO TRADE, BUT IF I HAVE GOOD GERMINATION, I'LL BRING SOME SEEDLINGS TO THE NEXT SWAP. I HAVE ALWAYS HAD VERY GOOD RESULTS GROWING ROSES FROM CUTTINGS BUT HAVE NEVER TRIED THIS WITH RHODIES OR AZALEAS BUT WOULD LIKE TO TRY THAT THIS SPRING. ANYONE ELSE DOING THAT?

Ah, I will definitely try the spagnum moss on top. I have been having a lot of trouble with young seedlings dying off, too, the potting mix was too moist for them.

Souer,
Do you mean the sphagnum moss like florists use in arrangements? Where did you get it?
Alicia

Thanks, Soeur. Next year maybe I'll have better luck. I think I just don't get enough drainage.

Alicia, around here you can buy bags of long fiber dried sphagnum moss at garden centers -- I've even seen it at Lowe's, too. That's what I use. I just rub it through a strainer, the ordinary kind with a handle you can buy in the kitchen tools section of a grocery store. It's the same moss as florists use, just dried.

If the potting mix stays too moist or drainage isn't sufficient, add perlite. Don't worry about the seemingly big size of the perlite relative to the tiny seed. The sphagnum moss (or live moss, like Mainegrower uses) gets the seed going and then it roots down easily into the medium below. It seems to me azalea seedlings likes a lot of oxygen in the soil and not too much wet. Once they get beyond a certain size it becomes less critical. The other thing to do is make sure your containers have as many drain holes as you can reasonably punch in the bottom. I use an ice pick and put maybe 20 sizable holes in the bottom of a 3" x 5" container. You want the water to flow freely out of the bottom.

Soeur

Mainegrower suggested using live moss, and as another post of mine indicates, I'd like more details about it. Just how does that work, Mainegrower? I've got two slabs of moss, with about 1/2" - 1" dirt attached (which I am afraid will not drain that well). What now?

I begged an assortment of seeds from generous growers here on the forum and elsewhere up and down the Appalachians. I used the instructions for starting them that I found here and that definitely advised using distilled water. I have 17 covered tubs of seeds planted with a 50/50 mix of perlite and peat moss, a little hollytone and topped with milled sphagnum. After about 2 weeks I have seedlings just up in about half the pots but am already fighting fungus, a fine, white cobwebby growth. The milled sphagnum doesn't seem to give much protection. I tried spraying with an anti-microbial/antifungal spray, (same ingredients as Physan but different trade name). It didn't seem to help so I reluctantly bought some Mancozeb, mixed it to the minimum strength and drenched the pots. It seems to have killed off the fungus and so far doesn't seem to have harmed the seedlings. Does anyone have a theory about what this fungus is and whether it would be harmful if not treated?

By the way, I couldn't find milled sphagnum locally but was able to order big bags from Jung Seed:
www.jungseed.com

I used disposable vinyl gloves when handling it because I've read that there is some nasty skin infection you can get from handling it.

susanwoods,

Last year I used essentially your system and got some damping off at the beginning and then, I think, further fungal infection later. I used bags of fine, NoDampOff milled sphagnum I had seen recommended, but it didn't seem to deter infection (and actually, I got real damping off for the first time ever; go figure). It was my worst try ever. I'm not sure exactly how I'll do it this year, but am pondering various alternatives. You've got a lot of stuff planted, by the way; good luck.

my seedlings are about six weeks old and are absolutely tiny , I use a magnifying glass to look at them , is this the norm they are so slow growing as well . when will growth speed up