What's in the water?

Last year I tested some chemicals as possible stimulants to germination of Country Dancer. the best was calcium nitrate as reported in the recent newsletter. this past fall and winter I’ve set up similar tests with several other CV, mostly shrubs that produce lots of seed for obvious reasons. So far I see germ beginning for either calcium or potassium nitrate, ahead of other salts or control. So I’m thinking this might actually work as a way to speed germ.

One notion of how nitrate works is that the enzyme nitrate reductase reduces it to NO which is a plant hormone. Of course it is also a nutrient. In the article that Henry posted today Mar 4, one of the “related articles” is about using nitrate to overcome the dark dormancy of lettuce seeds.

When you germinate seeds with water, adding it to peat, paper towels, or vermiculite and even straight up, do you use tap water or distilled? Well water often has fairly high nitrate around farms, and so does river water that goes into some water supply systems. Also, adding peroxide or other oxidants can convert organic stuff like ammonia of amino acids, into nitrogen oxides. New regulations on water “chlorination” have results in use of chloroamine, a stable chlorinating/oxidizing agent. It of course has nitrogen in the form of the amine part.

So we may each be doing different experiments on stimulating seed germination in different ways, depending on where the water comes from. In particular the embryo culture done by George V. and Don H. may be sensitive to these issues. I don’t know, I’m just speculating, and asking for your observations and the identity of your water source.

In the U.S. every water supplier has to publish annual results for the water composition, purity, contaminant levels etc. So I know what our city water is on average.

This may be a minor effect, but we don’t know yet. I’m trying various concentrations of nitrate this year to see the lowest that will give a stimulatory effect. Last year I used pretty high nitrate levels, perhaps 10x drinking water standards. This year I’m trying some that are realistic for farmstead water.

Makes some sense… the Country Dancer seeds I germinated this year germinated quite well on their own with no special treatment… they were watered with bore water. Didn’t work as well on harder to germinate seeds though.

lol… I have always used Sydney tap water for the water embryo soaking phase in WEC… it is definitely chlorinated, of that I am sure. I have often laughed that Sydeny water may have somehtin’ special in it that rose embryos like!

…must try and source that info for you…BTW I think your nitrate experiments are fab!

The water here in Idaho is HARD as heck. Germinations have not been as good as usual. The water in NW Oregon is very, very soft. Its why people’s hair there is usually nice, lol. The roses love it too, but dolomite is also a bi-yearly soil staple because the soil becomes too acidic for the roses. As for germinations, I am not sure. Personally, rain water has been the best, but one cannot really compare apples, oranges, and watermelons in this scenario :confused: I have always had minor amounts of lime in the outdoor seedling beds though. Maybe that has been beneficial.

I am currently close to completing the planned total 8 weeks of water-soaking of hundreds of OP achenes (from a modern floribunda which looked to be a fertile tetraploid)…these have been soaking continuously in the local tap water (refrigerated).

When I last did this crazy trial on ~70 OP Iceberg achenes, the germination rate after 8 weeks chilled tap water soaking was in the order of ~10%, which astonished me!! I expected all would have rotted!!

Maybe trace amounts of nitrate (as well as other possible germination promoters) in the local tap water supply are also helping things along, as you too are wondering here (on top of the H2O effect itself).

Fascinating speculations/thread!!

further up I wrote…“it is definitely chlorinated”… this should read “it is definitely fluorinated”.