Grow palm tree in your house from seed. Getting seeds ready. 

I always wanted to have a palm tree in my house, just as a houseplant. When you live in a place with such cold winters as we have here in Ottawa, palm tree in a house makes the whole winter suffering a bit easier, maybe because they always associated with some warm caribbean beach in my mind.  

Many times I tried to buy mature palm tree from local stores, but I guess palms don't really like any major changes in their environement and average house conditions are very much different from those of a greenhouse. Also local growers all have same typical set of species and I wanted something different. So at some point I decided to try to grow a palm for myself from a seed.
As I was newbie to the whole process - I selected two species that are considered to be fast germinators and were on sale from one online seed store that claimed their seeds to be fresh. At that point I already knew - for success you need the freshest palm seeds you can get.

So here is what I got:
- Thurston Fan Palm - Pritchardia thurstonii
- Spindle Palm - Hyophorbe verschaffeltii

First palm seeds need to be checked for viability by putting them into glass of water. You can throw away all the seeds that stayed on top and leave those that got to the bottom of your glass - they are viable.

All the good palm seeds have to be washed throughly to make sure there is no pulp leftovers on them. Then seeds have to be soaked in the clean water - I took regular water from the kitchen sink - for 2-3 days. During these days I did change the water as it looked not fresh at some point, but I am not sure if it is required.

And then seeds are ready for germination.