Ok so that is odd, this is the second time I have made this post the first one has just vanished....but anyway. I have germed thousands of seeds so I am not new to this, but my germ rates on these good seeds I am buying now is way low. Is this normal? This last run I put down 35 of them, and at 7 days I now have 8 viable sprouts. And really once you get past a week you aren't goign to get much more, maybe a stragler or two left but after 7 days they are pretty much done. I thought with these better strains I would get better results, especially paying $15 a seed from Herbie's for really good strains. I put them straight into soil, mist daily to keep top wet and cover with a black sheet in my veg room where it is 80/55. When I see the first sign of them popping move them under the T5 at at least 12 inches away from the bulbs. Way back when I used to water germ and then transplant, but honestly that should really not matter. I might go back to that just to see if there is a difference, but I would have no idea why there would be. Might try another place or something to buy from. No clue why I can't get at least 70-80% of them to sprout, and about 50% to stay alive. I am at half that. I so need to build a cloning setup, these seeds are annoying me.
I am waiting on a shipment from attitude, but I have raised the same question in the past. When I buy online success rate is about 10%. Bagseed is 80%~90%. Using the same method on both. I dont get it. Sent from my SCH-I535 using Grasscity Forum mobile app
Place them in a wet paper towel inside a ziplock in a warm place. I've had the occasional seed not make it but usually works great. Way better success that way for me compared to straight into soil.
I am going to change up my method next run. I am going to water germinate like I used to and then place them in soil after that. That way I can see just how many crack the shell and try to isolate where the problem is. This is much more a pain in the ass but I can't lose all these seeds that I am now. Out of those 35 I mentioned earlier I now have 10 nice sprouts. I had around 10 others die upon placing them under light, and about 12-15 that just didn't germ at all. T5 at about 8 inches away so no real heat under there. The weird thing is that I get a lot of them that germinate, but then die right when they crack the surface like immediately. It could be because I am moving them under light too fast, and they aren't ready for the heat. But I have germed bag seed rigth under light before in soil and never had any issues so who knows. maybe I need to back off the light even more like at a foot plus. It is odd because some of the seeds have no problem yet the others just die right away.
I just had one pop after 8 days. The worst thing that happened to me is that the fist 2 of 3 I put in the soil, sprouted the next day. It made me think there was something wrong with the others, and I wasted a couple of seeds by not being patient. The one I waited on was my last seed, so I had nothing to lose by waiting.