getting Germination & seedling success rates up

Greetings to each and all! Apologies for posting a bit OT for forum section. I did not find 'proper/ accurate' section for germination and seedling phase techniques.

I have read the basic damp paper towel in tuperware box / plastic bag; direct to soil; to jiffy pellet techniques.

While my experience is limited, I have tried different method. Still my success rate kinda sucks. While part might be due to old seeds .. too many failures indicate that it is me/ my techniques/ execution of techniques.

Issues I have:
1) Seed dose not open/ opens only slightly but dose not push tap root out.
2) cotyledons pushing out/ opening/ opened and stem gets thin and wastes away.
3) between cotyledons pushing out and first leaf pair pushing out . stem gets a brown spot (last time was where stem and cotyledons join) forms and rots the plant.

I would like to open up discussion for steps one can incorporate to germination inorder to improve success rate. Also looking into dialing in on specifics of each step. By this I mean I try to nail down flexible terminology like 'moist'.

I suspect that my seeds have been in too humid condition as 2) and 3) have been issues.

I do have a bag of cheap non-thc seed I can use on testing different techniques.

Looking forward to hearing about your techniques and trying to get my own house in order.

Just now testing how short/long soaking in tap water / tap water + chlorine affects germination rates.

Current understanding:
Temp: from 21C or 70F to 27C or 80F is good.

Seed likes to be in (moist to very moist) conditions before germination and moist but not very moist when cotyledons push out. (yes.. dialing these down is tricky). What would be good air humidity level for seeds and for cotyledons ?

I guess some airflow is better than non/ limited airflow.

Light .. I do not think that light makes that much difference in germination phase one way or another. On many techniques the seed is in fact more or less 'in dark' due to mechanics of technique. Once cotyledon leaves are present - light should be provided.

On wards and up wards .. step by step!

This is my method for germing seeds.

Soak seeds for 24 hours in water with a 5 or 6 drops of liquid oxygen somewhere dark and warm, this will help sterilize the outer shell of any dormant pathogens.

Remove seeds from water and use the paper towel
Method. Use fresh ph 5.5 water(left to stand 24 hours) with some liquid oxygen added to moisten your paper towels, dont have the towels too wet where water seeps out of the towels but the should not be too dry either. Put inside a zip lock bag or airtight Tupperware box somewhere dark and warm. Temp should ideally be 75-80oc.

I would normally check them every 12 hours or so, and dont like transplanting into rw cubes til the tap root is at least 10mm long.

My preferred medium for seedlings in 1 inch rockwool, soak rockwool cubes in ph 5.5 water with added liquid oxygen for a min of 2 hours and let the drain off for half hour or so, then ready to go.

When seeds open and just a tiny bit of tap root comes out and stops is because of damping off, thats why i use liquid oxygen.

Almost forgot, when your seeds pop up above ground but the stem gets thin and they fall in on themselves means your light is too far away. Your seedling is racing for the light but hasnt had a chance to strengthen its stem

Scuffing up the seeds with a matchbox strike strip prior to soaking I found was a great tip & it might help your first issue

yts farmer said:

This is my method for germing seeds.

Soak seeds for 24 hours in water with a 5 or 6 drops of liquid oxygen somewhere dark and warm, this will help sterilize the outer shell of any dormant pathogens.

Remove seeds from water and use the paper towel
Method. Use fresh ph 5.5 water(left to stand 24 hours) with some liquid oxygen added to moisten your paper towels, dont have the towels too wet where water seeps out of the towels but the should not be too dry either. Put inside a zip lock bag or airtight Tupperware box somewhere dark and warm. Temp should ideally be 75-80oc.

I would normally check them every 12 hours or so, and dont like transplanting into rw cubes til the tap root is at least 10mm long.

My preferred medium for seedlings in 1 inch rockwool, soak rockwool cubes in ph 5.5 water with added liquid oxygen for a min of 2 hours and let the drain off for half hour or so, then ready to go.

When seeds open and just a tiny bit of tap root comes out and stops is because of damping off, thats why i use liquid oxygen.

Almost forgot, when your seeds pop up above ground but the stem gets thin and they fall in on themselves means your light is too far away. Your seedling is racing for the light but hasnt had a chance to strengthen its stem

Click to expand...

Thank you!!

Soaking seed in water (how much?) with 5 or 6 drop of liquid oxygen. Shot glass? small/large drinking glass? something between these?

How many layers are you using below/on top of seeds?

Philmore Jars said:

Scuffing up the seeds with a matchbox strike strip prior to soaking I found was a great tip & it might help your first issue

Click to expand...

