Viewing post #1254700 by LynNY

KentPfeiffer said:

I somehow missed this earlier, sorry. Couldn't find a picture of the pods, but yes, SDB and MDB pods do look different than TB pods. SDB pods have pointy(ish) ends, they often resemble footballs. They also usually have thinner walls and more air space inside so, while TB pods are hard when green, SDB pods have more of a balloon-like look and feel. SDB pods are roughly the same size as an average TB pod, though, so they are fairly easy to spot.

I never had much luck getting seeds to germinate by leaving them outside over the winter. It seems to be a very common practice for hybridizers on the West Coast to plant their seeds in pots in the fall and just leave them outside. But, they tend to have cool, wet winters which create perfect conditions for stratification. Our winters are cold and dry so pots left outside tend to end up being frozen solid most of the time. When the seeds are frozen, the stratification process actually stops. That means most of the time spent in pots here during the winter is, in effect, wasted. For me, stratifying the seeds in a refrigerator works way better, but a lot depends on where you live and what kind of winter weather you experience.

Thank you for this, so much. The info that stratification stops during freeze was an eye opener/