Puya guidance from the masters

This isn't mine, but because we reeaaaally want one, I finally caved and reached out to the San Diego Botanical Gardens to ask how they germinate their Puya seeds. We've been trying two different methods: a yogurt cup with super wet soil and presoaked seeds, and directly planting the seeds into the Burpee growth media. I was excited to hear back from the Botanical folks!

"Hello,

Thanks for reaching out. We grow a lot of Puya here, so I’ll be happy to share our process. We have a small propagation greenhouse with mist emitters. These emitters run briefly 2 times per day. These emitters don’t actually irrigate as much as they keep the humidity within the propagation house elevated. You can create a similar environment at home by keeping a clear plastic cover over the containers with your seeds. Our propagation house is covered by 60% shade cloth. We sow the seeds directly on top of shallow seed flats and put them into the propagation house. We have had success with a variety of mediums, but notably so with a 1:1 mix of coconut coir and coarse perlite. They’re only watered about 3 days per week, but the mist in the propagation house helps to keep them from drying out.

As soon as the seeds germinate you’ll need to back off on the watering to allow the medium to mostly dry out between watering cycles. We pull the seeds out of the propagation house as soon as they germinate. There’s no rush in transplanting them because they’re slow growers by nature. Once the seedlings have a few true leaves we start to provide them with a very dilute fertilizer regime because the coco fiber/perlite mix has no nutrient value on its own. When transplanting into 2” containers we switch them over to more of a standard potting mix. From there they’re quite easy to grow – they like drainage, not to stay wet, and to have some form of consistent low-concentration fertilizing."

Woooo! Based on that we covered the yogurt cup with plastic cling wrap and keep it in the window sill. The seeds in the Burpee probably wont germinate since that soil does dry out a little bit I fear. We still have some seeds in reserve we might try if the yogurt cup works out.