Thank you, your success noted!
I did try to line a box with fine grain sanding paper and shaked seed within for a while. That run was 0/13 seeds germinated. Failure likely due to something else going wrong on my run.

Do you target specific area of the seed with scuffing?

yts farmer said:

I would normally check them every 12 hours or so, and dont like transplanting into rw cubes til the tap root is at least 10mm long.

Click to expand...

What position do you prefer as you transplant? root down? side ways? root up?

Iamnumber said:

Thank you!!

Soaking seed in water (how much?) with 5 or 6 drop of liquid oxygen. Shot glass? small/large drinking glass? something between these?

How many layers are you using below/on top of seeds?

Click to expand...

Hey there,

When i soak my seeds i'll just use a coffee mug plastic cup or small plastic kitchen jug. Disposable plastic cups are recommended if you're germing multiple strains at once.

I normally use 4 sheets of kitchen towel and fold it twice, half then quarter.

Then when kitchen towel is sufficiently wet i'll put the seeds between the 2 folded quarter's and then into tupperware somewhere dark and warm.

Once the pips have popped and have 10mm of taproot showing then i'll transplant into my rockwool cube taproot down and cover the hole with a small piece of rockwool that i would pinch of a corner.

Hope this helps buddy.

Peace.

It does seem like you may have to much moisture for your seedlings. Ive planted 100s of seeds over the years and have always had good success rates. 90% and above. Jiffys work well and allow you to observe your seeds process a bit more. Mostly I have just planted straight into a heavy perlite soil in a one gallon pot. Bury the seed about as deep as the tip of my pinky finger and put loose soil on top. *Do not pack the soil above the seed*. Then I pore a small amout of water(1/4 cup) onto the soil area above the seed. Everyday I pore about the same amount on depending if the soil had dried out on top. This method takes about a week for the stem to pop out of the soil. Your seedling can then stay in the gallon pot until its time to sex it. IMO the less amount of transplanting early on, the less stress on the plant. The faster and healthier it grows.
Good Luck with your germination process.

WilliametteWilly said:

It does seem like you may have to much moisture for your seedlings. Ive planted 100s of seeds over the years and have always had good success rates. 90% and above. Jiffys work well and allow you to observe your seeds process a bit more. Mostly I have just planted straight into a heavy perlite soil in a one gallon pot. Bury the seed about as deep as the tip of my pinky finger and put loose soil on top. *Do not pack the soil above the seed*. Then I pore a small amout of water(1/4 cup) onto the soil area above the seed. Everyday I pore about the same amount on depending if the soil had dried out on top. This method takes about a week for the stem to pop out of the soil. Your seedling can then stay in the gallon pot until its time to sex it. IMO the less amount of transplanting early on, the less stress on the plant. The faster and healthier it grows.
Good Luck with your germination process.

Click to expand...

Thank you kindly, I guess ideal would be to find the perfect mix of medium to provide enough and not too much moisture as constantly as possible. There is my first try at this reported below (medical seed) that aims at this. I added coco to perlite to increase wick action and to provide more moist setting for seed sprout.

report on how things are moving along...

Trouble in paradise .. I had seeds germinating on 'too wet' paper towels (two different methods to reach same effect). One patch dried as I left it to dry out a bit (and went to sleep forgetting them - Chronic pain leads to decline of cognitive capabilities - including memory )

Ten seeds (another patch) was moved (with root showing from just a peek to 9mm ( ~ 1/3 of an inch) ) and put between plates (tiny gap between). To provide moisture I used sponge cloth (fairly thick 2mm and 3 mm; 2/32" and 3"32" ). Today 10/10 were showing a nice tail. Today is booked so they must stay there - I will have to figure out if I am happy with this or if I must test the transplant phase too.

One (medical) seed was put to hempy bucket like of a pot with holed dome. Seed was rinsed in water and put to a thin layer of coco (~3mm or 3/32"). Today stem was above ground. I opened up (removed) dome - waiting for cotyledons to open up. Stem is darker but not brown - standard I guess?

After soaking (12 to 16 hours) direct to substrate was not as good. To Fytocell resulted only few sprouts (~2 / 10) and they were manky looking. I guess this is due to high water retention properties of fytocell. To soil resulted a bit better but poor still (~3-4 /10) sprouts - sprouts were good looking. (some might still be coming) . These experiments were done as afterthought so margin of (user)error is big.

Soaking and then directly to Bottom hydrated fytocell with coco layer on top is sprouting seeds.. this was also an afterthought experiment. We shall see how this turns out.


I have been bit afraid of soaking as people have warned about drowning the seeds. I guess the 'too wet' paper towels functioned as additional soak hydrating seeds. Good thing is that seeds do get air so the risk of drowning the seeds is greatly reduced. Comments or views on this line of reasoning ??

