Question about long term germination

S

shamazar

Guest
Hi all,

Please let me introduce my subject...

Usually, my beans pop within 24h-48h.
Always.

Except with MNS which is more like 72h-10 days

That is not a problem, the final product is the best :D

No, my problem / question is :

Usually, after 1 week I throw the unpoped to the garbage,
because I saw many times on the internet that for a good selection, the quickness to pop is a critera...(the plant will be "less good")

But I recently put to germinate a bag of seed of Devils bought in Aug.08 at DrCh. Knowing they were from DrCh, maybe old stk and conservated until now in normal room, I wasn t expecting great.

But the after 10 days unpoped were kept in a glass of water in dark place, changing water every day...

2/5 germinated after about +20 days. They are now in soil and taking the artificial sun.

--> Do you think I should prefer to put only quick germinating plants, because the long one will be - must be lower than a quick one ?

Please let me know...
Maybe L33t you can give me a good advice ?

Thx in advance...
 
I don't know what L33t will say, but he gives very good advice.

Here's what I'd do and the resoning why.

Seeds like Nevilles Haze or any "hard to get" strain are pretty valuable. So, I would give them 2-3 weeks or until you are certain they aren't going to germinate.

As for method, I would not soak them beyond 24hours, Seeds in the natural world don't usually lie in water for long periods. Soak them 24 hours in unchlorinated water with something like Liquid Seaweed(whatever the recommended dose is for seeds). Then plant them in a medium that you can keep evenly moist, NOT SOAKING WET!!! Seeds need air too.

I use my own soiless mix, but that's a personal preference.

I really think the germination rate problem has a lot to do with how seeds were "handled" between Shanti and those of us here at home :) There's no reason that Mr Nice seeds should behave radically different from other similar genetic strains.

Please take a look at my seed germination experiment thread and tell me what you think.

SativaFan
 
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Shamazar - I have never noticed if the seeds that have more vigor breaking the shell have more vigor during the rest of their life. I never really thought about it until I saw SF (above poster) mention something about it. I think that if you have plants that look good, let them grow, no matter how long they took to sprout. :) If the plants look shitty, I don't let em take up (prime) space, no matter how fast they sprouted.

In SF's ssh x ssh grow, the plants are labeled in the order in which they broke the surface, so you can observe for yourself if there is a correlation between seed sprout time and overall vigor. :) I'll be watching for the link ;)
 
I have the luxury of picking the alleged most vigorous( 1st out of the ground) because I have a shitload of my own apparently pretty viable SSH x SSH seeds. And it isn't necessarily a valid indicator, but I love to think it is:)

BUT BUT BUT!!!!

If I were germing Nev's(or any hard to get, expensive, etc. strain), I'd give each and every seed the maximum opportunity to grow...and I would grow every plant out until I knew it was absolutely NOT what I wanted or was somehow inherently "defective". You can't get too picky too early with something like Nev's or other maybe once in a lifetime deals IMO.

Or that's my plan if I every get to grow Nev's haze.


Does that make sense?

SativaFan
 
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Sativa seeds can take up to a week or over to germ just depends.

The best i have seen to date was g13/sk with in 12 hours not only was it starting to germ but had thrown out a tap root and the seed was trying to push its self out never seen it that fast before normaly 24 to 48 to see them start to germ but sativas normaly take longer.
 
SF, you are going to be doing a selection soon (assuming you get 50%+ females), so let us know if you personally think that the lowest #'d females are the most vigorous. Or better yet, do a photo shoot before you chop :D

Yeah, if I was on my last few seeds, or the seeds would be difficult to replace, I would prolly wait any plants out. The OP was talking about Devil seeds, which I've seen as generally available, and not TOO $$$ ($$$ relative...). If I had 4+ healthy dev's, I wouldn't let 2 or 3 stick around taking up space - if they looked shitty. If they just took a long time to sprout, and looked like healthy plants after they broke the surface, I wouldn't cut them.

Hempy, have you noticed a link between 'seed vigor' (time to crack, time to 'throw' the shell, time to form first set of leaves) and overall palnt vigor? If you have, do you think that culling slow starting seedlings (given the seed is replaceable) is an effective selection tool/strategy?
 
