How to Grow Redwoods from Seed

Rockermona

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posted on 15 years ago — updated on 1 second ago

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You can easily grow two of the three species of redwood indoors from seed almost anywhere, at any time of the year as long as you have the proper materials, for around seventy dollars. It's a cool, relatively unknown way to work out your green thumb.

Steps

Purchase a packet of Coast Redwood (Sequoia Sempervirens) or Dawn Redwood (Metasequoia Glyptostroboides - much more hardy than Sequoia Sempervirens)seeds. You can acquire them online. You could even buy "sample packets" for the price of 3 dollars from the F.W. Schumacher Company in Sandwich, Ma.

Soak the desired amount of seeds you wish to start in cool tap water for a period of between 3 and 5 days. You may place them in a small, seal-able plastic baggy or other container which won't leak. Keep the container out of direct sunlight. At the end of this period, you will notice that some of the seeds have become swollen.

Place the fast draining, proper soil mixture in the flat. This should be the flat that has holes in the bottom for drainage. Place this flat into another flat of the same size, but one which doesn't have drainage holes in it.

Now remove the water and seeds from the container (you can do this by gently pouring the water and seed onto a rag, but make sure that rag doesn't have any chemical or cleaning residue on it).

Gently sow the seeds, about two inches apart, into the flat. You may sow them closer, but you will be separating them later when they are bigger and stronger.

Cover the seeds with about a millimeter or two of soil, so that they may gently pop up when they germinate in ten days or so.

Gently mist the soil with the plastic spray bottle, saturating the soil with water.

Attach the t5 fluorescent single tube light to the inside of the plastic grow-dome. You can do this with the screws that come in the packaging and by cutting a two by two inch gap on the lateral sides of the grow dome, near the top. The light should be able to slide right in these holes, protruding outside of each by about 2".

Place the plastic dome on the flat, covering it.

Place the flat on top of the Hydrofarm Seedling Heat mat.

Plug the fluorescent light into an electric timer that is set to be on for 16 hours a day and off for 8 hours a day.

Place the whole set up in a bright, but not DIRECTLY SUN-LIT window. If direct sun is a problem, use a curtain or white shade cloth to reduce the intensity of the sun a bit.