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Yes we can germinate pistachios available in your kitchen and grow plants out of these.
We are just doing this for gardening fun and experimenting and to have the feeling of possessing a pistachio tree in your collection. Because, similar to other fruit trees like for example citrus and apple, a pistachio tree grown from seed may not bear fruits for the whole of its lifetime. The main reason is you need at least one male and one female pistachio trees for pollination and fruit production.
Having said that, now we will look into the step by step process you can follow for successful pistachio seed germination :
Step 1: The first and most important step is Seed Selection. Most of the pistachios with shell or without shell what we consume are roasted and salted and these will never germinate. Please do not waste your time on these pistachios. You need Raw and unprocessed pistachios which should be easily available in your local grocery store or you can even purchase online. I have given the link to purchase this in description of the video.
Step 2: Selecting some healthy looking pista seeds out of the lot. Do not select damaged ones or split ones. You can choose atleast 10 healthy seeds because all of them may not germinate. Only about 50% of the seeds or less might germinate, and only a fraction of those germinated will make it to a small seedling and then may grow into a small tree. Also if the shell is intact, you need to carefully break the hard shell without damaging the inner seed.
Step 3: Soaking these seeds in water for 24 hours. Many receommend 48 hours. I have tried 48 hours too but they split open with too much soaking. So, We need them to just swell up a bit before keeping for the sprouting process.
Step 4: You can take the soaked seeds and use two methods. Toilet paper method or coco peat method. In coco peat or dirt method. You place the soaked seeds on a layer of cocopeat and cover the seeds with cocopeat and place it inside a polythene zip lock bag for germination.
I found better results with the toilet paper method. We will look into this in step 6.
Step 5: Cold Stratification: This is optional if your climate is too hot. Stratification is a process of treating seeds to simulate natural conditions that the seeds must experience before germination can occur. Many seed species have an embryonic dormancy phase, and generally will not sprout until this dormancy is broken. So, to increase the chances of germination, you can keep the seeds in refrigerator for about 4 weeks and then sow them at room temperature. I have tried with and without stratification and the results were almost same for me. But this process is compulsory for Almond seed germination, I have even experimented this on almond seeds and the almond seeds succeed only after this stratification process in refrigerator for about 50 to 60 days and then bringing them to room temperature for successful germination. You can watch the entire process of how to grow an almond tree from home almonds in my previous video.
So coming to Step 6: Take a container with a lid or you can even use a polythene bag or a zip lock bag. Place the seeds on a layer of toilet paper and sprinkle some water to make it moist and then place another layer of tissue paper and cover the lid. This is to keep it warm and also moist and this speeds up the germination process. Check every 2 or 3 days for root development and also to see if its moist.
Results: First result at 4th day and then after 8 days and then 15 days.
You should see results like this after 3 to 5 days or max one week. If there is no fungus and roots look healthy, you can transplant these sprouted pistachios in small containers with a clean potting mix with cocopeat and some vermicompost and keep in indirect light or under shade like on a window sill, till you get a seedling with two leaves. Then when it grows further, you can transplant in larger container. Here you can see I am successful getting almost atleast 3 to 4 plants. May be the other seeds might also give out shoots.
WATCH VIDEO FOR THE COMPLETE STEP BY STEP PROCESS:
Thank you for your help, I purchased 25 pistachios from Turkey. They are very large seeds and will grow into nice trees as long as they do germinate. I have in frig now in a zip lock bag and will be taking them out to sit a room temperature for them to germinate in few days.