Germinating Old and Stubborn Seeds

[TychoMonolyth]

When I travel, which was a lot before Covid, my travel hobby was collecting local seeds. So I was in the Ecuador and scored great weed I called "Fisherman's Arse" because it was dust and tasted like what a fisherman's arse should taste like. lol. I muled some seeds home and tried to germinate them. No. luck. at. all. 100% failure. Probably because they were stored in a bamboo hut for a few years.

I still had a few dozen seeds and after trying all the regular methods of germinating trouble seeds, without success, I decided to let my OCD take over. I have cash crop and dairy farmers in the family, a biologist, a chemist and horticulture buddy. So I pumped them all for information. A couple years, and a lot of expensive chemicals and hormones later, I was ready for my first formal tests. I had already tested several techniques to germinate normal seeds with some of the hormones I collected, killing them, arresting and restarting germination, and a few more fun experiments.

The mixing is too intense for me and it's pretty easy to put seeds to sleep or kill them, so my cook (the chemist) put it together and diluted it for me to use on seeds. Now I have 1 liter of the stuff.

Side by Side Test of 14 year old problem seeds

Without treatment

With treatment

With treatment 3-4 days later (I forgot about them. lol)

Hormone Ingredients

Gibberellins (A3, GA, and GA3)​

Alpha Amylase
Abscisic Acid
Brassinosteroids
Ethylene
Cytokinins
and Vitamins​

It has a 2 year shelf life, and now that travel is on the horizon, I may be able to use some of it on new old seeds.

 

[Douglas.Curtis]

Pure awesome! Ty for sharing

 

[DragronfuitKing]

When I travel, which was a lot before Covid, my travel hobby was collecting local seeds. So I was in the Ecuador and scored great weed I called "Fisherman's Arse" because it was dust and tasted like what a fisherman's arse should taste like. lol. I muled some seeds home and tried to germinate them. No. luck. at. all. 100% failure. Probably because they were stored in a bamboo hut for a few years.

I still had a few dozen seeds and after trying all the regular methods of germinating trouble seeds, without success, I decided to let my OCD take over. I have cash crop and dairy farmers in the family, a biologist, a chemist and horticulture buddy. So I pumped them all for information. A couple years, and a lot of expensive chemicals and hormones later, I was ready for my first formal tests. I had already tested several techniques to germinate normal seeds with some of the hormones I collected, killing them, arresting and restarting germination, and a few more fun experiments.

The mixing is too intense for me and it's pretty easy to put seeds to sleep or kill them, so my cook (the chemist) put it together and diluted it for me to use on seeds. Now I have 1 liter of the stuff.

Side by Side Test of 14 year old problem seeds

Without treatment


With treatment


With treatment 3-4 days later (I forgot about them. lol)


Hormone Ingredients

Gibberellins (A3, GA, and GA3)​

Alpha Amylase
Abscisic Acid
Brassinosteroids
Ethylene
Cytokinins
and Vitamins​

It has a 2 year shelf life, and now that travel is on the horizon, I may be able to use some of it on new old seeds.

Are you from Ecuador? I seen on your posts that you traveled a lot there! I'm from there, and will be travelling in December for a month, feel free to shoot me a pm to talk!

 

[Lotto]

Gibberellic acid has been used forever to trigger plant responses. I hope your concoction continues to show good results.

I've used a smidge of Miracle Grow or Peter's mixed in water to wake up old vegetable and flower seed. You never know how much life left a seed might have unless you try. Thanks for the info.

 

[TychoMonolyth]

Gibberellic acid has been used forever to trigger plant responses. I hope your concoction continues to show good results.

I've used a smidge of Miracle Grow or Peter's mixed in water to wake up old vegetable and flower seed. You never know how much life left a seed might have unless you try. Thanks for the info.

I've used generic Gibberellic Acid on some and still got a fail. That's why I dug into it. There are over 600 Gibberellins and many other useful hormones. I always go to family farmers when I need growing advice. They'll talk your ears off about what, why, how, and when. Farmers use a variant of GA to increase seed germination and plant inter-nodal spacing to increase silage for feed, or to decrease inter-nodal spacing to keep some crops short for protection against wind damage while maintaining seed yields (wheat, oats, etc). It seems farmers know a lot more than we usually give them credit for.

 

[midwestkid]

That is really neat. You should see if you can get the measurements from your chemist. This could be a game Changer for the entire community

 

[TychoMonolyth]

That is really neat. You should see if you can get the measurements from your chemist. This could be a game Changer for the entire community

It's not really a game changer for agritech. It's old hat really. Monsanto has been doing that for years, if not decades with their GMO Rape Seed. It's bred to produce dormant seeds. Then you have to buy the hormones to treat the seed so they'll germinate. But I don't think I've seen anything other than GA3 used outside of them. I'm sure it has. I have a pretty big farm agriculture company about 30 minutes from me, and all they carry is GA3, and it's about $32 for 20ml. It pretty easy to kill seeds with it too.

