Hello all. Some time ago I said that when I tried @slowandeasy's germination method, I would document it. With apologies to @slowandeasy here is my attempt to apply his technique and document the process for anyone interested.
Until now, I used the paper towel/cd case method with success but I don't like the need to handle the rooted seed and especially the need to extract it from the wet paper towel. In my opinion, this can't be done without ripping root hairs, and more serious damage is also possible. All my plants got through this fine, but avoiding the stress seems worthwhile to me.
Slow kindly pointed out his germination method on the AFN site while I was growing last winter, and I thought it offered some advantages:
Anyway, on with the documentation.
The seed soak was done in <1cm of water in the bottom of a small canning jar:
This was placed in my growdrobe which was cranked up germinating some other garden seeds for the dearest's planters, so it was nice and warm (~27C). Within 24 hours or thereabouts, root tips were showing on three seeds out of four. I should note that these were old seeds from an order I did a year or more ago. Specifically they are Auto PK from Oasis Genetics, so not perhaps the match quality wise of my Mephisto seeds that I grew last winter. In fairness to Oasis, I did get 100% from these last summer. This is more of a germination test than a serious grow, so I did not want to commit my remaining Mephisto stash.
I ended up leaving the water soak for longer than really needed - other projects got me busy... Anyway, here are the four seeds after ~48 hours:
One of the little buggers has already spread its cotyledons. As I mentioned, I was a bit late.
As the photo suggests, the final score was 3 out of 4.
While the soak was on, the germination cups were already in the growdrobe soaking their coco with dilute MC (maybe 600EC or so) with a touch of Sweet Candy. Each germination cup is actually two cups, an outer one with duct tape to keep light from the roots, and an inner one to contain the seedling. The cups are ~250 mls or so, not the larger solo cups. The clear inner cup allows inspection of root development. vHere are the cups all ready to go:
The closeup of the bottom of the inner cup shows the drain holes I made with my table saw. Easy and quick, but other tools would work fine. The holes are not optional though, you have to have clear drainage. The soil mix is straight coco.
I initially soaked the cups completely, and then left them soaked in the warm growdrobe until I was ready to plant the sprouted seeds. As Slow suggested, I then squeezed the medium down in the cup to remove excess liquid and compress the coco at bit. Lots of nutes came out, coco is very good at hanging on to moisture. Once the coco was squeezed, in the seeds went. I moved them by picking them up with the tip of an awl, lifting them gently while they were held in place by only the surface tension of the water. I didn't use the turkey baster because the babes were a tad too advanced, and I was worried about breaking them. Here is the most advanced of the three in her new home ~48 hours after the soaking started:
Initially, I kept the cups under cover because humidity in the growdrobe was too low (~40%): I also put some semi transparent plastic over top of the whole thing to keep the light intensity down, but I didn't take a photo. The heat in the growdrobe is from the led lights which were feeding the other garden seedlings, so I didn't want to burn the babes before they were ready.
And here they are on Day 7 from the start of the soak, the pics show lighter green than they actually are:
Even at this stage, roots are already reaching the bottom of the inner cup:
Since about day 5, the babes have been out from under cover in ~27C and ~70%RH. My "humidifier" is a bucket of water with a towel hanging in it, and a fan directed at the towel. Works a treat, moved RH from ~40% to ~70%. Which brings us up to date, today being day 7.
Hello again peeps, Day 11 since the start of the soak, and the babes are transplanted. Before I get on with the photos, a couple comments to summarize the generous pointers provided by @slowandeasy in the comments below. First, I left the coco too wet, I should have squeezed the coco down until it produced nothing out the bottom holes, and then fluffed a bit before putting the seeds in. It seems that no damage was done, but the babes might have been slightly happier initially if I had dried the coco out more than I did. Also, Slow uses a small spoon to move the sprouted seeds into the germination cup, which should work a treat, no doubt easier than what I did, and maybe less risk of breaking a root than using a turkey baster.
On with the photos. Here is a top view of one of the babes before transplant:
And here is its root development:
Root development varied a bit between the three, but this pic is pretty typical. Others had more roots out the bottom holes. As suggested by Slow, they were fertigated by putting just enough nute solution in the bottom of the taped cup to cover the bottom of the cup a few mm deep. The nutes were then soaked up into the inner cup by subirrigation wicking. I gave them a small feed ~ once a day or when they felt light.
Here is one popped out of its inner cup, and ready to place in the final pot after making an appropriate hole:
And here she is in her new hole, all ready to be tucked in:
Here are all three in their final pots, one autopot fabric pot, and two SIPs. I will be running coco/perlite in the autopot, and a soil mix in the SIPs, MC in both.
This will be the last update to this blog entry. The girls are now established in their final pots, so germination is a done deal. On with the subsequent mischief...
