Hello!, Well this is my 2nd time growing and I was just curious as to which method is the best for germinating seeds. My first babies were massacred by my dogs so I'm looking to try again. A friend told me to put the seeds in a cup with water and let them germinate that way. Could letting them float in water be better? The first time I tried laying them down on a wet paper towel but out of like 20 only 2 germinated. Is there any method to germinating that would increase the number of seeds that actually germinated? Or is it all luck? Any advice or comments would be greatly appreciated!
the way i know of that works best imo is taking a cereal bowl, lay paper towel over it, mist it with spray bottle(room temp water), place seed on paper towel, cover with another paper towel, mist again & finally rest another cereal bowl upside down creating a humi-dome of sorts. make sure to keep towels moist, but not dripping wet. should germ within 3 days. plant as soon as you see the taproot. the longer the tap gets the harder they are to plant.good luck!
I'll have to try that homemade humi-dome out, the way I usually do it is to take a finger nail file and scratch up the outsides of the seeds a little and then let them soak in a glass of water for about a day, then put them in a moist paper towl, I bought Jorge Cervantes grow bible and dvd's and that's what he said to do and it worked better then just putting them in the moist paper towels like I used to do. I read somewhere on this forum that some people crack there seeds, I didn't read into it but I will before I start my nexts seeds.
Scarification of the exterior is proven to work, sometimes even on very old beans. . . Cracking it though? That just scares me.
my usual method is the good old toilet paper method I take a lid of a box from the chinese restaurant(anything wich is waterresistant works) on that several layers of wet toilet paper then the seeds, wich each a little space around it and on top of that again a few ;ayers of wet toilet paper and I spray it wet again everytime I see it's getting dry germing usually takes 1-3 days with that method, depending on the strain/seeds(for example the UK08 I had last year all sprouted within one day, except the one that didn't germ, my NDB this year took a little longer but also 9/10 germing, all the seeds I 'made' myself that I tested so far had 100% germing glass of water is another method that's used a lot, and I heard a method that involves moist mud in a plastic bag that supposedly works very well for seeds with a hard shell you can fill some sort of tube r so with rough sand and the seeds and shake it around to damage the outside of the seeds a bit making them crack open easier I've never needed that tough edit: I make those pieces of toilet paper pretty wet btw, I just hold the under the tap so they're dripping wet, let them drip out a little bit and that's how I use them I think especially the watching for drying out is inportant, if needed I spray it wet again multiple times a day such a dome made of 2 cereal bowls is a clever idea, that probably fixes the drying out so you don't have to watch it that closely but my method also works so I'll juist keep it this way, only had one time a batch of 10 seeds of wich no singe seed germed, but the seeds laying next to it from other strains had no problems so it were probably the seeds
Scratching is new to me also but it makes sense. I usually put TP on a plate and seeds and more TP with stretch wrap over the top to hold the mousture, but lately been unlucky. Maybe old seeds, should try scratching!
scratching is only for some strains with thicker seedshells, or maybe older seeds usually it isn't needed(I never used it so far)
yeah i needed to do that with easy ryder and bf red dragon. also greenhouse white rihno. i lined an empty prescription bottle with sandpaper and give the seed a spin, it does the trick.
I'm assuming "TP" means toilet paper. This doesn't usually work very well because it tends to not hold moisture as well as paper towels and just dry up after a day or two.
for most seeds 2 days is more then enough, and if you spray it now and then with such a plantsprayer it works very well
Thats probly why my latest attempts failed, it was dry when I picked it up the last time. I will try it with some baqg seeds. I want to order some soon, looks like there is little risk. Thanks for the info.
