21/03/2019 - Seedlings

It's the official start of spring today and high time to start potting up the seedlings. The seedlings have been growing fast and a few of them are actually ready to go straight into their final pots with trellis at this point. However having started this early in the year the weather outside is still way too cold and we don't have the room to store a large number of plants indoors in large pots. So most of the seedlings will first be potted to P9 pots (approx. 9cm x 9cm x 9cm) and pruned to prevent them from vining for a while.

Above you can see our first batch of seedlings. You can easily spot the yellow leafed varieties among the bunch, as well as the compact slow growing kikyo varieties. Looking a bit more closely will reveal signs of variegation in some of the cotyledons and first true leaves and a wide variety of leaf shapes. You can even spot 2 varieties with the curled up leaf margin mutation.

A young flower bud on Fuji no Ao.

There's is already quite a few flower buds to be found among the seedlings as well. Which is a clear sign that the 12 hour night periods are doing their job of getting the plants to flower much earlier in the season.

Baby Blue Ray

Keiryu

Kikyo Blue Halo

Raiko

Here's a closer look at four yellow leafed varieties. Top-left: Baby Blue Ray with maple leaves. Top-right: Keiryu with cicada leaves (previous phenotypes we've grown had orthodox leaves). Bottom-left: Kikyo Blue Halo. Very compact with what seems will be crepe leaves. Bottom-right: Raiko with orthodox leaves and light variegation.

Heian no Izumi

Heian no Izumi

Heian no Izumi is an example of how the true leaf variegation can already be spotted in the cotyledons.

Ocean Mist

Ocean Silk

Both Ocean Mist and Ocean Silk are sporting variegated maple leaves. The variegation in the cotyledons is subtle but still present (hardly visible on the left due to the reflection of the low sun).

Murakumo has some of the most amazing crystal variegation we've seen to date and it is already very present in the cotyledons. A very good sign indeed!

Kikyo Pearls

Kikyo Quasar

Left: Kikyo Pearls. Right: Kikyo Quasar. As typical kikyo varieties both are slow growing, very short and contracted with stiffer leaves and vines.

Kikyo Snowflakes

Kikyo Snowflakes

Kikyo Snowflakes had trouble shedding it's outer seed coat so the cotyledons got a little damaged. The first true leaf looks very cute though.

Unexpectedly this Cosmic Kelly is looking much like a kikyo variety. Chances are this was a stray seed. Our first mistery variety in the bunch.

Ray Flow

Blue Mutant

Left: Ray Flow. Right: Blue Mutant. Both of these varieties have the curled-up leaf margin mutation.

Kodachi Violet

Kodachi Violet

The seedlings of the dwarf variety Kodachi Violet are looking very compact with shiny, dark green leaves. One of five has dimpled cotyledons but the rest looks quite uniform so far.

With these young plants already showing signs of flowering we're debating whether or not it would be advised to pinch out the flower buds at this point as to conserve their energy for growth instead of flower production. On the other hand it would also be nice to experiment with keeping the plants in miniature form like the Japanese show style asagao. We'll likely do some of both. Pinching buds on the slower growing plants and letting the vigorous ones flower.