I mate one thing i started to notice as a grower in my erly years as i spent many hours watching studing my plants out doors the runts you never cull i have seen so many runts turn out to be something very special even if there the same genetic line they can just take off and out yield the others that had a better start.

The last runt i saw was a ssh grew it and had to leve it in veg were its sisters n brother went to flower this runt stayed a runt were its sisters brothers were almost tall as me the runt stayed short growth was so slow i think by the time i harvested its sisters was still no taller than 6 inches and a few sets of leaf.

I didnt give up on it as the seeds were old and as i see it all could be something special so i grew other plants still leveing the runt in veg untill i could take a clone then once clone was rooted i culled the seed plant and vegged the clone taken as it got to a set size i put her into flower and not only did it out yield her sisters and i mean in a massive way it turns out to be the best of the group in smoke.

All germinated around the same time juast this seedling took a lot of effert to take off but was worth every bit of effert.
 
B !!!

Hey man...maybe I overstated my point.

I'm not a slave to picket the lowest numbered female(s). It's one of those things I think about though if all else maybe is about equal.

I generally try to have some reason to pick one plant over another.

#7, the tallest one , the one I left three nodes on. That plant has been an exceptional plant (relative to the others) from the very beginning IMO. Go back and check my remarks about it. If 1-5 were all girls and #7 was also a girl...Screw the low number deal. I take #7 first. Make sense?

I forget the number, but I like this one plant a lot that is short but just has that "look" that it will be a "nice, healthy, vigorous" plant. Just a feeling you get. I'm not a good enough photographer to bring out subtle aspects of a nice plant with pics.

Each grow I do I learn more about what I like to look for in my plants. Experienced growers know what I mean. Nobody is always right about their "selections" though :) I don't have that sort of hubris in me;)

SativaFan

PS

Hempy

How they hanging Mate? ;)

I hope you're nowhere near those fires? The fires are down south right? Wildfires are bad news. We live with a fire season here too. 3-4 years ago we had 3 very close to here that burned up 100's of sq miles. Luckily all was widlerness and no lives lost.

What are you growing these days?

Being a SativaFan but with little practical experience....my research says you are correct bout sativas generally longer germing. That's what I read anyway.

That said, these plants of mine are coming up pretty quick, 83 % in 4 days or less in my lil "experiment"...Now I know SSH x SSH is not a 100% sativa, so maybe the indica from the NL5 in the genetic background accounts for my shorter germ times?

I know it's such a small sample to make a conclusion from, but over the last 3-4 grows, my seeds have been pretty consistent in germing like that.

SativaFan :)
 
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No I know it's not THE decider (as our former prez called hisself) :D It's just that I never made that connection before, and I'm looking forward to seeing for myself. AND since I can # my new babies, and watch yours which are #'d the same way, I can make a logical assumption based on observation. :D

How many plants do you have now? Would you say that as a group the 'oldest' 1/3 are signifigantly ahead of the 'younger' 1/3?

EDIT - I'm on this topic, cause you mentioned it, it caught my 'brain', then the OP started this thread (asking basically the same thing). Plus I have 20 seedlings (19 as of 10 min ago) to # and observe.
 
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barletta said:
No I know it's not THE decider (as our former prez called hisself) :D It's just that I never made that connection before, and I'm looking forward to seeing for myself. AND since I can # my new babies, and watch yours which are #'d the same way, I can make a logical assumption based on observation. :D

How many plants do you have now? Would you say that as a group the 'oldest' 1/3 are signifigantly ahead of the 'younger' 1/3?

EDIT - I'm on this topic, cause you mentioned it, it caught my 'brain', then the OP started this thread (asking basically the same thing). Plus I have 20 seedlings (19 as of 10 min ago) to # and observe.
Click to expand...

Interesting question. I'll try to take a look tomorrow when I water. The thing that sorta makes it acedemic is all 12 of them came up within hours of each other on the same day. So the Younger third vs older third is kind of hairsplitting at best. There could be lots of reasons one plant broke thru ahead of the others, e.g. inconsistent seed planting depth being high on the list...even tho i try hard to be very careful...I'm anal you know :D

And then there is the question of different "expressions" making judging what "ahead" means. There's one plant I'm not inclined to like because it want to be too big for what I want this grow. #10? the tall one with long nodes. Prolly be a huge ass plant if I'd left it alone. I dunno what I'm gonna do.

