Found some Wax Jambu at a local Asian grocery. Ate some. It's pleasantly light, crispy, and tastes vaguely of clove. Unsurprising, since the fruit is a sister species of the literal clove spice tree (S. aromaticum species)
It's a recalcitrant type of plant, so like a lot of seeds that I save, I eat the tasty fruit, and dunk the seed in water. Ended up having 5 total seeds (~1 per fruit). 3/5 were developed enough to consider trying to grow.
I usually let seeds stew in room temperature water for a while (days or even weeks sometimes), but this one was barely two days. I didn't want to risk any mold/bacteria/fungal/algal growth on the fibrous seed coating, so I planted it less than two days later. (I'm a good boy and often change out water and clean the seeds in seed dunks).
From the day I ate my Wax jambu to the day the germination picture .... total of 14 days.
Since this is the first detailed post about seed germination, here's my usual high-effort seed germination I use for low-info tropicals:
1. Microwave some potting soil. 1 quart of soil means at least 2 minutes. Soil should be reasonable out of the bag. Dusty? Not good. Soaking wet? Don't put that in the microwave. Also ... I wont ever use an actual oven. Too high of risk of burning, and damage to both plants and your/my lungs.
2. Add a small amount of perlite, play sand, vermiculite, or whatever mix of them to a small paper cup. For the wax jambu, I added only a small amount of perlite and vermiculite. For a point of comparison, I added quite a bit of sand for Kopsia seeds (FYI)
3. Plant seed. Wax jambu ... honestly I barely pushed it into the soil. I buried the Kopsia seeds with about 3/4 inch cover. I recommend looking up recommended seed depths for your own projects.
4. Spray top of soil with spray bottle. This is a procedural step, not horticultural. This is for you, the gardener. As long as the very top surface breaks water surface tension, you're good. When this happens, it means the soil particles won't fly about for the next steps and when you actually "water" it. Or at least .... less likely.
5. Spray high-level insecticide around seed. No, not neem oil. Something that actually kills things.
6. Spray a strong fungicide around seed. (Obviously skip this for a strongly mycorrhizal specimen).
7. Spray top soil with water again. Continue doing this until the seed/cup is "watered". Cup should clearly weigh more due to water mass. Don't drown your seeds, however. Punch a hole in the bottom of the cup and drain excess water if you put too much in.
8. Enclose a ziploc bag around the cup/seed. Spray a spritz of water in the bag for humidity.
9. Place enclosure outside in summer. Caveat - don't actually give it much sun. It should be act as a greenhouse with high humidity, not a vegetable steamer.
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| Seed color varies in size and darkness. Normal size red lychee for scale |
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| You can barely see it coming up. Ziploc makesift greenhouse behind it. |
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| Wax Jambu germinating |
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