Propagation and care of Tall Fescue - wallacelab/lab-wiki GitHub Wiki

Procedure From David McSweeney at the Noble Research Institute

Planting from seed:

Materials needed:

• A mix of germination soil, sand, and farm soil
• 128 well flat
• Seed
• Hose

Procedure:

1. Wet Flat with hose to prevent spilling of fine soil from the sides of the flat.
2. Place flat on a solid surface where excess soil will not spill onto the ground.
3. Fill Flat with soil then water. Add more soil and water as needed until soil is around 5mm from the top.
4. Make small indents around 5 mm in the soil. One per well.
5. Place one seed in each indent.
6. Cover seeds with around 5 mm of soil.
7. Water, being careful not to disrupt the seeds.
8. Place orange stake in flat so that greenhouse staff does not water them for the first week or two of establishment. You'll want to water them once a day yourself during this time to ensure they receive gentle treatment. When they are better established, remove stake and let greenhouse staff water and fertilize them. They will receive 20-20-20 fertilizer once a week.
9. After a few weeks when roots are spread throughout and growing well, transplant to cone-tainer or pot.

• Trim to 10-12 cm once a week when applicable.

Pots, soil, and fertilizer:

• Can grow in cone-tainers, 4.5" pots, or up to 1 gallon pots. Carolyn also likes 4" square ones that are 10-12" deep, but require special holders (like cone-tainers)
  • The cone-tainer racks make it a little harder to keep everything cut back.
  • Be aware that cone-tainers can have watering issues because of long vertical depth but small surface area; hard to water from either the bottom or the top to get the entire thing wet.
• Use MetroMix 360 to grow plants; some lots have bark a bit larger than should be, so just keep an eye out
• Most of the time water without fertilizer, but every 3-4 weeks they water with Peter's 20-10-20 fertigation fertilizer dissolved at 100 ppm nitrogen.
  • Fertilizer example: https://icl-sf.com/us-en/products/ornamental_horticulture/peters-general-purpose-g99300/
• Let soil dry between waterings. Don't want the fescue to have wet feet (leads to root rot).

Environmental Conditions:

• Better to keep rooms cooler than warmer. Theirs set to ~21 °C, and try to keep beweetn 19.5 and 22.5.
  • Specifically, 21 C day / 19 C night, 12 h light starting at 0700 with 250 W/m2 supplemental lighting
• Keep some shade over the plants to keep them from getting too hot, especially in the summer
• Best to keep out of direct sunlight to avoid overheating

Maintenance

• Cut back every 3-4 weeks to ~6" tall so they don't flower (causes lots of problems with thrips)
  • Use Wildflower Seed & Tool Garden Scissors with ergonomic handles: https://wildflower-seed.com/collections/garden-tools/products/garden-scissors
• Periodically (every 3-4 months) have to go through and dethatch to remove all old leaves and repot. Can go as far as stripping everything but 3-4 tilles and their roots and putting in a new pot.
  • For cone-tainers, usually is just root trimming: pull out, cut bottom half of roots off, add fresh soil, and stick back on top.
• Thrips and mealy bugs can be a problem, but usually not much else.