tough seed casing?

[epiphanista]

Are there varieties of tomato that naturally have a harder seed casing (don't know the technical word for that!) than others? Despite a bit of soaking and treating seeds of all my tomatoes the same, for some reason all of the Aunt Gertie's Gold came up with the poor little cotyledons stuck fast inside the seed case and I needed to operate with tweezers.

I am an okay surgeon, but is this common?

Or is there something else I could have done to prepare the seed? Aunt Gertie's Gold was the only one that did that for me, 2003 seed from Carolyn that I got last year. (No, I'm not complaining, Carolyn! Just being specific! The others I got from you were fine! )

Thanks!
~Thalia

[carolyn137]

(No, I'm not complaining, Carolyn! Just being specific! The others I got from you were fine! )

****

Thalia, I know you're not complaining. And no I've seen no real difference in seed cases hanging on as to specific variety except many really old seeds, not ones that are now 5 yo like the ones you have, do tend to do that.

I just put a gob of spit on them and smear it around the seed casing, let it sit for an hour or so and then operate.

it works pretty well. I've convinced myself that the enzymes in spit might help to soften up the seed case but have absolutely no data to back that up.

Just curious, but how many seeds did you sow and how many came up? And did you have any other seeds from 2002 or 2003 that you requested from my seed offer here and if so, how did they do?

[epiphanista]

Carolyn,

I use spit, too! Generally stays wet longer than regular water.

These seed were from your last year's SSE offering:
Aunt Gertie's Gold 2003 4 out of 4 came up
Dr. Carolyn Pink 2004 4 out of 4
Indian Stripe 2003 1 out of 4

~Thalia

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by epiphanista

Carolyn,

I use spit, too! Generally stays wet longer than regular water.

These seed were from your last year's SSE offering:
Aunt Gertie's Gold 2003 4 out of 4 came up
Dr. Carolyn Pink 2004 4 out of 4
Indian Stripe 2003 1 out of 4

~Thalia

Thalia, if you couldn't get any good plants out of the 4/4 that germinated why don't you take four more and soak them for a day with a couple pinches of Miracle Grow or a drop or two of seaweed or fish stuff. I sent out plenty of seeds for the 02 and 03 seeds so you should have plenty to work with.

I'd do the same with the Indian Stripe altho that one has been germinating just fine.

So who knows.

[epiphanista]

Actually, the plants are doing fine. Just the Indian Stripe was not germinating as well as the others. And just Aunt Gertie's Gold had the tough seed casings.

I don't have very much room this year, so I don't need them to germinate in high numbers!

Thanks for your help.

~Thalia

[gardengalrn]

I didn't garden last year but in 2006 I had many "helmet heads." More than I ever remember having before. I attributed this to several varieties that sprouted days before the others and I removed the dome of my seed tray and put it under lights. I feel that this dried out the growing medium more and caused the seed coats to not be cooperative. There wasn't one particular variety that did this, rather one or two sprouts of several kinds. It was a real problem in 2006 so I am going to sow a little more intensively this year to beat the odds.

[gardengalrn]

I meant to say that I use spit too and am a firm believer that the enzymes help to break down the seed coat, at least enough to ease the surgery of getting it off without killing the sprout. It works if the seed were in our mouth, the first step in the digestive process

[Thomas]

I fixed this problem last year by putting the seeds a little deeper in the starting medium. Yes, I still had some that stuck..but not near as many the year before.

Something else I noticed was that when most of the seedlings germinated , the ones that did not were low enough from the top that they were in plenty of moist medium.