Germination Experiment

A friend sent me many packets of very old seeds she found in her parents house. Some are from 1977! She was hoping I could use them in the seed library. Because they are so old I felt I needed to do a germination test on the seeds before I set them loose in the seed library.

To do a germination test you take a small amount of seeds, say 5-10 and place them on a damp paper towel. Use a pencil to write the type of seed on the paper towel. Fold the towel over the seeds and place in a plastic bag, with the end open and put them in a warm location. Check the seeds every day to make sure the paper toweling is still damp and to see if any have germinated. Remove any seeds that start to mold and count them as dead.

On the seed packet it will tell you the number of days until germination. After that many days have passed or until all the seeds have germinated, stop the test. Count the number of seeds that have germinated and figure out the percentage as follows:

(# seeds that germinated / # seeds used in test) * 100 = % of seeds that will germinate

So if 50% of the seeds germinated, then you know you have to put down twice as many seeds as you want to grow.

So today I started the germination test. I placed the plastic bag of seeds in paper towels in a tray. Then I put the tray over the heating mat to help along the germination. But as you can see from the photo below my seeds are getting a little extra warmth!
Big Wooly enjoys 'helping' me alot!