Last week, I was cleaning up under my bed. There were so many dust bunnies that I could not see what was under there. I found a couple of nice wooden boxes that used to house diamond Blanchard wheels. I decided that if i clear coat them, they’d be good risers for my plants. When I opened them, I found I had seeds from 6 strains in there. I hadn’t forgotten them, I just never thought about them because they were old. Here is what they were:
White Russian - May 2005
Karpov - July 2005
Neville’s Haze - august 2005
Karpov x Blue Widow - April 2006
SRL -March - 2007 (I don’t remember what the initials stand for, can’t find it in my erratic records)
St. Loius Sleeper - August 2012
Friday, I took 5 seeds from each strain except the Karpov and the Karpov x Blue Widow. I just took 3 seeds ea with them, because I have only about 25 of each of those and surprise, surprise, they were both favorites). I soaked them in a weak H2O2/water solution (1 part H2O2, 20 parts RO water). Nothing changed by the end of the 24 hours. I then upped the H2O2 after seeing a video on YouTube where they’d germed seeds in paper towels at a 5:1 ratio favoring water. I mixed 1 oz 3% H2O2 and 5 oz RO water. At the end of another 24 hours, I had cracked shells in some. I then changed them to soaking in 5ml of molasses, and 2 drops of Superthrive mixed with 1 liter of the H2O2 solution I’d soaked them in. I checked in on them every 8 hours or so. I had some very slow growth action going with a handful of seeds. I’d order some fulvic acid through Amazon and it had arrived by noon today (Sunday. Amazon has some pull with the USPS). I drained all the molasses/Superthrive\H2O2 solution from the containers and cleaned them with straight peroxide and rinsed them. I mixed the fulvic acid with pH adjusted water (5.95pH) at 35ml Ful-Power to 1 gallon of water. I put enough solution in each container to leave them sticking above the waterline by maybe 1mm
After all the seed groups soaked another 6-8 hours, I checked in on them and was surprised to find:
3 White Russian seeds with tap root started at about 2mm long (WOW! My oldest seeds at 13.1 years old! 
)
1 Neville’s Haze seed in the same condition
1 SRL seed also with about a 2mm protrusion
1 St. Louis Sleeper with a tap root about 5mm long
The 2 Karpov strains still had 0 germination activity.
None of these guarantees they will become plants, I had 1 tap root almost 12mm long on 2 Headband seeds and they didn’t survive. BTW, the Headbands are the reason I want to be able to sprout fussy seeds. The seed base descriptions of them sound like they will become a favorite. And if I recover some or all the strains I thought I’d never see again: BONUS extraordinaire!!!
I’m thinking the Karpov strains will be good candidates for GA3 (gibberellic acid).
@Enstromentals, yeah, I got that. He said to be very careful because of it. I only intend to use it one the ones that don’t respond well to other techniques.
I have some barley seed trying to sprout. I started it about 5:00 pm last Thursday (72 hours ago). That is some tough stuff to germ. The seed is very dry and hard. I just checked in on it again 2 hours ago. There were some nubbins on some. Hoping it means they will sprout soon. Using sprouted seeds to replace enzymes and hormones that have diminished with age is a very interesting idea.