Sprouting with Hydrogen Peroxide

 We recently heard about a few seeding hacks that seem to work.

The first new idea was pre-soaking seeds in a 1% hydrogen peroxide (h2o2). This is the same hydrogen peroxide you would use on a cut and it usually comes in a brown bottle. We took a small jar and added two parts water to one part 3% hydrogen peroxide. I did this by taking a simple measuring cup and an empty jar, then putting two measures for every one of the Hydrogen Peroxide.  

We did the first test with some rather expensive marijuana seed and a few days later with pumpkin, pepper, tomato, and squash seeds. {art of the idea in this is to clean the seed exterior of pathogens while giving the germ a boost of oxygen that comes from the extra oxygen atom found in h2o2. For the Pot seed I got a quick response and sprouted five of five in three days. This is excellent since I usually get as low as three of five sprouts and it takes anywhere up to a week's time.  The other seed tests were a bit more positive than negative, about a twenty percent boost in pepper pops, a quicker sprouting in tomatoes, and an ambiguous result with squash.

The second hack was snipping the sharp end off of the nib of squash, cucumber, tomato, and pepper seeds. We cut a very small tip off of these seeds using a razor blade prior to soaking them overnight in 1% hydrogen peroxide solution. 

The idea here being to let the pre-soak into the seeds more quickly and stimulate sprouting. In the tests so far we can make a good case for cutting the tips off because we got a four to seven day spouting time. Our pepper seed often under-perform so if we get a three of five seed sprouting ratio in half the time we have to look at it as a win. All of these seeds were sprouted in wet paper towels indoors, in zip-lock baggies, after pre-soaking them. Generally we got a better germination response by soaking the open ends that with those we didn't cut the nibs off of.

The Third Hack is to sprout larger seeds in paper towels. This is a pretty simple idea where you pour your seed off onto a paper towel after soaking them in the 1% Hydrogen Peroxide solution. I use a dinner plate to keep the mess down, but H2O2 doesn't stain things (it's basically water with an extra Oxygen atom). After pouring them onto the nicely wetted towel I fold the towel over to cover the seeds and slip the whole thing in a zip lock baggy. Since we usually sprout a large number of seeds  and many different varieties, the bags let you write on them with a waterproof pen. 

You can stack these things up without making a mess in a place where they will get limited light and not suffer chilling. We check them every day and might even mark the bag to show how the sprouts are doing. Sorting through them and checking for open seeds is sort of fun and, so long as the towel stays wet the sprouts will go a few days before they need transplanted. 

These sorts of tests are not solid science, they just seems to work. The pre-soak seems the thing most effective of the three, but snipping the ends worked very well in pepper seeds and extra good in tomatoes, so the practice might be worth exploring.

We are also trying the h2o2 presoak with peas, beans, cucumbers, and others as an antiseptic practice. So far nothing much to report here.

- David Smith - Creekside Farm Oregon - Manning, Oregon