Seed germinating

[pibb]

Anyone else have a hard time getting vegetable seeds to sprout this year?

I've had a terrible time this year for some reason and I don't think it's me since I've never really had any problems like this before. All are new seeds packed for 2020 and came from Lowes or Walmart. Usually new seeds sprout right up. I could start seeds 3-4 years old and had better rates than this year.

 

[nchls school]

This has not been a good gardening year here in TN. We had nights in the 30s and 40s until just a few weeks ago. Rain that has gone on for weeks. A late frost that destroyed my peaches, plums, and grapes. Now the sun is unbearable hot and what was doing well is burning up and withering. Even those items we had in the greenhouse are not growing well; first it was too cool and no sun-now it overly hot with too much sun.

 

[pibb]

I'm right there with you. I can understand low germination rates outdoors with what we've had but I've tried to start most of the seeds in the house ~75 F. Your greenhouse should be doing well also if you can control the climate. I always grow/start squash, peppers, and tomatoes as a late crop this time of year.

I think the seeds aren't any good to start with. Maybe they've sit around in the sun or in a hot container and cooked but as fast as the seeds have sold this year, I just don't know about that either. Makes me scratch my head and wonder if this virus has played a role in it.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Have you tried a germination test? Soak a paper towel and squeeze most of the water out, wrap several seeds in the wet paper towel, and put it in a zip-loc bag. Do not close the bag, leave it open. Then put that bag somewhere fairly warm, top of the fridge maybe. In a week come back and see if any sprouted. You might need to check after a few days to make sure the paper towel stays damp.

If you try this you can either confirm or disprove the bad seed theory.

 

[pibb]

Yes. On one round of squash seeds I've planted I actually did the wet paper towel folder over in a ziploc baggie and they did germinate. I have done that trick multiple times and it does seem to work the best. So I carefully cut around the seed and tail (looks like a tail coming out) and planted those in my media and still waiting for them to come up.... been about a week ago since I transfered them. I didn't do that trick on the other seeds.

Thats got me wondering about my media which I'm in the process of seeing if it is or not. I went to walmart and bought some promix and planted the same seeds out of the same package in it. This makes, I think, the 3rd round I've tried to sprout these seeds.

 

[pibb]

Well I don't think a change in media helped anything. I've finally had some plants come up but it has taken about 3 weeks. It has to be the seeds. They say packaged for 2020 but that doesn't mean they aren't old. I guess the germination rate so far is about 50%.