Seeds of doubt
Ever had seeds meet with an untimely soggy fate? As Toby learns with his new salsify seeds, it all comes out in the wash
NOW I’m no Elon Musk, but my lumberjack gardening shirt is always so stuffed full of seeds, if it was planted on the Ghost Dunes of Mars I’m sure it would only be a matter of time before the Red Planet turned green.
Recently, though, disaster struck at Buckland Mission Control imperilling the precious payload in my shirt pockets, including a newly collected clutch of salsify seeds. Lisa, oblivious to my Martian plans, washed the shirt on a rocket-hot temperature, giving the newly collected seeds a broiling.
Being a modern man, I knew that complaining about this might mean that my clothes would never be laundered again. So instead I have produced a homemade poster that Lisa can study at her leisure, showing easy-to-follow pre-wash pocket checks and protocols. Meanwhile I, like Tom Hanks in the film
Apollo 13, have tried to find a life-saving solution for the salsify…
It’s not that this vegetable is rare. In fact, when you see its supersized dandelion-like clocks, chances are it’s an alien escape from a nearby allotment. But the joy of sowing collected seed is that the resulting plants are a teleport to the time and place where the kernels were gathered. And this salsify was discovered on a picturesque gravel riverbank on the first day of lockdown lift-off, so it has special significance.
At first, I thought all was lost, because I couldn’t see the fluffy satellite dish of down that tops each seed capsule and enables them to take to the sky.
During the wash this had disappeared, but right in the pocket seams the seeds clung on and, best of all, they were still wet. As every allotmenteer knows, a wet seed packet is the kiss of death for the contents – the seeds inside are fooled into sprouting, only to die as the paper around them dries.
A study at the University of Debrecen in Hungary has also given me hope. Researchers there looked for life – not on Mars, but after a spin washing cycle – and discovered that even after a hot wash at 60ºC (140ºF), half of all seeds sprouted. Keep your fingers crossed!