How to Germinate Stubborn Seeds

Do old seeds germinate? How long is too long for seeds to germinate? What if we told you that you can get 20-year-old seeds to germinate? Watch our video to learn easy seed germination techniques, as well as how to use things as simple as sugar water and other items for old seeds to avoid spoiling and fungus growth and help them thrive.

This is Bill Graham with Microclone Tissue Culture, and I am at MonsterGardens.com, and you guys get to be the first ones to see this. This is brand new. What we've done is we have taken tissue culture techniques and created a seed starting kit for old seeds or seeds that are valuable that just need an extra kick to get them going, OK? And really I'm going to show you what we got going.

It all started when I had friends come to me with like 20-year-old seeds they had found in their taco box and they knew that they were plants that they had really enjoyed. I'm sure it was something special from grandma. And they were really afraid that if they tried to germinate them like they were that they could possibly get spoiled when they're germinating them in the paper towels or even if they had put them into soil that they might get fungus or something on them. And those are the things that we're addressing.

The special part about tissue culture is that we are using elements like sugar to grow plants, and we're also surface sterilizing the plants so that they don't have fungus and things on them. And these are the two things that we're concerned with when germinating old seeds. What we did find was that for other plants that have particularly valuable seeds that like orchids, for instance, that we can give those plants a head start using the exact same techniques.

So let me show you what we put together in this kit. We're going to start by giving the plants a surface sterilizing. I'm going to throw seeds into this bottle right here. This is a 0.15% solution of hydrogen peroxide. Sounds really complex, but really what this is it's grocery store peroxide diluted 1 to 20. So I've got about 2 milliliters and I added 40 milliliters of water.

So we've got the hydrogen peroxide. I'm going to probably include this in the kit just like this. And so what we're going to do is we're just going to throw in a couple of seeds into the surface right here and then we'll close that up. And what we'll do is we're going to swirl that and rinse the vessel back and forth and leave this in a warm and not brightly lighted location until the surface of the seeds is clean. Usually about anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour, depending on whether you have a smooth surface seed or a rough surface seed.

Let's just say that it's been an hour because these are smooth surface seeds. Give it a soak in the hydrogen peroxide. And then, here's where it gets really special is we're going to move these seeds into a solution of sterilized sugar water with oxygen. So you can see the oxygen has already started to bubble inside.

This is where we start to do the special stuff. This has cleaned the outside of the seed so that fungus and things are already gone and bring the outside of the seeds. Now, I'm going to take those and put them in this solution here.

What will happen here is when the plants soak up the germinating liquid over the next couple of hours, the liquid they absorb will have a little bit of sugar in it. It's our own recipe, and there's also an oxygen source in the solution. So the plants will be soaking up a little bit of sugar and oxygen, which is exactly what they need to germinate.

But the problem with old seeds is that the enzymes are basically, they're slow, tired, or damaged from heat, cold, humid, dry, all the things that can happen. But the seed can still be viable. Our best example of this was in 2009 when the Russians found the little weed seeds in the rat hole and they grew plants from 20,000 year old seeds. We're doing exactly the same thing they're doing.

This sugar and oxygen solution will soak into the seed, the seeds will sink. When the seeds have sunk, we'll take those out and we'll move them into these tubes. I don't have the medium, but I've made medium for sterile tubes that contain sterile coco coir with a little bit of sugar and nutrient solution in it. That will give the seed a perfect medium to germinate in. It'll start growing roots in here. It gives the top of the seedling room to grow.

And as soon as we see roots start to grow in here, I can use my forceps and take that out. We can extract the entire thing-- roots tops and everything. Use your imagination. And plant this into whatever we want to-- root plugs, small pots. That we will have taken an old seed that may not have germinated and very likely would have become contaminated and been able to grow it into a 2-inch seedling that we can now plant into an ordinary pot of soil.

Now, let me go ahead and share one more thing with you, too, because when we're doing this with healthy seeds like valuable healthy seeds, there's some special tomatoes and vegetables and things where single seeds may be $15 or $20. And for $15 or $20, do you really want to risk just putting them in paper towels? Using these materials and this exact same technique, we've been able to soak, hydrate, and germinate healthy seedlings that grow this tall in 24 hours. 24 hours to a seedling this tall.

Now, let's just call that the exception. But two or three days is still impressive, and we are doing that because we are putting in mobile sugar and oxygen, which is exactly what the plant is supposed to be doing on its own but we're just doing it a couple stages up the line from when it ordinarily does it. Those are the basic pieces of the micro clone seed starting kit and this is MonsterGardens.com.

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Want to see if your old seeds will germinate? At Monster Gardens, your success is our success. Check out our seed starter kit to give your seeds the greatest possible advantages for germination. It’s ideal for growers attempting to germinate old seeds, valuable seeds, and difficult to germinate seeds. Happy growing!