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4 weeks ago I purchased Chinese Juniper Seeds. The intructions which came with the seeds said to keep the seeds in boiling hot water for 48 hours.
Therefore everytime the water cooled I would boil more water and move the seeds into the hot water.
I then planted the seeds in soil, which is where they've remained since.
However the seeds are not germinating.
Should I have boiled the seeds prior to planting? Would this have potentially ruined them?
Interesting. Most of the instructions I've seen for these say to do something such as "bring water to a boil" then take water off heat, add seeds and then allow the seeds to soak in the water as it cools down to room temperature".
I don't have any firsthand knowledge of growing these but 48 hours of boiling seems like it would be certainly enough time to kill the seed rather than preparing it to germinate. That's a lot of heat for a long time.
Well that's very odd - I wonder if something has been lost in translation, so to speak. The usual method with these, if they are not already fully prepared, is to soak them in 'very hot' (rather than actually boiling) water for six hours, changing the water as it cools so that the seeds remain hot. Once the six hours are up, they should be planted in starter mix (seed compost in the UK) and some sand which has been pre moistened. They then need a temperature of 75 deg F (24 deg C) for 3 months, usually achieved by a propagator with bottom heat. After that, the tray should be moved outdoors in a lightly shaded, sheltered spot, ideally in temperatures of around 40 deg F (5 deg C), and watered as necessary. They may still take a year to germinate, usually doing so in Spring.
The method the instructions gave may possibly be a way of getting round the 3 months at 75 deg. F, though it's not one of I've heard of. It'll be interesting to see if they do actually germinate eventually. If you actually did boil the seeds, they might be non viable, but given the extremely long germination times that they can take, it's likely worth just waiting to see what happens.