SativaFan
 
Fresh seeds tend to pop a lot faster than some I have stored for years. I think harder thicker shells make it a bit more work for them to get free as well.

Scuff em
 
shamazar said:
Hi all,

Please let me introduce my subject...

Usually, my beans pop within 24h-48h.
Always.

Except with MNS which is more like 72h-10 days

That is not a problem, the final product is the best :D

No, my problem / question is :

Usually, after 1 week I throw the unpoped to the garbage,
because I saw many times on the internet that for a good selection, the quickness to pop is a critera...(the plant will be "less good")

But I recently put to germinate a bag of seed of Devils bought in Aug.08 at DrCh. Knowing they were from DrCh, maybe old stk and conservated until now in normal room, I wasn t expecting great.

But the after 10 days unpoped were kept in a glass of water in dark place, changing water every day...

2/5 germinated after about +20 days. They are now in soil and taking the artificial sun.

--> Do you think I should prefer to put only quick germinating plants, because the long one will be - must be lower than a quick one ?

Please let me know...
Maybe L33t you can give me a good advice ?

Thx in advance...
Click to expand...

Hi shamazar

20 days eh? well done , proves that those who persist do get rewarded in the end ;)

I ve seen seeds germ on me within less 12 hr like my mns SSH , which were the fastest germinating seeds I ve had so far , and even though it wasn't the most fresh stock from what I remember , they were stored in my bedroom on a shelf for over a year , many of em germinated within the first 12hrs and all rest had germinated by 36/48hrs the latest. On the other hand my NH seeds which were very old , from the early 90's , germinated at around 2 weeks/14 days and thats the slowest germination I 've encountered myself. With the old nevs , like with any old stock , it was normal & expected though to see slow germination as that stock was more than a decade n half old. Also the plants were quite slow during the first 3-4 weeks , almost stunned growth and had some mutated growth too , something also normal/expected with old seeds . Those seeds were not on sale publicly of course due to their age and were from backup stock Shanti kindly sent me. After a month or so they started growing very fast and had great vigor so it was good I hadn't tossed em earlier. Now generally most of my MNS stock usually took 1-6 days to germ and I 've grown over a dozen packs of mns F1s.

As for seeds that are slow to germinate , well with most indis and hybrids if the stock is fresh the chances of getting something from a seed thats over 1.5week in the germination container/medium are quite low imho . With some sativas tho its completely normal to see them start to germinate at around a weeks time. So depending on the variety I d keep em for at least 1.5-2weeks before tossing em to the bin , maybe bit longer if I really wanted to get something from em. Sativa seeds are usually slower to germ than indicas , also those strains' seeds that have a harder shell / seedcase than seeds from other varieties usually take longer as water penetrates more difficult the outer harder/thicker case..

To answer your Q , I don't think germination time means much really , I mean like hempy said you can get a very special plant from a slow germer and it can be very vigorous later on during its life , eventually turn out very special , I ve seen that myself too so personally I wouldn't really use such criteria for selecting unless of course we are talking about selecting from a very large number ( ie hundreds of seeds ) and even then , I think I would wait for the plants to grow a bit then start selecting.
I kinda agree with Barletta , I ve noticed fast germers may grow some very vigorous seedlings/plants. But I ve also seen slow germers catch up during their life and becoming perfect looking/growing plants so I wouldnt really really use such criteria , at least most of the times for early selections .

One last thing to add here is from a smokers perspective ideally I wouldn't really cull a plant before sampling the smoke , of course in practice since we are growers ,not just smokers and we care about other things too , such as vigor growth / resistance to pests-mold / yields / fastness etc etc we also take into account other things besides smoke quality so it depends on many factors what path you should take. If you have space I 'd advise you to not cull any plants at this point and keep em all even the slower ones , if they continue to be slow you may want to toss em but personally I might still keep those (and backup clones) to try the smoke , you never know , might turn out to be something really unique and if you run em again from clone they might have their vigor restored. I say this because the slow germination and slow early growth may be due to bad luck (ie germinating seed environment related issues or old seedstock/bad storage etc etc ) while the genetics may have a great potential and with proper work they can be given the chance to express their full potential.

