After reading a lot I have found out daylilies seeds like the cold to germinate, so my question is this. The temp in south Ga is crazy highs from 55 to 80 and lows are 30 to 50. If I put some of my pots outside with seeds in them ( that was in the fridge for 4 weeks) would it help or kill them? What is too cold for seeds and seedlings?

The reason I am asking, is I have about 15 pots that are not getting good light, I have moved them to a window, but I don't think that will be enough light.

It's not that daylilies like cold to germinate, but they germinate better if they experience moist cold for a few weeks (winter) before moving on to normal "room temperature" or outdoors (spring). I would think as long as you bring the pots indoors during the times it gets close to freezing, or cover them, or move them close to a warm house wall, they should be fine.

@sooby
Thanks a lot, I will just move them outside during the day and bring them in at night. I have put them in front of a south window, but I still don't think they till get enough sunlight there, my table with my lights above them are full with other pots, I have messed up so many seeds and seedlings, I 2nd guess myself a lot now.

Got them outside in their cube, I have plastic I can cut a sheet to cover the cube and pots up on really cold nights, or I will just bring them inside.

This is a very interesting subject for me. I have lots of seedlings outside in cups that are planted in the ground. But, they have been planted for varying periods of time (from several months to about a month) so I feel confident they will be fine. I think Stan has some more newly planted seedlings planted that are set on the protected side of his house (north Florida, not that far from me). I have few seeds in the refrigerator now that I noticed have sprouted and I was thinking of maybe planting them in cups and placing them outside also on the south side of the house, but I don't want to have to bother with bringing them in and out.
So after reading this thread, I have decided to go ahead and plant some of those seeds just to see how they do when planted at this time of year. I still have lots of seeds left in the fridge, so it will be worth the risk to me to know the answer. I also was surprised when I first learned that daylilies will sprout at much lower temperatures than I would have imagined. When new to daylilies I thought it would be the warmer the better, but I have since learned that very hot weather is a terrible time to try and sprout daylily seeds outdoors in Alabama. I had very poor success rates during the hot months here. Once the temps cooled down they seeds sprouted much better.

@seedfork
Let me know how your seeds do, I have my seeds in the pots outside on the south of the house, the wind is blowing like crazy today, but the house is protecting them from the wind. Your cups are in the ground why? The rest of my pots and cups are under lights in the house, I will only bring my pots inside on freezing nights, or maybe cover the cube with plastic.

Just got through planting my seeds. I discovered that I had no place on the southside of the house (the protected side) that would get enough sun due to bushes and trees and air conditioner and propane tank etc.
So I did have five unused bales of pine straw I had picked up with some leaves. I decided to use the pine straw bales as a substitute for the protected side of the house. So the cups are now on the south side of the pine straw bales. It has been a little windy here today about 15 miles per hour it seems most of the day, so the pine straw bales are protecting from the wind which seems to be right out of the north today. If not for the wind it would be a perfect day, almost 60 degrees and bright clear blue skies.
I planted twelve cups, with 6 -9 seeds per cup.

My seedlings are in cups planted in the ground because I did not feel they were mature enough yet to actually transplant this fall, and also because I wanted to make sure I kept the crosses together till they were planted and be able to tell exactly where any increase came from(assuming there is any by spring planting time). Also I felt it gave me a little better protection from critters digging from underneath them. One more thing I thought having the cups planted in the ground would give them a lot of protection from freezing weather.

Sand on the top of them? I have a bag of sand but have not used it, what does it do? 6-9 seeds per cup, when do you thin them out? I have 40 one gallon pots with 10 to 18 seeds per pot and in my cups 2 to 6, I mix my seeds per pot or cup so when I plant them, I don't have to keep switching pots and such, I am only growing them for the beauty, I have not got to where yall are on knowing each plant name, and crossing them. Maybe on day, I will start a new bed, and get all high text like yall are.

Naturally not all the seeds will sprout. I will plant them all out of the cups in the spring, so no thinning until then (that's the plan anyhow). With the red plastic cups, I can get nine pretty evenly spaced holes so that is what I do, one in the center then eight around the edge. I place the sand on top (1/4 to 1/2 inch layer), the reason is because with the dark homemade compost I use to fill the cups it is often hard to tell when a seed is dropped in, and I found that when trying to make holes in the compost I could not form uniform round holes, but the layer of almost white sand allows me to see the seeds and form perfect round holes when using my crab claw hammer(the little wood kind you get at get at seafood restaurants). Plus it makes it very easy to see tiny new sprouts when they start emerging. After the seeds are planted I just fill in all the holes with more sand.

Just out of interest, I have some seeds that have sprouted outside just this week, despite the freezing weather (down to -5°C at night).

I will be keeping a note as to whether they survive or not and will let you know in Spring what happens .

