Quote:
Originally Posted by Barb_FL
RE: Helmet heads - I've pretty much eliminated them by starting everything in the paper towel method. I never had cucumber seeds with HH, but there is a cucumber site and it was recommended there; so I did it anyway and this is when I had the 12 hour germination and then < 24 hours for the seed to pop up in the mix.
Then tried with peppers where I always had a lot of HH. Major success and much quicker to germinate in the mix.
This year I tried it with tomato seeds; When I left, I sowed the dwarfs and some others where I had a lot of seeds straight in mix and left them. All the others were sown in the paper towel method. When I got back the ones sown in the mix had a huge % of HH and the ones in the paper towel virtually had 0.
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Barb- with 105 varieties, it's a practicality issue. I just can't separately wrap, label and bag 105 separate packs of 3-12 seeds, then as they sprout radicals painstakingly carefully remove each seed and transplant it, even then, no guarantee of not helmeting.
I used the paper towel on the Sweet Success you sent, mine took about 48 hours to germinate, but it got transplanted after the first sighting of a root tip., didn't you say it took 18 hours in a prev. post? I dont know why our results are different, but who cares, I love that cucumber.
