Hardier than we knew ....

A few weeks ago, when I took last summer’s daylily seeds out of the refrigerator to add absorbent paper and moisture to them in order to break their dormancy, I found a little plastic envelope of seeds from the previous year, hiding behind a jar of jam. It’s not unusual for things to get lost in our fridge; the unusual thing is that these seeds had sprouted last winter … and were still green, a year later.

It was clear that the growing shoots had sucked up all the oxygen in the bag, because it had that flattened out/shrink-wrapped look to it. My first thought was that they would probably die very quickly once removed from the bag, but of course, there was nothing to do but experiment!

So I prepared the moist planting mix in a pot (my vessel of choice is always a recycled yogurt quart container – a half-dozen seeds fit easily, you can make drainage holes in the bottom, and there's plenty of room for roots to grow) and then quickly transferred the shoots into the soil. I didn’t expect much, frankly; put the pot near a south window, and that was that.

Within a few days, those shoots started growing, much to my amazement. And here they are, two weeks later – growing very nicely – so far!