Normal for seeds to have such a hard time?

Hi all, newb here, with cannabis growing becoming legal here soon I'm starting to figure out my grow space for a small personal-use stash and I figured I would start to germ some seeds to light the fire under my ass.

I started with ~15 year-old bagseed I picked out of some herm'd nugs way back when and stored in a bin somewhere. Of the 25 seeds I had in water and then a paper towel, only one actually popped out a taproot, after 4+ days of patience, and even manually splitting the seams on the seeds to help.

Now I'm at ~48h of the sole survivor being in soil and the cotyledons still haven't shown. I have been watering it (litmus strips suck but it looks like 5-6 pH) and the tap root looks strong, it's under a CFL lamp on 24h light and the seed is just 2-3mm from the surface.

I popped seeds once years ago so it feels now like this process is taking way longer than normal, do I just stay the course and wait for something to happen or is there anything else I can do to help the seed give up the green?

I also have this question: If/when it finally does sprout, can I switch over to 16/8 light at any point during vegging?

Thanks for reading

Those seeds are way too old man. Best bet is fresh seeds not older then 3 years . But otherwise when waiting for a sprout anything extra you gonna try do probably just do more harm. Grrowing is a game of patience
Peace goodluck get new seeds !

if you've sprouted a 15 year old seed that hasn't been in refrigerated conditions
then you doing quite well, better than many others who have tried
how do you know it was a hermie bud? maybe it was just hit with male pollen

thanks for the advice guys, I will be patient some more igrowone i'm not sure about the bud, thought that only hermies produce smokable bud and seed

Strelock said:

thanks for the advice guys, I will be patient some more igrowone i'm not sure about the bud, thought that only hermies produce smokable bud and seed

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Nah man females make flowers aka buds, males make the sacks of nanners and hermies make both. A hermaphrodite makes buds but a lot less cause they are diverting energy into making nanners and seeds as well as pollinating other females reducing their yields. To last anywhere near 15yrs seeds need to be in airtight sealed containers in a fridge like igrowone said. Order some new genes online dude and make a ton of seeds your first grow so you have stocks for future grows.

Read up on the stickies on this forum not trying to sound condescending but you got a lot to learn bro. Better to learn as much from other people's experiences and techniques before going in headfirst. Good luck

And yeah 18/6 in veg is just fine I prefer 24/0 but that's just my personal preference. Any seeds that are taking that long probably means the genetics have degraded from improper storage and length of time. If they do somehow pull through they will likely be weak, slow growing and not produce much. Get some fresh genes one way or another be it new bagseed or online.

I can also give you my technique for starting seeds that gives me a near 100% success rate. I start off with a 12-24hr soak in a bottle of water. Then i carefully pinch the shells of any seeds that havent cracked open during the soak but you got to have fine tuned skills to do that without hurting them. Then i plant them in styrofoam cups filled with straight clean perlite and insert them about 1.5" deep. A 1/4" hole around a inch from the bottom of the cup turns it into a mini hempy bucket. Then once they get about 6" tall with a few nodes going I pinch the bottom of the cup off and can transfer the mini hempy cup to either soil or hydro systems.

Bloody amazing is nature and the will to survive a regenerate isnt it. 15 years unstored and you got one to sprout. Totally agree with Hermes though. Start with some fresh beans full of vigour. Id still want to grow that one out if the space was available, be good to see the results.

ive had seeds that took 2 weeks to sprout. I suggest getting rockwool cubes and watering daily with tap water. I keep my seeds under a 600w so theyre warm and get light for photosynthesis

I have been having pretty bad luck with germing old seeds as well when trying to start them in rapid rooters (presoaked in a glass of water for 24 hours). I don't know if I'm keeping them too wet or not wet enough. So I'm giving up on them.

This last time around I went the paper towel method (Not presoaked in a glass of water. Just placed between 2 paper towels folded in half, soaked with tap water and placed into a ziplock bag with a puff of air.). Within 36 hours 7 out of 8 had cracked. And in 60 hours the 7 had grown to an inch to an inch and a half. So they went into my perlite/vermiculite mix and under my 200 watt LED. All 7 are now about 2 inches tall and working on their second set of leaves.

This is with seeds that are 15-17 years old that haven't always been stored in the proper conditions as well.

The one seed that survived my last rooter attempt (1 out of 10) was just topped for the first time last night. It's got a 2 week head start on the others that I just popped.