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Entheogen Growing: Germination |
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Written by Glider
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Monday, 21 December 1998 |
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Page 2 of 3
The next tool we will consider is bottom heat. This can be an expensive, mail order item from a gardening supply house. A cheap medical style heating pad has worked well for me. While this is not a must have item, I have found that with many species this can literally half the time required for germination, and it can boosts the germination rate greatly. I bought mine at a local pharmacy for $10. They had much larger ones for about twice as much, and if I purchase another, I'll get a bigger one. They also had choices of moist/dry heat, or dry heat only. Intuition says the moist/dry heating pads are safer for horticultural use, but I get by with unplugging the pad before watering. The moist/dry heating pads run a little more money. Keep in mind, using a heating pad this way will most certainly void any manufacturer's guarantee.
Now there are those of you out there that are saying, “This fellow hasn't done anything except suggest I spend more money!” Well for those of you out there on a shoestring budget, there are a few things you can do with practically no cash at all. Seeds require moisture and oxygen to germinate, with no exceptions. Plastic sandwich bags, made of polyethylene, permit transfer of oxygen, but not water. This means that if you dampen a paper towel, place your seeds in it or on it, depending on their light preferences, and place this in a baggie, conditions will suit them nicely!. This has several advantages over simply placing seeds in soil. The first is that water loss is greatly reduced. This means that the seeds are not constantly being cooled by evaporation. If your room temperature is 70, moist soil in that room may be as cool as 65. Warmer seeds germinate faster, up to a point. Also you will not be disturbing sprouting seeds every couple of days with regular waterings. If you need to go away for a couple of days, or if you are just plain lazy, this will ensure that seeds will not dry and die following sprouting. Keep in mind this will work poorly outdoors. Direct sunlight, or perhaps even HID lights, will quickly raise the temperature inside the bag to a point high enough to kill most seeds.
Another version of this is to plant the seeds in a small pot and enclose the pot in a baggie. This will accomplish much the same thing, with the same disastrous results if used outdoors. But very small seeds such as Nicotiana or Papaver will not need to be transplanted from paper towels to potting soil. Larger seeds do better with sprouting on paper towels then transferring to soil, as this allows a more even distribution of the plants in your available growing space. A key thing to remember is to use the strongest towels available. If the package says extra-strength, so much the better. Paper towels labeled “soft” or anything to that effect tend to turn to mush quickly, becoming difficult to work with. Some practice will be needed in manipulating the wet paper towels into and out of plastic bags. The thinner the plastic, the easier oxygen diffusion will take place, making thinner plastic bags the preferred choice. This also happens to be cheaper than the thicker freezer type bags. As a point of reference, I had N. rustica planted in an open clay pot at 70 deg F, and seeds from the same batch planted in a plastic pot, enclosed in a sandwich bag, on a heating pad. The clay pot took 2 weeks to show growth. The plastic pot took about 6 days. Also I got a dismal germination rate with the clay pot, and a much higher rate with the plastic. Due to the small size of the seeds, I could not get accurate counts and do not have exact rates.
This brings us the question of what sort of container to plant in. Use a container with drainage holes! I have germinated seeds in pots without holes, but it is safer to have good drainage. Remember that the roots have to be able to breathe. There is little gas exchange between plant parts, and the roots generally get oxygen from the air spaces in the soil. If you over water plants in pots without holes, you will quickly kill your new seedlings, or even rot your seeds. Next, I prefer plastic pots over clay. They are generally cheaper and easier to clean. They do not break nearly as easily. They are usually much easier to find in the stores. Clay has one major advantage though. It evaporates water from the sides of the pot as well as the top of the soil. This means the pot dries out faster and stays cooler. For the indoor grower, this is not worth much. The pot doesn't usually get too hot anyway, and drying out faster means you must water more often. Cactus and desert succulent growers may still find an advantage in clay pots, but for most of us, I truly believe plastic is the way to go.
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