....something I have suspected for a while now, confirmed well by another vastly experienced grower
: beware the cheap brands of PT, maybe others too...
This guy had some suddenly horrible germ rates outta the blue, also in the past,... never could finger the culprit for sure, he had suspicions though and finally isolated the sole difference between good and bad rounds, same seeds BTW. It was the PT!
I too have had some odd bouts of shitty germ'ing when doing the PT method, and this confirms my suspicions... These days I don't do that method any more...
They are manufactured using some pretty nasty chem's for sure, including formaldehyde... Whatever the chemical culprit is, take note of this and start presoaking in pure water for an half hour before using them to germ',... blot out and re-wet before nesting the seeds!