Bottom line , If the seeds you are working with have a high value to you then just keep all of em till sampling the end product. If not you might want to cull a few that don't match your selection criteria. It all depends on how much space you have and if your grow is focused towards selecting or just producing bud/look for the highest possible yields from that run. So if you don't care to get the maximum yields I 'd say keep em and wait till you finish em and have sampled all the diff pheno's flowers.

L33t
 
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shamazar said:
Usually, my beans pop within 24h-48h.
Always.

Usually, after 1 week I throw the unpoped to the garbage,
because I saw many times on the internet that for a good selection, the quickness to pop is a critera...(the plant will be "less good")
Click to expand...

Im not sure to person who told ya to hard germ have something with plant size,trichomes,yileld,color,root system etc etc have any idea about growing or biologic.

Genetic are inheritable
We can not make new plant genetics, we only can change already existed.

bo
 
Hello all,

Thank you everybody for your interest, your experiences and replies :)

Sativafan :
Interesting post, you are right. I read it quickly and it gave me want to read it totally. So i will this weekend

Barletta : Yes man, even if I read the lengendaries on icmag :)p) my inside heart told me like you : let s give a chance to those long-term born babies. You gave me smile, because you made me remember that i was born by Caesarean, so, sure I wasn t really happy to quit the hot cocoon, but I would not have merit the garbage :D

L33t : yes, by the past I saw like you mutations and slow growing or smaller leaves so I killed them. Error...!
Yes the real problem is the place and the value given to the seed.


--> In conclusion, if you have money and space, or you want a special vintage "millesime" give a chance to every babie !

If you have mass seeds and small space, lets only continue with the fast germinating.

Thank you guys for having cleared my mind :)
 
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BlizzOut said:
Im not sure to person who told ya to hard germ have something with plant size,trichomes,yileld,color,root system etc etc have any idea about growing or biologic.

Genetic are inheritable
We can not make new plant genetics, we only can change already existed.

bo
Click to expand...

Hi BlizzOut

imo like said earlier , I don't think how fast a seed germinates has much if anything to do really with how the plants turn out.

Genetics are inheritable (though mutations happen in nature too and genetics change) , if one seed is fresh and fully matured should give a good plant with at least descent vigor (at least most of the times/thank natural and human selection for that). Now if seeds are old the seed may germinate after a longer period of time compared to fresh seed from same 2 parents and may even take longer to start growing and may not have such vigorous growth (or even grow with mutations) , But in such old seed/slow growth cases most of the times you can restore vigor.If the same seedstock is more fresh you getter better results (faster early growth , vigor) but the final product should be the same really more or less. Now if you know you only have good fresh seedstock selecting using such criteria (fast germers / plants that grow very fast even from early on) has a basis and makes sense.

As for 'we cannot make new plant genetics , only change the already existing' , I agree . On the other hand nowadays we create GM strains and day by day we understand better how genetics work , I m not sure if they have made genetically engineered MJ yet (have read some rumors/stories about gov GM mj) but I wouldn't be surprised at all if they have. Its nothing too extreme imo, we 've all seen GM corn and other food crops already. I agree we cannot really create new plant genetics (from scratch) but imo I believe even this day is not so far ahead as we may think.
 
Exactly L33t,with biggest part of your text I will agree ...

When I talk about hard germ, I was not think on seeds who are old couple years and more.
Natural looking, something like that do not exist.Seed will germ in the spring or not.
However, old seed have same genetic like "fresh", all genetical characteristics must be a same, but vigor can be a problem.
If old seeds do not posess same genetic like fresh it's useless keeping and storage seeds = all strains from '70 will be losted.
If germination somehow can change genetics, then something are wrong with logic.

Some plants posess hard germ genetics, so next generation will be :almost same: like parents - hard germed but powerful.
Some plants posess black colored seed genetics some dont ...


Nah, I dont believe in that.We still dont know for sure are we alone in the space or not ... how we can create something what we do not understand,but lol humans luv playing god role.

Sheep Dolly are not maked, human just clone already existed.If is that so simple, how is possible to we don't know how to make not live organism but diamond.O yea, we already make a diamond, so so good to he is named the zircon ;)

Nothing wrong with hard germ beans.

bo
 
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