These were seeds just sown directly without stratifying as an experiment to see what works here as I had plenty of spare seeds (and can replicate these crosses).

The ones just sprouted were Baby Blues x Star Child
Aquamarine x Star Child

Nikki, while the temperature is below 10C/50F it has the same effect as stratifying in the fridge, although you don't want it to go too much below freezing.

That's what I thought, Sue, I was just thinking that they wouldn't sprout until the weather warmed up, they were part of my winter sowing experiment so were only sown a week or so ago whilst I determine what works here.

Some people find that some of their stratifying seeds will sprout even while still in the fridge (although mine have never done that). Damp chilling does increase the temperature range over which daylily seeds will germinate and some respond to chilling quicker than others.

I mail out a lot of seeds over the Winter months---some to people who are experiencing very cold temps.. So---a few years ago I did a test to see if freezing seeds made any difference. The results were a bit mixed from what I expected---but did give some good advice: 1) Seeds that were from EVR crosses tended to have somewhat less germination rates, but not a big difference from Sev's. It was a bit better with Dor crosses. 2) A more significant difference was seen with seeds that were more moist than others. The drier the seeds, the better they withstood freezing temps. 3) temperature variation made a bit of a difference: some seeds were placed in my 5 cu. ft. freezer and remained there till it was time to take them out and attempt germination. a smaller batch were placed in the freezer in our kitchen refrig.. The latter ones experienced a thaw due to mechanical problems that lasted a couple of days. They were then, again, frozen. There was a 5% difference in germination rates that favored the ones that had not been thawed. CONCLUSIONS: 1) I store my seeds with a bit of moisture in the baggies (but not enough to cause germination to begin). It keeps them plumper, and improves overall germination. However, before I ship them---if they are going to a place where I know the temps are pretty low---I will let the seeds dry out some before they are shipped. If there is more water in the baggy to dry properly, I will repackage the seeds into a fresh baggy with a redone, dry paper label. 2) If there are a lot of Evr x Evr, or Evr x Sev crosses in the shipment I will monitor the weather for that area and ship when I figure the temps will moderate some. Those seeds are usually going to more Southern destinations (USDA zones 7+) so that is not hard to do. I have been shipping shipping seeds for 15+ tears now with few problems---even though I know that some have sat in unheated mailboxes waithg for their new owners to get home from work. There have only been a few instances of germination failure (<50%) reported. Those were mostly due to the crosses (Evr/Sev x Evr/Sev) coupled with unexpected colder weather in the receiving area. Those were a long time ago since weather prediction has vastly improved (believe it or not) with the use of weather satellites and better science due to research. Daylily seeds are pretty durable, and can take freezing as long as they are pretty dry. For those who plant outside in the Spring, it is best to wait for planting to a time near the average last freeze date for your area. http://www.intellicast.com/Nat... My final conclusion is that the closer seeds get to germination, the lower the chance for germination. Once that initial root cracks the hull and shows, the germination rate plummets if they experience freezing.

Counted my seedlings today I have 207 in my inside room. I wish I would have counted how many seeds I planted but I did not. I am guessing roughly I planted around 400. The outside pots I he 4 seedlings, but they where started a few days later then the others. I am so excited and looking forward to spring, to plant them all outside.

I have a white seedling is that normal?

The rest of them are growing great

Catherine, I did plant some seed, very late in the season. In fact it was on Nov. 10th. I was bored from being cooped up for months with my healing foot. So, I dug out some crosses that I'm anxious to see and got them started. It's in my blog if you care to look.

As for the seedlings, they're sitting on my south facing porch, get some morning and afternoon sun, blocked from frost and regularly misted with water and hydrogen peroxide. So far, they're doing just fine. I was going to pot them up in 1gl pots, but so far I've been preoccupied with other commitments. If'n I can remember, I'll post and updated photo tomorrow.

OBTW, the white seedlings don't survive. I'm sure some here, @sooby perhaps, will explain why. It escapes my memory right now.


Edit to add, that back in Nov., we were still experiencing very warm temps and nighttime temps were still in the upper 50/lower 60s. The seed, I started were from my crosses and I didn't spend any $$s on them. So, if they die off, well then I'm only out time and not the green...

GaNinFl said: OBTW, the white seedlings don't survive. I'm sure some here, @ sooby perhaps, will explain why. It escapes my memory right now.

It's because plants make their own food for growth etc.from light by photosynthesis (fertilizer just supplies the needed minerals but is not really "food"). Photosynthesis requires the pigment chlorophyll, which is what gives plants their green colour,. Without chlorophyll an albino plant can't make its food so eventually, when it has used up the resources stored in the seed, it will die from starvation.

Thanks Sue!
I knew it had to do with Photosynthesis, but you break it down so much better that I would have.