Germinating Indian Bean Tree Seeds

First off: What a wonderful tree this is. The Indian Bean Tree (Catalpa Bignonioides) is one of my favourites right now. That's why I bought some seeds! The leaves are beautiful. I have a few baby plants coming up and the thing that stands out about these plants to me so far is it's leaf quality. The colour and texture is so rich and intense. Looking on Google Images at the full sized trees, the flowers look nice too. Anyways, you came here to read about how to germinate Indian Bean Tree Seeds so lets get on with it.

Indian Bean Tree Seeds

Fill a small tub / container with water. I use a small lunch box type container. Anything will do. You could even use a cup or a glass if you have no tubs available. Get some of your seeds and put them into the container that has the water in.

Now leave them in the water for at least 24 hours. This is to soften the outer shell / skin that the seeds are concealed in so it can be pulled off to reveal the seeds. I left mine in water for about 36 hours and found that was just about the right amount of time for easy-ish shell / coat removal. During the time period that they are in the water check to see if any of the seeds are floating. If they are just push them under the water with your fingers until they remain submerged on there own. This will help with softening the outer skin that covers the seeds.

When the time is up take the seeds out of the water and remove them from their protective skins. Hold one end with one hand and peel or pull at the skin with the other hand to release the seeds. Some skins may be a little stubborn but they will come off eventually. Then after this step the process for germinating these seeds is basically the same as germinating Paulownia Tomentosa Seeds. Fill a tub / container with a decent level of soil. The container should be see-through so that light can get in. A sealable lid is also ideal. If you don't have the lid just cover the top of the container with some cling film.

We have lift off. Indian Bean Tree Germination

Sow seeds on the surface as they need light in order to germinate. Water the soil and also give the container a spray with water to aid with humidity. Close the container so that it's air tight and leave in a location that will get sunlight like a window sill, or put the container under an artificial light source. Personally I use CFL lights to germinate these seeds and it works fine.

Leave the seeds in the air tight container for anything from a few days up to a week. After this time you should see signs of germination taking place. If not re-water the soil and spray the container again, then leave for a few days, or up to a week. Check periodically to see what's happening. After this time you should see some seeds sprouting. Once they are up and looking lively you can reduce the amount of humidity by leaving the top of the container off for long periods of time so that the plants get used to normal temperatures. Once they start to develop the first few sets of leaves move them into small individual plant pots. And that's it.

Summary

1. Soak seeds in water for a least 24 hours

2. Peel seeds from protective skins

3. Sow seeds on the surface of the soil

4. Water soil - Spray container

5. Close container so it's air tight

6. Put container where there's good lighting

7. Leave for around 1 week

Repeat from step 4 to step 7 if there are no signs of germination after one week.

Germinating Paulownia Tomentosa Seeds

Germinating Paulownia Tomentosa Seeds is a fairly easy process, and I'm sure there are many ways to germinate the seeds. The way I do it is as follows: Put a uniform amount of soil in a see through, sealable tray. I use an old see through takeaway container that has a sealable lid and it works well. I'm a big fan of using whatever I have around the house! If you have a tray but no lid you can always just cover the top with cling film. Put the seeds on the surface of the soil and mist the whole container with water. Also make sure the soil is fairly damp. This will aid with keeping humidity up over the long term. These seeds need to be on the surface, as they need light to germinate.

Make the container air tight by closing the lid or sealing it with cling film and leave in a place that will get some decent sunlight like a window sill etc. Personally I use CFL lights (Compact Fluorescent Bulbs) to germinate these seeds. As I do with most seeds. You don't need much light in terms of CFL wattage to germinate seeds. In fact with as little as an 11 Watt Energy Saver CFL bulb, whether that be 6400K (Daylight) or 2700K (Warm white) focused directly over the tray containing the seeds you can easily germinate Paulownia Tomentosa seeds. I leave the light on for 14 hours of the day but you could successfully grow these plants with less hours, or more if you like. More powerful CFL's will be needed if you plan on growing these plants indoors to a decent size. Of course, nothing beats natural sunlight.

So, once you have misted the tray and left under a CFL or on a window sill, leave it for around a week. Just open the container now and then to check if there are any signs of germination. Don't open it too frequently because you will lose humidity. If the container is going dry inside re-mist and water the soil a little then close and leave for a few days. After around 1 week + you should see signs of germination taking place.

Once some the seeds are up and running you can leave the top off and let them get used to normal temperatures. At this point I leave them to root a bit before removing them by hand and giving them their own pots. With mine, once potted I will continue to leave them under CFL bulbs until they are big enough to be planted outdoors. Still waiting for that day to come. I know these trees are classed as an invasive species to most but I still want a few in my garden! I'll just cut any others that happen to come up. However, not all Tomentosa trees will seed.

One thing that I have noticed with young Paulownia Tomentosa trees is that they are not fussy when it comes to plant food. They seem to thrive off almost anything you give them. Can't wait to plant one or two outside. I'm just waiting for the cold nights to leave us. I'm in the UK, so the summer here is quite temperamental. If you have any questions regarding germination just shoot me a comment.

Privacy Policy

This website uses third-party advertising companies to serve ads when visiting this site. These third parties may collect and use information (but not your name, address, email address, or telephone number) about your visits to this and other websites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you. If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used by these companies, you can visit Google’s Advertising and Privacy page.

If you wish to opt out of Advertising companies tracking and tailoring advertisements to your surfing patterns you may do so at Network Advertising Initiative. Google uses the Doubleclick DART cookie to serve ads across it’s Adsense network and you can get further information regarding the DART cookie at Doubleclick as well as opt out options at Google’s Privacy


Privacy
Never Forget Nature respects your privacy and under no circumstances would I sell, exchange, give away or disclose any user information what so ever. The only software I use to track how and where users are coming from and visiting this website is through Google Webmaster Tools.

Log Files

http://never-forget-nature.blogspot.com does not use or save any log files or stats. As mentioned above, then only way we see where our visitors are coming from is through Google Webmaster Tools.

Cookies

A cookie is a piece of data stored on the user’s computer tied to information about the user. This website doesn’t use cookies. But, some of Never Forget Nature's business partners use cookies on this site (for example – advertisers). Never Forget Nature can’t access or control these cookies once the advertisers have set them. You can easily deleted them by running a clean of the temporary Internet files folders on your computer.

Links
This website contains links to other sites. Please be aware that Never Forget Nature is not responsible for the privacy policies of these other sites. I suggest my users to be aware of this when they leave this blog and to read the privacy statements of each and every site that collects personally identifiable information. This privacy policy applies solely to information collected by this website.

Advertisers
Never Forget Nature uses outside ad companies to display ads on this website. These ads may contain cookies and are collected by the advertising companies. Never Forget Nature does not have access to this information. Never Forget Nature works with the following advertising companies: Google Adsense. Please check the advertisers websites for respective privacy policies