I only wanted to thank all of those here and around the multitude of threads for all the seed information and especially about seed soaking ,and older seeds ,
It has helped immensely in my various attempts , and gardening ,,
The reminders when I had forgotten or do forget is really helpful
I am soo soo delighted , and wanted to thank the gardeners who have shared so many info shares ,,

Glad you found something helpful

Jim, I recently saw something that sounded like it might explain why dilute hydrogen peroxide helps some seeds germinate.

I was trying to find out what "ROS" meant, and found "Reactive oxygen species". It seems to be a current topic of research, but based on titles of papers, these "Reactive oxygen" compounds serve plants (or seeds, or seedlings) as "signalling" compounds, perhaps a little like human hormones.

Admittedly, I am still guessing, but hydrogen peroxide might release some oxygen free radicals or some other form of reactive oxygen. And those might mimic something seeds already use to break dormancy. Or maybe something reacts with H2O2 to produce those "signals".

Or, more simply, seeds "know" not to sprout unless they are in a plenty aerobic spot, and H2O2 assures that they "smell the oxygen".

Just speculation. I Googled :

ROS seed and
Reactive oxygen species and seed germination

Rick

The above sounds about right. I know from my own experience over many years and tens of thousands of seeds...Watering the media and seedlings with H2O2 helps and dramatically reduces damping off. I have not had any in years even when staring as many as 1,000 seeds.

I saw the same improvement with my few trays of seedlings, but I "cleaned up my act" in several ways at the same time so I can't say which change of habits helped the most.

- watering with dilute hydrogen peroxide (very dilute)

- putting a thin layer of coarse bark chips on top of the seedling mix so the surface was always dry

- replacing very fine horribly water-retentive & badly aerated cheap peaty-dusty seedling mix with ProMix plus added re-re-screened pine bark "grit"

- occasionally ran a small fan

- continued trying to over-water less

Those (all at about the same time) cured my damping off. I think it was mostly using MUCH faster-draining / better-aerated mix that helped.

But later I figured out a convenient way to bottom-water, which might have accomplished most of that by itself.

Over-watering much less, all by itself, might have the same benefits, but I'll probably never know because it seems to remain beyond my self-control.




http://garden.org/ideas/view/R...