From Spores to Ferns - the story and the timeline

So, a little more than a year ago, in a moment of boredom, I decided to grab a piece of my prize holly fern, with nice fat ripe spores on the back side of the leaves, and scratched some off into a seed tray. 

I covered the whole lot with a sheet of glass (after watering it with tap water that was left outside to get the chlorine and other disinfectants gone) and left it in my little 2' x 2' zip-it-up plastic nursery.

The brown stuff are pockets of hundreds or thousands of spores

In the picture above, on a white sheet of paper, there are a lot of spores, ready to be dispersed onto the growing medium

 For many months nothing seemed to happen, and I even watered it (very carelessly) every month or so, and then in month three of four, a lot of "green" became visible. 

Not knowing whether this was just some fungus or mould taking hold of the seed tray, I left it for another month or so, and found miniature little leaves all over the place. 

Well, today I have the better part of ten or more small sized holly-ferns doing very well, and indeed growing by the week. I would be careless not to state that there are still hundreds more still in the seed tray; I am simply not sure what to do with all these holly ferns!

Excited with my achievement on the holly fern, I then tried a couple of other specimens, such as the common fern tree (or tree fern), fish tail fern (don't confuse with the fishtail palm!), some other un-known tree fern variety bought on the KZN South Coast, as well as the common leather-leaf fern (Afr: Seweweeks varing).

 

These are the containers used for the growing medium.  Small holes were drilled into the bottom to allow some drainage, but still retaining enough moisture to keep things alive.

Very coarse river sand (approx 2 to 3mm in diameter)

 Whilst it is now already two or so months later, I can only see some green in some of the containers. 

Going into winter now, I hope that these would survive, and that there would be a higher level of success than what seems to be the case now.
In any case, here is the recipe for now:
  • 50% vermiculite
  • 50% course river sand
  • no special sterilization (I think it could cause problems with the spores, which I somehow consider being somewhat of a fungus of their own?)
  • I used plastic containers into which I drilled 2.5 mm holes in the bottom and sides.  It is a very shallow container with little dividers internally, and I used another of the same to serve as lid for the tray.
  • The spores were scratched off the back of the leaves of the ferns onto the mix, and not covered at all.
  • The trays were bottom watered with water that does not contain chorine anymore (see the comment about sterilization)

 

Vermiculite helps to retain moisture, and releases it to it's neighboring media when the latter gets drier.

Progress as at 7 July 2008.

Check this website.

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Last updated on

 13 August 2010