Here are all three girls in their panty hose and copper dress.
The two taller SIPS are soil, and have some leaf funkiness going on. I've never used the soil mix before, so the jury will be out for a while. I used soil in these because they will likely be handed off to a friend who I know will not bugger about with pH, nor am I keen about lending the pH probe for him to try. Once the plants are in his hands, they will receive tap water with nutes only. The plant in the lower autopot setup is doing better than the soil ones. It is 60/40 coco from the grow last winter, flushed and buffered.
The screen is cheap panty hose, it should be knat proof. Once the plants get bigger, I will gently close the material around the stem. For now, the cut off leg is just tucked in place around the stem base. The copper mesh, rumour has it, will deter slugs, at least any that try to climb the sides of the containers. Unless birds deliver the little buggers, the planters should be slug proof too. Good theory that. We shall see. Now all I have to do is deal with the mould issue, and an outside grow will become interesting again.
Nuff said on all that.
To summarize the germination process documented here, this is how to do it:
1. Prepare ~250ml (1 cup) plastic cups as illustrated, with clear inner cups with drainage holes, and taped outer cups left watertight.
2. Fill inner cups with straight buffered coco.
3. Pre-charge the coco with dilute nutes (~400 EC seems to work, they need very little at this point), and leave the coco to soak.
4. Place the soaking pre-charged cups into your heat controlled space, whatever that is. Make sure that the space is steady at >27C (80F) before you soak seeds, and make sure that the pre-charged cups are put into the space early so they can fully come to temperature before planting seeds.
5. Soak seeds in <1cm (1/2") of water brought to temperature before putting in the seeds. One way to do this is to use a small lidded glass jar with the water in it, and place it capped in the heated grow space a day early. If you want to get a bit fancier, add kelp to the soak solution, it has gibberillic acid, a plant hormone which activates germination, perhaps especially in older seeds. In ~24-36 hours, viable seeds will sprout tap roots. When tap roots extend roughly 1/2-1cm (1/4-1/2") the seeds are ready to transplant.
6. The night before you figure the seeds will be ready, squeeze the coco in the cups until no more nutes come out the drain holes.
7. Just before planting the seeds in the cups, squeeze the coco again to remove any nute solution that still wants to move, fluff the coco up slightly, and make a hole for the seed (chopstick works well). If you have mycos, add a bit to the hole, then transfer the seed into the hole gently using a small spoon or other tool. Ideally get the tap root pointed down without handling the seed . Cover the seed loosely with coco, do not pack it down.
8. If the RH in your heated germination space is <~70%, cover the cups with some sort of clear cover that keeps the humidity up initially. If you don't have anything else, one of the clear cups place upside down will work fine.
9. Within 24-48 hours, you will have new babes showing their tops.
10. Monitor root development through the clear inner cups. Irrigate from the bottom only. Do this by removing the inner cup, placing just enough nute solution into the outer cup to cover its bottom, and put the inner cup back in.
11. Once roots are well established, particularly if they are sprouting out the bottom of the cups, they are ready to go into their final pots. I left the plants in this effort for ~9 days after they first emerged from the coco. Exact timing will vary, and is likely not that important, just don't let the roots get carried away out the bottom of the cup or transplanting could be difficult without causing root damage. OTOH, too little root development may cause the root ball to not hold together when removed from the cup. Compromise, compromise.
12 To transplant the babes, first prepare a hole the right size by digging a hole the same depth as your cup, and gently packing soil medium around the outer cup to leave a shaped hole just right to receive your plant. Support the coco with fingers on both sides of the plant stem, invert the cup upside down, and tap the bottom or press it until the root ball releases from the cup. As gently as you can, invert the plant, place it in the prepared hole, press everything in place to get rid of air pockets, and water with dilute nutes in a circle around the leaf tips, not next to the stem.
That's all she wrote peeps. I hope this blog helps someone out. There are lots of ways to germinate weed, and I do not suggest that this approach is necessarily better than anyone else's. With many thanks to @slowandeasy for first describing this approach, it will be my go to process henceforth for the advantages it has over the alternatives that I have tried.
Happy growing peeps. (@slowandeasy, if you have any editting suggestions for the summary, give me a shout and I will incorporate)
Until now, I used the paper towel/cd case method with success but I don't like the need to handle the rooted seed and especially the need to extract it from the wet paper towel. In my opinion, this can't be done without ripping root hairs, and more serious damage is also possible. All my plants got through this fine, but avoiding the stress seems worthwhile to me.
Slow kindly pointed out his germination method on the AFN site while I was growing last winter, and I thought it offered some advantages:
- All seeds get tested initially in a water soak, so non viable seeds (they do happen even for the best of the breeders) can be identified and chucked without investing the effort of setting up pots, soil, etc. before you know whether they will germinate.
