Germinating cannabis seeds seems just to be one of ‘them’ grow room jobs, like taking cuttings, or ‘judging’ the pH of your water with the naked eye.

Some people take to it with absolutely no thought for the value of the seeds, often throwing their seeds between two bits of old toilet paper wetted with some smelly old stagnant water, and see 100% success rates.

Whilst others..?  Well others just don’t!

For some, germinating seeds is like a mysterious dark art, practised and perfected only by those with the longest, greyest beards.

Lowryder 2
I recently tried Lowryder 2 seeds, after hearing lots about them both in the press, as well as on the Internet message boards.

“8 weeks – Seed to Weed”, the advertisements roared.

“I’ll have some of that”, thought me!

After placing my order for seeds I decided to do some research on the Lowryder 2 strain.

Whilst reading it became apparent that people were having some difficulty with germinating the auto-flowering dwarf variety.

I’ve seen many reasons for this touted round the message boards, but the upshot of it seemed to be, that the shell of the Lowryder 2 seed was a little bit reticent to open no matter how long its first soaked for.

So it was with some trepidation that I set about germinating my own Lowryder 2 seeds, once I received them.

It doesn’t matter how long you grow for.  You still feel the same ‘tingle’ of anticipation when it comes time for germinating seeds.

Paper towel
I’ve used the same method for germinating cannabis seeds since as long as I can remember and its always served me well.  This time I expected nothing different.

So I moistened 2 pieces of kitchen roll with some tap water.  I then lay the first piece of kitchen roll inside an old, washed out ice cream container.  You know the ones with the pop off lid?

With the first sheet of paper in, I place the seeds on it, spaced out evenly around the container.

Then I cover with the second sheet, pop the lid on the container, and put it in a warm, dark environment like a clothes airing cupboard.

Normally, between 24 and 36 hours passes and I can see some signs of life.  Maybe just a crack, but it’s a sign.

With the Low 2’s however, after 30 hours there was only 1 seed showing any signs of doing anything.  The rest bar 1, were still solid!  The ‘1’ didn’t look up to much and I didn’t hold out much hope.

Clever
Now nature is pretty clever for the most part, but sometimes she gets it all wrong.

So here’s the science.

When a seed gets wet, moisture is transported through the seed shell by osmosis.  That is, the equalisation of concentrations of moisture, through a semi-permeable membrane, (in this instance – the shell).

When the seed embryo comes in contact with the moisture, a rapid and complicated set of instructions is executed, and cell division begins.

As the cells multiply so the embryo swells, getting larger until the seed can no longer contain its growth.  Something has to give!

Ordinarily the seed splits along the naturally weakened centre ‘seam’.  But on this occasion its not happening.

Either the seed embryo is inactive, (read dead).  Or, the embryo is, for one reason or another, unable to split the seed shell.

After 30 hours the embryo is already crushed up into the inside of the shell, so any longer and they will surely die come what may.

So I individually picked up the seeds in a pair of tweezers, (you know those things women use in some perverse self-torture ritual, which includes pulling hair out of their faces, individually, one at a time), and I gave each seed a little squeeze along the centre seam.

There were 8 audible ‘crack’’s.  One was already open but not looking like it was doing much.  It didn’t bode well.

So I replaced the seeds and put them back in the airing cupboard.

4 hours later I check again, and already there were 5 seeds showing a tap root emerging and after another 2 hours all of the seeds had germinated, except the one which was already open.

I’ll take 9 successfully germed out of a 10 pack of seeds any day. But had I not stepped in when I had, with my ‘forceps’ delivery, things could have been a lot different.