Improved paper towel and baggy method for germinating seeds (fast)

and today's episode of garden fundamentals I'm going to discuss two different ways to germinate seeds a paper towel method and the baggie method I split the video up into different sections so that you can go to the section that interests you most the start times will be on the screen beside me I'll review the supplies and equipment you need to carry out each one then I'll go and actually show you how to do them I'll show you the paper towel method and I'll show you the baggie method once the seeds are in the bags I'll also show you how to take care of them and how to incubate them warm and cold and finally I'll show you how to move the seeds once they've germinated into pots with soil if you want more information about germinating seeds have a look at my channel below I've got quite a few videos I also write about it on my blog garden fundamentals and I have several articles there about germinating seeds first I'll go through and show you the thing you'll need to get ready you'll need some paper towels now you can use regular kitchen paper towels but I like to use these they're called rags so you'll find them in your painting section most hardware stores they're kind of like a shop towel they're a little thicker but these are nice and white which works better with seeds if you don't have these just use regular paper towels they work too always make sure you have a label so you know which plant you're actually going to grow and then you need some spray bottles to put water into the baggies I like this here this is a piece of laboratory equipment for dispensing water and it works great but if you don't have one of these you can't find one a regular model works just as well same thing used for your plants you can use for spraying water inside the baggy you'll need some seeds and today for the demonstration I'm going to use some old daylily seeds they're nice and large so you can see what I'm doing I've used this method for a very large seed much larger than this and I've used it for very small seed that are just just like bits of pepper for small seeds I do prefer seeding them directly into pots and I have a separate video to show you how to do that but they work just fine in baggies as well you'll also need the baggies and I tend to use a ziploc bags because they seal a little better and I like the snack size snack size is just a little smaller than a regular baggie and it just fits perfect for the seeds I'm going to use I'll first show you the paper towel method you take a regular paper towel fold in half and now we won't put some seeds in here pull in half again pull it again if you like and now we need some water take your baggie put it inside and you're done now this works quite well and if your germinating seed that will germinate in a couple days or a couple weeks this merit method works just fine but here's my problem when I look at this I can't tell when the seed is germinating because I can't see through the paper towel so the only way to know if the seeds ready to go into a pot is to open it up take out the wet paper towel unfold the whole thing and you see what paper towel is not the easiest thing to work with have a look oh they're not ready yet let's fold it back up put it back in the baggie and come back in a couple days and do it all over again if you have any number of seeds this is just way too much work and I have a much better way of doing this the method that I like to use is very similar I use the same baggy but I take my paper towels and I cut them into strips that fit right into the bag first thing I do is open the bag with my paper towel in slide to the bottom and now add the seeds on top a little water again it's important to just make it wet you don't want standing water in there I then take my plant label and just take the top layer of plastic and staple it to that and then I close up the bag all right so why is this so different well the first thing is that I can very easily see my seeds and if they start to germinate even if that root just comes out the tiniest little bit I'll be able to see it and I don't have to open the bag I don't have to unroll all the paper towel the other thing that I do that's different than most other people is I actually close my bag now other people like to leave it open with the idea that it needs to have air in there and it's certainly true that seeds need to have air but my seeds have enough air in there to germinate I've done hundreds of seeds this way and I know there's there's plenty of air the other thing is that air actually goes through the plastic to some extent so they're they're getting enough oxygen to germinate by keeping it closed I only have to water this about every six weeks and I can tell when it needs water just by feeling it if you touch this you'll be able to feel the wetness through the plastic and you'll know it's fine once that feels dry then I just open it up give a little squirt and I'm good to go now there's one last secret if you think about the seeds germinating the root comes out first and it wants to go down it knows gravity and it knows which way is down if you leave your bag sitting like this the root will go down into the paper towel and then they're much more difficult to take out so what I do is I store all of my baggies upside down now what happens is that the roots go onto the plastic instead of into the paper towel and they're very easy to take out that way I've been then using this method for several years now and I've done hundreds of seeds and method works just great for me I use all kinds of different size seeds in here these are fairly large I use those so you can easily see what I'm doing I've used bigger seeds in this and I also grow seeds that are as fine as dust in here and a little later on in this video I'll show you how to get those off the paper towel now that the seeds are in the bags we need to