Beautiful seeds but poor germination

[M4A]

I've been playing with nonfemmed purple ryders for a while now and regularly producing small batches of seeds through multple grows using pollen from my first grow. I havent had to use any seeds from anything but my first grow until recently, and it seems that the seeds from subsequent grows look absolutely fantastic (big, stripey, perfectly shaped) but seem to have poor germination rates. The newest seeds I've tried are at least 6 months old, and possibly a year so they should be ready to rip but they don't.

Is it possible to have pollen go bad and still get big perfect seeds? The pollen is always kept in the freezer, in 2 seperate bottles from 2 different males, and has been succcessfully used in the past to produce seeds that germ.

 

[briman]

Could be the seed shells are hard and need some scarification. How do you germ them?

 

[natertots]

I had some bagseed I saved for over a year and they took I think 8 days to come up.

 

[nc420_KY_BotanicalDOC]

Could be the seed shells are hard and need some scarification. How do you germ them?

I know that a lot of people use a little piece of really fine grit sandpaper put into a matchbox and drop the seeds in the box and give it a good quick hard shake. But personally I just put the seeds in between my teeth and pop them very gently...
But, I guess that if you have some expensive seeds and you haven't popped them between your front teeth before I would utilize the matchbox or really fine steel wool methods...
Just my opinion I would say My 2 cents but not sure if its worth that much... :thumbs:

 

[Waira]

Hmmm,... hard cases is certainly one possibility,... the Lambsbread beans my friend gave me were huge and freakin' bulletproof! Myself and others had some germ'ing issues initially, which were much improved by literally sanding down the material at the seams, not just merely scuffing them up....they were that bad! Beyond this, I'll defer to the breeders for other reasons why,... Evol, GoAuto6, JM,.. will have to chime in on loss of viability.... shoot them a message if they don't answer here soon,...

 

[M4A]

I generally do the wet paper towel germ, and with diesels and dragons I've done i've had near 100% germ rates in 2 to 3 days, and my sucessful purps usually germ in 3 to 4 days. I have never had to scuff/sand or otherwise molest the seeds.

 

[derek420colorado]

I want to make sure I understand correctly, you have saved pollen and used it in the past those seeds were good with no germination problem correct? Then you used the same pollen and got seeds that are hard to germinate? If that is the case I would say that you may have gotten harder seed shells in the new batch of seeds probably a recessive trait from the new mother(I am assuming you had a new mother to pollenate and not a clone) as previously stated above try the sand paper and matchbox method(it sounds like you know how already) and see if that does it. If not it may just be bad genes for germination, not nesscarily the pollen from the male going bad but the new mother having different genes than your previous seed batches.

I know that one of the main reasons I chose Dutch Passion is because they will not release seeds no matter how stable the strain if it does not meet their strict standards for germination. They have so many strains that are probably amazing but if half of them don't germ they don't sell them. Because of the inbreeding that is nessacary to get fem seeds and stablize traits sometimes it just happens where the beans wont pop.

Defeintly sending good germination Karma your way!

 

[M4A]

Update: I left the original 4 seeds alone, and then cracked another 4 open with my teeth. What I have determined is that despite being told PHing water for the seeds in the papertowel isnt necessary, apparently that doesn't hold true to high ph well water. In my new appartment water is 7.8 out of the tap, and is what i used for the first seeds with no luck after 5 days. I mixed up a qt of water with 1/4tsp liquid kelp and 3ml rhizontonic and ph'd it to 6.3 and started a new paper towel where i placed the 4 new cracked seeds, and i transferred the original seeds from the old towel to this one, and within 2 days had 100% germ rate. My assumption is that the water needs to be acidic to help eat the seed shell and allow the tail to push through.