Fresh seeds struggling to sprout!

hiya all,

been sprouting seeds for years and never had a problem. gave pollinating a go with some reversed female pollen and harvested the seeds about a week ago. they were black with tiger stripes all over them. have tried sprouting about 10 in the last week and none have popped. i dried the harvested seeds for a couple of days and had them in the fridge, cant work out why there not sprouting!!

Was the plant you pollinated a hybrid?

yeah it was

i also reverse pollinated off the hybrid, then pollinated another hybrid. And pollinated a stabilised plant as well but still waiting for those seeds

I have never planted seed's that fast of the back of a breeding project,i think that the seed's really need a bit of hardening off time,

But to be honest i see no reason why they should not have germinated,i would have thought they would have sprouted faster.Be very interesting to see if the seed's you have rest sprout after a short while.

They sound has though they are perfect how you have described them,perhaps just do some more they can't all let you down

Gianttee said:

hiya all,

been sprouting seeds for years and never had a problem. gave pollinating a go with some reversed female pollen and harvested the seeds about a week ago. they were black with tiger stripes all over them. have tried sprouting about 10 in the last week and none have popped. i dried the harvested seeds for a couple of days and had them in the fridge, cant work out why there not sprouting!!

Click to expand...

I fell into this some time back

and now leave them to dry out

for a minimum of a month between germs,

seeds with more than 5% water are called 'green' even tho they may not be ...lol

some in your position may heat a plate in a microwave

and then place the seeds on the plate

shuffling the seeds on the plate not to roast but to lightly dry

for a few minutes, but best is in the sun for a day

good luck

vostok said:

I fell into this some time back

and now leave them to dry out

for a minimum of a month between germs,

seeds with more than 5% water are called 'green' even tho they may not be ...lol

some in your position may heat a plant in a microwave

and then place the seeds on the plate

shuffling the seeds on the plate not to roast but to lightly dry

for a few minutes, but best is in the sun for a day

good luck

Click to expand...

(good advice) don't heat the seeds just put in a air drying bag a old pair of tights in a dry dark place leave to hang for a while then re try

I've found out through trial and error (some reading but I always have to try shit anyways) that any new seeds I pull sit for 4-5 weeks MINIMUM before I try and germ them. In fact, I just confirmed what I already knew because I was being impatient with a new batch of F2's I wanted to try out, threw down 5 and none popped anything resembling a tail.

I recently did a germ test on a batch of seeds while they were still fresh. I got about 20% and they were slow and showed little vigor.
I then dried them for about a month and put them in the fridge for another month. Germination rate jumped up to normal rate of about 95%
maybe a coincidence but it convinced me to always "age" seeds

thanks everyone, thought i produced dud seeds but will dry them out and try again in a month or two

God i love this forum, that has made my day