I guess I will try out some form of bottom feeding with upwards wick in transplant pot. Fairly heavy on perlite (allow air and prevent over watering / damping off) with moisture holding and wick characters to prevent drying out of the plant. coco seems very good so some of that. I guess some soil as I am aiming for soil grown ( as soil gives more leeway to ph levels and nutrition feeding)

WilliametteWilly said:

It does seem like you may have to much moisture for your seedlings. Ive planted 100s of seeds over the years and have always had good success rates. 90% and above. Jiffys work well and allow you to observe your seeds process a bit more. Mostly I have just planted straight into a heavy perlite soil in a one gallon pot. Bury the seed about as deep as the tip of my pinky finger and put loose soil on top. *Do not pack the soil above the seed*. Then I pore a small amout of water(1/4 cup) onto the soil area above the seed. Everyday I pore about the same amount on depending if the soil had dried out on top. This method takes about a week for the stem to pop out of the soil. Your seedling can then stay in the gallon pot until its time to sex it. IMO the less amount of transplanting early on, the less stress on the plant. The faster and healthier it grows.
Good Luck with your germination process.

Click to expand...

My money is on too much water as well. I use rock wool or root riot to start, no need for paper towel.

Medium and pots for babies

Medium and pots for babies

I put the saplings from 10/10 woohoo patch into medium.

Testing medium mix that I guess might work and few setups on different cups/ very moist bottom layer.

4 in mix with 1 perlite, 1 coco, 1 soil.

1 was put with 1½ perlite, 1 coco, 1 soil.

1 was put with 1½ perlite, 1 coco, 1 soil AND thin layer of fytocell at bottom (idea is that this will be a step against dying out)

4 was put with 1 perlite, 1 coco, 1 soil AND thin layer of fytocell at bottom (idea is that this will be a step against dying out)

All are in plastic cups, some with cuts on side to see if they make any difference. All have holes at bottom (thou part have fytocell to mimic hempy reservoir - potential benefit is that fytocell would allow holes at bottom which opens door for air pruning).

Light watering on top, fairly solid watering for bottom (so middle where sprout is left 'dry' on top layer, middle layer dry and bottom layer wet . Hoping the root will seek water / moisture will wick toward root/seed AND that drier environment will give plants a better chance.

One set of four seeds in quite well hydrated coco. testing how it will keep with wick feeding.

-- Notes for testing at some point --
Scarring, 1st pot size,

-- Notes for production run --
wash hands _- minor thing to do but can save from world of hurt.
clean tools/seeds with hydro peroxide (liquid oxygen for example) -- again.. minor cost to take the prudent course of action.

Transplanted saplings are doing fine. 5/10 have opened up and dropped the helmet while remaining 5 still have the helmet.

As some of the seeds I put directly to soil are tiny pit ahead, I noted that some of the saplings were deformed - having only a single cotyledons. I guess the helmet/ protective sac stayed on for too long.

On 100% coco (with wick feed quick and dirty test) I had 4 seeds. only one broke surface and helmet stayed on 'for too long' 'it looked like I should help the plant to get out of it'. Result was that I botched the job and broke off the tip

So the question is.. Do you have any tips on how to help plant 'open up' and 'drop the helmet' ?

Second item on the list. I am interested in root pruning (air-pots). Root trap propagation pots are not available here (looked cool and great value). 1 Quart = 1 L air-pot is only one available here. I was wondering if that might be bit too big as a first pot? My best guess would be that 25 cu. in. (~0,4 L) might be better as a first pot.

As smaller air pruning pots are not available some DIY would be the only option.

While air pruning is not an subject to this sub-forum - I feel the size of the 1st pot is.. and I do plan to utilize air pruning so that has to be taken into consideration.

If you have pointers on cost/ effort efficient ways to improve seed/ cutling propagation.. please do post em. ( I have about two pound pack of the no-thc, no-/ very-little-cbd strain to be played with as I have not found the energy to do any baking (where I could use these sees ) )

- notes for further testing --
Natural rooting hormones to increase success rate / speed of plant development. First step would be to compare with and without different remedies and different combinations of mixes.

Iamnumber said:

Transplanted saplings are doing fine. 5/10 have opened up and dropped the helmet while remaining 5 still have the helmet.

Click to expand...

Looks like final score is 6/10 pushed through till serrated leaves.

two freed themselves from helmet/membrane too late/ with damage > Growth tip lost. I mean the cotyledons stay bound up within membrane and (quite often) starts to look like swan neck/head (stalk as neck and bound up leaves as head/peak). Two seedlings growth stalled as cotyledons stayed trapped within seed hull (only taproot and stalk pushed out - seed remained quite closed)

I did try to free these up but it looks like I waited a bit too long (one did continue healthy grow pushing score from 5/10 to 6/10). So more practice needed on timing (when one should step in) and how to remove helmet/membrane without damaging the plant.

