The seeds start to rush the place, i’m happy even if i have maybe one more month of germinations in front of me to reboot the lab’. I don’t specially like to do it, i prefer to analyze and kill seedlings lol
But i was thinking than maybe it was a good idea to present how i do that, one time for good because it’s always the same procedure. For the curious or some than need inspiration or whatever, just to share it if any.
As promised, the very ghetto picture :
I need to buy again a dozen of seeds sprouters lol
One person here know in detail why i’m so much happy to see that again, and what this ugly ghetto pile of germinating seeds represent for me ^^ Proud to be shameless. As hell.
Now this is my best friend to manipulate germinating and germinated seeds :
This is a titanium tweezers (surgery) with enough strenght to be able to do delicate operations with it. If it’s too loose, i crunch the seeds with it.
I never touch germinated and germinating seeds with my fingers, gold rule. Even with gloves.
The first thing than i’m doing is to wash everything than will be used and than is “not brand new”. I just use dish soap in good quantity (without excess) and i don’t rinse the tools. Residual dish soap “film” is my friend.
For fresh seedlings, i use the white “plastic glass”. I don’t known the volume, i can test it if any.
On left the format of the popular “solo cup” more generally known, a bit less than a half liter (0.11 gal).
It’s how i prepare them, and it’s (for real) the start of the optimization. I just flame a cutter blade then i make four fine cut on the bottom of the cup. More will make my seedlings lazzy and i don’t want that, time is not money but weed than you don’t smoke ^^
I use this kind of supermarket soil. Nothing special or expensive but enough “fine”. I work it a little in my hands to aerate it to the maximum possible, like a cloud of soil.
I fill very gently the cup, i NEVER press the soil and i let it loose, aerated to maximum and fluffy as hell. By this way, i will be able to have solid, dense and not struggled roots. The soil don’t disapear by magic when the seedling fill the cup with roots, the roots are just compressing the soil to have space. And the force of a seedlings to compress the matter of its soil mustn’t be under-evaluated. The more compressed, the more the roots are compressing each others when you want dense and boosted root balls to transplant. Specially with explosive products like Root Excellurator ^^
I place them in a “tray” then i fill the tray with tap water until the cups are gently “floating”. I was used to do it the day before the transplant of seeds with larger scales. To let the soil to be “uniform” in RH. But i was more in “chinese factory” mode today.
I wait a little, the time for the water to enter gently in the cup in preparing the others trays.
Just before sowing the seeds, i spray in a very fine rain the upper side of the cup to broke the “dry layer” and permit to the twos humid side to “communicate” fast. It’s why i don’t hate dish soap.
Then i digg a micro-hole on every cup ready to be “sowed” with seeds. Every single one, to known in one fast check if the cup is allready filled with a seed or not. I dig mostly at 0.5 centimeter depth, one centimeter for the big-rooted-dragster seeds.
On the right, there is a seed than is perfect to explain how i think. It’s planting his pivot root just aside. Not to dig, but to “stand up” and become a plant. Without its primary leafs, it actually don’t known than it’s on surface so it will continue to probe the surface until to find a stable corner to “be right on its feets”.
Can appear stupid like that, but it don’t exist a single way to plant seeds. Like “plant the root down”, “plant the root up” blabla … just plant the root in thinking what the fuck is doing the seedling lol At this stage theyr are just pathetic arm-wrestling babies, if you don’t forget that you will plant all your seeds the right way.
If you think than i will plants all these seeds the same way and manner, you don’t got the thing and/or i don’t have well explained it ^^
The macro is not very good but it give an idea on how i adapt.
I want to dedicate this post to this Avinash Soul F1 lol It literally exploded from the shell like pop corn. And without taking the time to eat all the food inside lmao Motivate the others, sucker !
Because writing on cups is shitty as hell and need to be done again at each transplantation … i use this cheap and simple trick. Available everywhere and “knifes” are enough long to write the ID on it. I use also spoons of different colors to mark the specimens. Like : red spoon = to be killed, green spoon = to watch, yellow spoon = to be pollinated etc … with a fast check you can remember things without opening the database during the daily maintenance.
First shot done, around 30 seeds. I will let sit the cups in a bit of water like that until tomorrow morning then put them in a large, dry and clean tray. One dedicated for the veg side, one dedicated for the “sog from seeds” side. No light until i see a leaf.
Maybe 20 mores seeds are waiting to be transplanted, the ST#3 x Ghanna batch is dead. Trash fate. The first shot of ghanna x zamal too, i need to launch others from this one again. Some of you will think than it’s pretty early to throw seeds but they smell not legit. I mean really smell lol Can’t explain really, only my grand son can smell this odor too.
I will try to document a specific trick for this type of difficult and aged seeds. Somes will be shocked maybe ^^
see ya ! can’t wait to see some green in the tents.
