The only thing I did different this year was plant in 72 cell trays. The past 20 years I always planted in a tray w/o cells and used string to divide off sections. I used to start 12-18 varieties of tomatoes and the same number of peppers, so that worked. Since starting over 160 varieties this year ,I went with the cell method. I had pretty good results , but some weird stuff too.
I had expected lower rates of germination on traded seed, but was surprised how well it did. I started 79 traded varieties and have had only one no show, that was thrown in as an extra. 18 SSE varieties had one no show, again an extra thrown in... However the seeds from one SSE member germinated only one per each of 5 different varieties. The other SSE members seeds were over 80%.
Commercial vendor seeds were from Baker Creek, Abundant Life, Skyfire, Seeds of Change, Sand Hill, and Victory. All were nearly 100% except for a few varieties from Sand Hill that did very poor, and I replanted with a bit better results. The last few years Sand Hill seeds are always superstars so I wasn't sure what happened there.
With trade seeds that were difficult to germinate, I noticed almost all the diff. varieties would generally yield poor from the same person.
I had a particular variety(trade) that came up 5/5 the first time sown. I accidently planted it again in another cell about 7 days later and it was 0/5, while every cell with it germinated very good.
I have had great success with Canadian and Australian seeds too. The seeds that did poor came from NY and NM if that should matter...
Jerry L your seeds were awesome. 100% on all 4 varieties and Lucky Cross up in 3 or 4 days without bottom heat.
Some of the trays were placed in the incubator room which is about 18-20 degrees warmer than the house. I did not notice that much faster or better results there.
This year all eggplants germinated faster and better than last year. Even older seed did well.
Strange.
Jeanne
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