The sole surviving medical seed is enjoying as she basks in bright light. Leaf size <> stalk length is looking good. No sign of burn etc.

Next patch of germination started. 7 seeds, bottom hydration with wick effect. Seeds are sitting on paper towel inch apart and covered with thin/hard coffee filter paper (idea is that seeds will stay moist and get some air). With wick effect I hope the moisture will stay good without too much active monitoring or watering/ ventilation.

The bit different rig I used last time had a bit of stability issues so I opted for described method.

I shave the edge of the seed where it joins together or the sharp tip of the seed. Not too much or you damage the insides.

I am gonna try using some distilled water with a bit of earthworm casting in it to help things along this time. I use gloves during all the handling to prevent any contamination. Heating mat set to 75 degrees. Seeds between two sponges damp but not soaking wet and that inside a airtight food container.

The seeds into a worm bin sounds the most successful so far. I have no worm bin so.

I've found germination to go significantly quicker at closer to 80-85 F. Also you want to make sure you have a nice, airy medium. Professional seed starting mix is incredible! If you are unsure about the mix, pour boiling water through it. This will knock out soil parasites. Obviously you want the medium to cool before you sow your seeds.

I never presoak or use paper towels. Just germinated 4/4 Dutch Passion Auto White Widows sowing directly in the mix and they're doing great now.

For helmets, I drop water onto the helmet and if they need help, I VERY carefully remove the seed coat and the membrane underneath. If you're careful, this won't hurt the plants at all. Wash your hands first to prevent spreading pathogens to your new babies.

https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=172749

Peace
BM

yesum said:

I shave the edge of the seed where it joins together or the sharp tip of the seed. Not too much or you damage the insides.

I am gonna try using some distilled water with a bit of earthworm casting in it to help things along this time. I use gloves during all the handling to prevent any contamination. Heating mat set to 75 degrees. Seeds between two sponges damp but not soaking wet and that inside a airtight food container.

The seeds into a worm bin sounds the most successful so far. I have no worm bin so.

Click to expand...

Thank you, I will add the shaving to the list of things to try. What is your preferred tool for this? small file?

Regarding wormbin, Try to find a strain that is bred to the composting (scientific name: Eisenia fetida) - Bit smaller and thinner than standard red crawler but these can stand warm (house hold) temperatures better.

My worm bin has been contaminated with small pests so this is something (risk) to consider.

Gelado` said:

For helmets, I drop water onto the helmet and if they need help, I VERY carefully remove the seed coat and the membrane underneath. If you're careful, this won't hurt the plants at all. Wash your hands first to prevent spreading pathogens to your new babies.

Click to expand...

Thank you for this info! I just managed to remove couple of helmets without damaging the plant/sapling. My hands are not delicate so this is extra hard for me.

Best practice (at this point) is to trap the helmet between thumb & index finger of left (secondary) hand from the left side of plant. Then from the right side of plant insert a sharp tool that you can manipulate into helmet (careful not to damage plant) and push (or pull) helmet open (which ever way works best). Plan is to brace helmet with left hand and apply force to the other side of helmet and force the helmet open without applying force to the plant.

It would stand to reason that weakening the seem (as suggested) would help the process as long as embryo is not damaged.

Bud_Man10 said:

https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=172749

Peace
BM

Click to expand...

Thank you - that is a nice setup and I will try to incorporate that style of heating. I do not recall seeing that exact type of sponges here so I think I must look for alternatives - This is one more reference point to 'what is appropriate'

I managed to sprout 6/6 seeds between paper towels.
2 layers each side of seed (pre moisture with chlorid water to kill pathogens)
bottom wick fed.
Bottom non water absorbing -plastic, no cover on top.

The paper did stay slightly too moist so while I do feel this is the way to go - I must still dial in water intake/ -evaporation ratio.

Paper was size of (large hand). Feeding with ~8 * 1mm or 1/32" multistrand nylon cord.

Temperature was aimed at high room temperatures ~25C or ~80F (lower at night I guess)

sigh.. forgot to post and I cant edit so..

so seeds were put into soil heavy medium after taproots were showing (varying lengths - longest was ~1 inch. All were put at once as I feared that longer time between towels might increase pathogen risk.

Helping hand was offered 'rather bit too soon rather than too late' mindset as 'rather later than too soon' resulted loss in previous experiment.

More details on removing technique on previous post