- The small initial germination container allows easier control of temperature during germination than does direct planting. Keeping the seeds warm during germination is a good idea in my and others' opinions.
- Seeds are handled only to move them from the water soak into the germination cups, and they do not have the chance to embed roots or root hairs in anything beforehand. By gently sucking them into a turkey baster, they can even be transferred without touching them at all. (Can't recall the member who reported doing this, my apologies for that)
- The initial soak seems to soften the seed cover more effectively than starting the seed in soil mix, so there is less chance of the shell getting stuck.
- Starting the seedlings in small germination cups may encourage more complete root occupation of the eventual final medium, at least general horticultural advice suggests this for other plants.
- Transplant of seedlings into final grow medium is as easy and low stress as any other method I am aware of, other of course than just putting them in final pots. However, the final pot option has other disadvantages - entire pots being used for non viable seeds, and the bigger challenge of getting and keeping temperatures up being the two that bug me.
Anyway, on with the documentation.
The seed soak was done in <1cm of water in the bottom of a small canning jar:
This was placed in my growdrobe which was cranked up germinating some other garden seeds for the dearest's planters, so it was nice and warm (~27C). Within 24 hours or thereabouts, root tips were showing on three seeds out of four. I should note that these were old seeds from an order I did a year or more ago. Specifically they are Auto PK from Oasis Genetics, so not perhaps the match quality wise of my Mephisto seeds that I grew last winter. In fairness to Oasis, I did get 100% from these last summer. This is more of a germination test than a serious grow, so I did not want to commit my remaining Mephisto stash.
I ended up leaving the water soak for longer than really needed - other projects got me busy... Anyway, here are the four seeds after ~48 hours:
One of the little buggers has already spread its cotyledons. As I mentioned, I was a bit late.
As the photo suggests, the final score was 3 out of 4.While the soak was on, the germination cups were already in the growdrobe soaking their coco with dilute MC (maybe 600EC or so) with a touch of Sweet Candy. Each germination cup is actually two cups, an outer one with duct tape to keep light from the roots, and an inner one to contain the seedling. The cups are ~250 mls or so, not the larger solo cups. The clear inner cup allows inspection of root development. vHere are the cups all ready to go:
The closeup of the bottom of the inner cup shows the drain holes I made with my table saw. Easy and quick, but other tools would work fine. The holes are not optional though, you have to have clear drainage. The soil mix is straight coco.
I initially soaked the cups completely, and then left them soaked in the warm growdrobe until I was ready to plant the sprouted seeds. As Slow suggested, I then squeezed the medium down in the cup to remove excess liquid and compress the coco at bit. Lots of nutes came out, coco is very good at hanging on to moisture. Once the coco was squeezed, in the seeds went. I moved them by picking them up with the tip of an awl, lifting them gently while they were held in place by only the surface tension of the water. I didn't use the turkey baster because the babes were a tad too advanced, and I was worried about breaking them. Here is the most advanced of the three in her new home ~48 hours after the soaking started:
Initially, I kept the cups under cover because humidity in the growdrobe was too low (~40%): I also put some semi transparent plastic over top of the whole thing to keep the light intensity down, but I didn't take a photo. The heat in the growdrobe is from the led lights which were feeding the other garden seedlings, so I didn't want to burn the babes before they were ready.
And here they are on Day 7 from the start of the soak, the pics show lighter green than they actually are:
Even at this stage, roots are already reaching the bottom of the inner cup:
Since about day 5, the babes have been out from under cover in ~27C and ~70%RH. My "humidifier" is a bucket of water with a towel hanging in it, and a fan directed at the towel. Works a treat, moved RH from ~40% to ~70%. Which brings us up to date, today being day 7.
Hello again peeps, Day 11 since the start of the soak, and the babes are transplanted. Before I get on with the photos, a couple comments to summarize the generous pointers provided by @slowandeasy in the comments below. First, I left the coco too wet, I should have squeezed the coco down until it produced nothing out the bottom holes, and then fluffed a bit before putting the seeds in. It seems that no damage was done, but the babes might have been slightly happier initially if I had dried the coco out more than I did. Also, Slow uses a small spoon to move the sprouted seeds into the germination cup, which should work a treat, no doubt easier than what I did, and maybe less risk of breaking a root than using a turkey baster.
On with the photos. Here is a top view of one of the babes before transplant:
And here is its root development:
Root development varied a bit between the three, but this pic is pretty typical. Others had more roots out the bottom holes. As suggested by Slow, they were fertigated by putting just enough nute solution in the bottom of the taped cup to cover the bottom of the cup a few mm deep. The nutes were then soaked up into the inner cup by subirrigation wicking. I gave them a small feed ~ once a day or when they felt light.