treat them so that they germinate and I use one of two different germination techniques I either treat them warm in which case I'll just have them sitting on my desk until they germinate and I'll check them every 2 or 3 days to see if I can see the root coming out of the seed that indicates it's time to put them in the pots with soil if they're getting a cold treatment I just put them in the fridge since seeds in the cold grow a little slower I only check those about once a week again I'm looking for a root that's coming out and as soon as I see one I want to move it into soil if your seed happens to need dark conditions and warm conditions then I put them inside a drawer on my desk that seems to do quite well now let me show you how to get the seeds out of the baggies and into the soil now let's have a look at some sprouted seeds this is a close-up picture of some Allium narcissi florrum seeds they're very tiny little seeds and as you can see I had three seeds and all three of them have sprouted to have roots that are about half a centimeter long and the third one is just starting to make a root so this is a great time to get them potted up these seeds here are as for tooless albus and you can see two seats both of them have sprouted now this came out of a baggie of about twelve seats if I have a lot of seed like that and only to sprout it then what I generally do is just pot up the Tuda sprouted and I'll leave the rest in the baggie for a while until they start to sprout - all right let me show you how I handle these seeds so there's two ways of doing this you can open the like this and just use a pair of tweezers and pull them out and put them on the soil and that's what I usually do just so you can see what I'm doing a little easier I'm going to take it out and let it sit on my hand and that works good too now you can see a bit of a root developing here so what I'll do with these seeds is I'll make a little hole pick it up by the seed end and just deposit in that hole you want to be very careful you don't damage the root now I like to make calm pots so I have several seeds in the same pot it just means I have less pots to worry about these are alliums so they're bulbs and they don't mind being crowded for the first year now this seat has almost no roots so I'll just lay it right on top all right I get my mister out give them a little misting and now we'll cover it with a bit of soil or a bit of chicken grit in a day to a week you'll see the green sprouts coming up and of course it's always important to label your plants now that's a good way of doing it if the seeds are large enough that you can pick them up with a pair of tweezers but what do you do if it's really tiny seed and you can't use tweezers I do those seeds a little differently and I have a couple techniques that will work so I prepare my seed bed try to make as flat as I can and then I take my paper towel out of the baggie and here's a lot of small seed and they're starting to sprout the way I do it is I grab it with two fingers like this and a bit on the other side you know I just flick it might turn the pot just so I get a little more even distribution and flick it the harder I flick it the more they come off now if the seeds are stuck on here a little tighter then I have a second technique that I use and that's just to spray them into the pot and that works that looks pretty good too now if I only have a very small number of seeds and I'm really fussy I'll even take my tweezers and kind of scrape them off and tap them in here I was small see they usually have enough I don't have to do that it's very easy to transfer the sea to the pots now treat them just like little seedlings in a few days we'll have green leaves showing and it's just important to keep this well watered one of the reasons I really like the baggie method is that it's very easy to hold seed over from year year the seed that takes a long time to germinate is much easier to do in bags than in pots these are seeds from last year and the previous year anything that doesn't germinate I just keep in the bags usually I put them in the fridge because I figure they need some they need some additional cold warm cycling let's have a look at some of these so this is seed from a year ago still hasn't germinated you can see some old spots but I don't worry about those as long as it's not fuzzy mold it's not a problem here you see that kind of black mold that you see on bread sometimes I just leave that that's not an issue sometimes you get discoloration so there's quite a few seeds in here and they the color from the seed has gone into the paper towel and has made it kind of brown looking but there's not really any mold in there if you see the fuzzy white mold that usually indicates that the seed is not viable and those were rolled up fairly quickly and I just take those out what I do with these seeds is that I give them cycles of warm and cold right now these are sitting in my fridge and this whole box of a hundred or so seeds is taking up this much room years ago when I used to use pots on er pots would take up a huge amount of space and I certainly couldn't put them into my fridge now I can give seeds cold warm cycles two or three times a year and speed up the germination that's one reason I really like this method thank you for watching this video if you'd like to see more garden videos check out my channel below and press the red subscribe button thank you you

Channel: Garden Fundamentals

Views: 1,078,007

Keywords: Gardening, garden fundamentals, seed, seed germination, baggy method, paper towel method, starting seed, perennials, bulbs, alpines, trees, shrubs, planting, baggie, Marijuana Seed Germination, Ziploc bag, winter sowing, vermiculite, germination, how to start seed, paper towel germination, how to grow seeds, how to germinate seeds

Id: dirz0WIMQi0

Length: 16min 44sec (1004 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 01 2016