Seed wouldn't germinate so I improvised and it worked! Read and learn to germ the seemingly unviable

so I had 8 seeds that just wouldn't germinate, I had them in moist folds of paper towel and so I started squishing them for some odd reason, mainly to test the "if you squeeze it and it snaps the. It's no good" theory and to see what it looks like, well when I got to the last one it wouldn't snap like the other ones, even though it had been germinating for a week and a half. So I pinched with my finger on the blade like part of the shell (you know the part that is all along the side of the seed and is "sharper" than the rest of the sides. Anyways in doing this I was able to crack the shell open without harming the embryo inside. It looked relatively healthy and unharmed by my manhandling. So I put just the embryo back into the paper towel in hopes that it was the hard shell holding the tap root back originally. I came home from work yesterday and sure enough the tap root had reached out and it was beginning to unfold. I put it in the pot and it sprouted only a few hours ago. Hope this helps if you got any "unviable" seeds laying around. Peace

I saw a few posts or replies in another thread which I thought was a good trick and maybe a bit less harming to the seed than squishing it lol. They said if you take a nice sharp razor like an exacto knife or single blade razor and just kind of cut open the "blade part" like you called it where it's supposed to split open to help it open up. This might have been better than smashing them to test them and you might have had all 8 seeds ready to go!! Sorry I was too late for them lol. Hope this is a good tip for you I know when I read it I thought it was a great idea as I had some trouble popping seeds that wouldn't pop but didn't wanna smash them.

Smokinsunrise said:

I saw a few posts or replies in another thread which I thought was a good trick and maybe a bit less harming to the seed than squishing it lol. They said if you take a nice sharp razor like an exacto knife or single blade razor and just kind of cut open the "blade part" like you called it where it's supposed to split open to help it open up. This might have been better than smashing them to test them and you might have had all 8 seeds ready to go!! Sorry I was too late for them lol. Hope this is a good tip for you I know when I read it I thought it was a great idea as I had some trouble popping seeds that wouldn't pop but didn't wanna smash them.

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I agree completely but you have to understand that I wasn't trying to save the seed when I was squishing them, and all the other ones were brown and mushy and certainly unviable. Yeah next time I try to open my seeds I would definitely be more gental.