Spore Soup

Growing ferns from spore is a great experience. This is not a difficult to do with most ferns. Sharon Banister with the Texas Gulf Coast Fern Society has demonstrated one of the easiest ways to grow from spore.

Things you will need

Jiffy peat pellets

Use a clear plastic glass, and a bottom, such as a petri dish or lid, that has a rim larger than the rim of your glass.

Boiling water to pour over the peat pellet to sterilize.

Distilled water, 2 drops dishwashing detergent, and something to use to dispense the water and spore mixture over the pellet, like eye-dropper, turkey baster, or suringe.

Spore.

Sharon tells us to take the spore off the fern frond when it's a good cinnamon color.

Now you're ready to start.

Take you peat pellet and tear the mesh off the top and loosen it down the sides about 1/4 inch.

Place the pellet in a shallow dish and pour the boiling water slowly over as not to disturbed the peat.

Cover let stand until cool. While pellet is cooling, take a container pour your distilled water (you don't need a lot about 1/4 cup), dish soap, and spore.

Place the now cooled peat pellet on the Petri dish with open mesh side up.

Take your eyedropper and draw up your spore liquid and dispense it onto the peat pellet.

Cover with clear plastic glass.

This next step if VERY important. 1 week...7 days you need to dispense a small amount of distilled water onto the top of you pellet, recover and wait. Best placed where you can give 12 hours of bright indirect light, or non-west window. Keep between 65-80 degrees. You will see a green matt appear, it's going to look like moss. Don't panic this is what we want. From that moss like stuff, you in time will see your ferns taking on there different stages. The time frame of this occurrence will very with different ferns. Some are within weeks others those months. You should water about once a week just saturating the pellet allowing only a small about to stand in the Petri dish.