Staggered Germination

 

In January, I was reading the Fedco seed catalog—the best for seeds, prices, and entertainment. One of their informative paragraphs talked about the emergence of staggered germination. According to the catalog, plants that have been stressed during the summer months will produce seed that germinates over a longer period of time. Because of climate change, they are seeing this stress response  more often. It can be challenging, they observed, for commercial growers who depend upon consistent germination within a narrow timeframe in order to get their crops in the ground on time—which is also becoming more difficult with climate change. Interesting, I thought.

This April, I have seen this happening in my own greenhouse. I planted all of the tomato seed one afternoon and put both flats on the heating pads. For every variety of tomato, from several distributers, there has been staggered germination. A  little bit is normal; there are often two seedlings of slightly different sizes on one six pack cell. But this year, they were all different sizes. Some were almost trees while their neighbor was just breaking through with all heights in between. And a couple of varieties—the Evil Olive being one—took two weeks longer to germinate than any others. It makes it challenging to bump up the plants. Some pairs are deeply tangled in their roots but big enough for both to survive. Some are not. I popped three Long Keepers out of their six pack and left four behind to develop their roots a little more before the trauma of being repotted. I thought I would be able to consolidate the little ones into one or two six packs, but I couldn’t. They are just taking up precious space.

Even given the chaotic and packed nature of a greenhouse in April, I can’t complain. It will make the tomato give away a little trickier and maybe a week later—does anyone want to come back for the Evil Olive after they have their Sungolds? But my livelihood does not depend upon evenly timed germination.  By August, it won’t matter. I’ll be hauling in tomatoes every day for crockpot sauce. But it gave me something to consider while I worked this morning—both the thousands of way climate change is going to impact us that we do not even begin to understand and also the bit of hope lying within those seeds, as they adapt to a changing world.