I was going to do it myself but he described the method was important because some hormones will nullify (I can't remember the word he used) in certain combinations. He gave me the example of Abscisic Acid being used. It induces seed dormancy, and that's not we want. At the same time, it's needed for another function (don't ask me). Regardless, the amounts you have to purchase, and the amount you need, make it unreasonable and expensive.

If anyone in here has old seeds they want to test it on, I'd be happy to send some out as a tester. I don't even know if I can send it across the border yet. I think I can because I got most of it from the US. But I still have to check.

A couple people asked me about some already so I just added it to my website.

I'd post the address but I'll get my wrist slapped for not being an advertiser (and that's fair).

 

[TychoMonolyth]

They're up.

Now comes another test. When I've used GA3 in the past, and the little guys stretched like you wouldn't believe. So I'll be pouring the light on them to try and keep them short.
(Wish I had T5s for this)

 

[Lotto]

Tycho
Live in grain country. Best soils in the world being worked by farmers. The utmost respect goes out to them. Have family ties to a Monsanto ( now Bayer) plant in the area. Don't care to discuss roundup or GMO breeding, just to say genetics allow growers to profit even in bad weather years.

I would love to try your mix on old vegetable seed. If you can figure it out and care to do it, I'm in.

 

[midwestkid]

What's the shelf life on one of those bottles?

 

[Mithridate]

Im thinking the ABA should slow down the crazy GA stretch, well maybe. Ha.

 

[Ogsourblue]

Im very intrigued by this thread.

 

[TychoMonolyth]

Tycho
Live in grain country. Best soils in the world being worked by farmers. The utmost respect goes out to them. Have family ties to a Monsanto ( now Bayer) plant in the area. Don't care to discuss roundup or GMO breeding, just to say genetics allow growers to profit even in bad weather years.

I would love to try your mix on old vegetable seed. If you can figure it out and care to do it, I'm in.

I'm not against GMO at all. Rice with Beta-carotene is keeping people from going blind.

Without GMO, we couldn't feed ourselves. I'll take a pass on roundup ready soy thought. I'm glad that gets shipped to china. Lol

I'm not far from the Dutch Marshes up here and they claim the same. Lol. Not as big as your area though. Only about 20 square miles and feeds most of Canada it's summer vegetables. No wheat in there at all I don't think.

-

 

[TychoMonolyth]

Im thinking the ABA should slow down the crazy GA stretch, well maybe. Ha.

Stretch, stay small, go to sleep. It's a dance for sure. I've seen lighting tests and T5s worked best to keep them short. I wish I could find that video again.

 

[Creeperpark]

Sounds interesting, I think whats is most important is the male to female ratio and hybrid vigor of the plants. I noticed that old seed almost always yields a very large amount of males. The last old seed batch I cracked I got 16 males to 2 females out of some old White Widow seed. Plus the plants didn't have the same vigor as the OG plants when they were new seed. It would be more interesting to me to see what the sex ratio and hybrid vigor will be from the seeds you cracked in a month.

 

[TychoMonolyth]

Sounds interesting, I think whats is most important is the male to female ratio and hybrid vigor of the plants. I noticed that old seed almost always yields a very large amount of males. The last old seed batch I cracked I got 16 males to 2 females out of some old White Widow seed. Plus the plants didn't have the same vigor as the OG plants when they were new seed. It would be more interesting to me to see what the sex ratio and hybrid vigor will be from the seeds you cracked in a month.

Male to Female ratio? I'm very interested in finding out. I suspect you are right about a high male count.

As a survival mechanism, even female plants will produce pollen via rhodelization in an effort to produce seed, and hermaphroditic plants release pollen even earlier for the same reason. I'm only guessing here, maybe Pollen trumps flower when it comes to survival of the species. Fertile flowers don't last long in comparison to pollen, so it wouldn't surprise me to discover male seeds staying viable longer than female seeds.

 

[Creeperpark]

Male to Female ratio? I'm very interested in finding out. I suspect you are right about a high male count.

As a survival mechanism, even female plants will produce pollen via rhodelization in an effort to produce seed, and hermaphroditic plants release pollen even earlier for the same reason. I'm only guessing here, maybe Pollen trumps flower when it comes to survival of the species. Fertile flowers don't last long in comparison to pollen, so it wouldn't surprise me to discover male seeds staying viable longer than female seeds.

That's why I try to use up my seed faster than in the old days. I only use Reg seeds.

 

[flylowgethigh]

Might try that on the snitch's SSDH seeds on the bay. I got 0 of 30 to pop.

 

[Sunshineinabag]

Fuken Monsanto lol

 

[Budz Lightyear]

Might try that on the snitch's SSDH seeds on the bay. I got 0 of 30 to pop.

(looks at fridge where my pack of SSSDH from seedbay are snuggled away in anticipation) :