Here is one popped out of its inner cup, and ready to place in the final pot after making an appropriate hole:
And here she is in her new hole, all ready to be tucked in:
Here are all three in their final pots, one autopot fabric pot, and two SIPs. I will be running coco/perlite in the autopot, and a soil mix in the SIPs, MC in both.
This will be the last update to this blog entry. The girls are now established in their final pots, so germination is a done deal. On with the subsequent mischief...
Here are all three girls in their panty hose and copper dress.
The two taller SIPS are soil, and have some leaf funkiness going on. I've never used the soil mix before, so the jury will be out for a while. I used soil in these because they will likely be handed off to a friend who I know will not bugger about with pH, nor am I keen about lending the pH probe for him to try. Once the plants are in his hands, they will receive tap water with nutes only. The plant in the lower autopot setup is doing better than the soil ones. It is 60/40 coco from the grow last winter, flushed and buffered.
The screen is cheap panty hose, it should be knat proof. Once the plants get bigger, I will gently close the material around the stem. For now, the cut off leg is just tucked in place around the stem base. The copper mesh, rumour has it, will deter slugs, at least any that try to climb the sides of the containers. Unless birds deliver the little buggers, the planters should be slug proof too. Good theory that. We shall see. Now all I have to do is deal with the mould issue, and an outside grow will become interesting again.
Nuff said on all that.
To summarize the germination process documented here, this is how to do it:
1. Prepare ~250ml (1 cup) plastic cups as illustrated, with clear inner cups with drainage holes, and taped outer cups left watertight.
2. Fill inner cups with straight buffered coco.
3. Pre-charge the coco with dilute nutes (~400 EC seems to work, they need very little at this point), and leave the coco to soak.
4. Place the soaking pre-charged cups into your heat controlled space, whatever that is. Make sure that the space is steady at >27C (80F) before you soak seeds, and make sure that the pre-charged cups are put into the space early so they can fully come to temperature before planting seeds.
5. Soak seeds in <1cm (1/2") of water brought to temperature before putting in the seeds. One way to do this is to use a small lidded glass jar with the water in it, and place it capped in the heated grow space a day early. If you want to get a bit fancier, add kelp to the soak solution, it has gibberillic acid, a plant hormone which activates germination, perhaps especially in older seeds. In ~24-36 hours, viable seeds will sprout tap roots. When tap roots extend roughly 1/2-1cm (1/4-1/2") the seeds are ready to transplant.
6. The night before you figure the seeds will be ready, squeeze the coco in the cups until no more nutes come out the drain holes.
7. Just before planting the seeds in the cups, squeeze the coco again to remove any nute solution that still wants to move, fluff the coco up slightly, and make a hole for the seed (chopstick works well). If you have mycos, add a bit to the hole, then transfer the seed into the hole gently using a small spoon or other tool. Ideally get the tap root pointed down without handling the seed . Cover the seed loosely with coco, do not pack it down.
8. If the RH in your heated germination space is <~70%, cover the cups with some sort of clear cover that keeps the humidity up initially. If you don't have anything else, one of the clear cups place upside down will work fine.
9. Within 24-48 hours, you will have new babes showing their tops.
10. Monitor root development through the clear inner cups. Irrigate from the bottom only. Do this by removing the inner cup, placing just enough nute solution into the outer cup to cover its bottom, and put the inner cup back in.
11. Once roots are well established, particularly if they are sprouting out the bottom of the cups, they are ready to go into their final pots. I left the plants in this effort for ~9 days after they first emerged from the coco. Exact timing will vary, and is likely not that important, just don't let the roots get carried away out the bottom of the cup or transplanting could be difficult without causing root damage. OTOH, too little root development may cause the root ball to not hold together when removed from the cup. Compromise, compromise.
12 To transplant the babes, first prepare a hole the right size by digging a hole the same depth as your cup, and gently packing soil medium around the outer cup to leave a shaped hole just right to receive your plant. Support the coco with fingers on both sides of the plant stem, invert the cup upside down, and tap the bottom or press it until the root ball releases from the cup. As gently as you can, invert the plant, place it in the prepared hole, press everything in place to get rid of air pockets, and water with dilute nutes in a circle around the leaf tips, not next to the stem.
That's all she wrote peeps. I hope this blog helps someone out. There are lots of ways to germinate weed, and I do not suggest that this approach is necessarily better than anyone else's. With many thanks to @slowandeasy for first describing this approach, it will be my go to process henceforth for the advantages it has over the alternatives that I have tried.
Happy growing peeps. (@slowandeasy, if you have any editting suggestions for the summary, give me a shout and I will incorporate)
