Hi linnea,

" Months went by, and nothing happened. "

The trick to getting quick germination from seeds with a relatively impervious seed coat is to breach the coat in some way. Use a file or an X-Acto knife to remove part of the coat until you can see some of the embryo.

" There are very long stems (the first to emerge is a foot tall) with a big fat seed leaf at the top. I don’t know if the extreme length was just from planting indoors, or this is normal for these plants. "

They probably are stretching because they don't have enough light in your indoor growing situation.

" I assume it might be too late to get these in the ground and expect more seeds. "

You should be able to purchase castor bean seeds from a seed company . That would be easier than going to heroic efforts to get seeds from your current plants, and you have a lot more to choose from when purchasing castor bean seeds. Be aware that castor bean seeds are poisonous.

ZM

I did use a nail file to nick the seed coat. Not sure how deep I got it, though.

I wonder (just thought of this now) if they just didn't germinate until it got sufficiently hot. My house tends to be cool, and summer has not been hot until the last 2 weeks.

I kept castor bean plant in my basement under fluorescent lights in OH a few times. Not a true annual. If you can keep it alive, which shouldn't be difficult, you should have impressively massive plants next year. I wouldn't change the level of soil on the stem.

Hi Linnea, I had the same experience this spring. Planted seeds, they sat there on the heating mat with nothing, kind of gave up, then had one seedling pop up two or three weeks ago. I planted mine out in the garden, if we have a nice hot summer (so far no problem!) I'm sure it will grow and produce seed... I'm in the same boat, this is a real nice dark leaved one with bright red flowers and seed pods and I haven't been able to find anything as nice, the closest has been 'carmecita'.

i think these late plantings bloom earlier when they sense the shortening day length... Unless it's one of those huge huge strains which care only about overtaking the world!

Thanks!

I went out of town for a weekend, now they are really tall. I have 5 now.

I’ll put them out on the deck to get used to more sun before planting them.
I think I’ll put half in one large pot (~ a foot, the biggest I have), and half
in the ground. The potted cluster I’ll bring in in the fall, assuming they are strong
enough to live at all, with those long stems. I will have to cage them to keep
curious squirrels from tasting the stems.

Interesting about the heat mat, katob. I had been wondering if heat mats
would have helped these. I bought heat mats for starting my caladiums, they
never seemed to make a difference, so I didn’t bother with them at all this year,
for anything.

This one is also a beautiful dark red. I don’t know if the original is a
dwarf strain or whether it just got into the ground too late to get some
height. I don’t need enormously tall, I just like the color, and the red spiky
pods.

Good luck! Maybe between the two of us we'll get a few seeds :)

if I had another seedling I would try one potted. I wouldn't have thought they would be that easy to overwinter.