Seed Starting

The first harvest. Fresh Certified Naturally Grown radishes from our rooftop garden.

---------

This just in: Hydrogen peroxide decreases sprouting time in nearly all types of seeds.

I heard about it on an organic gardening group I'm on, and decided that it was well worth a try. There's not a lot about it online from what I saw in a quick search, and I've heard of an 8% solution being ideal, but the store-bought 3% is fine as well as far as I can tell in my experiments.

I have pre-soaked seeds as well as "watered" directly planted seeds with dilute peroxide to surprising result. All of the seeds have sprouted faster than expected, less than a week after only two treatments. Even the corn (avg sprout time: 18-21 days) came up in less than a week. I am now attempting the same technique with rooting plant cuttings, and I'll keep you posted on how that turns out.

From what I understand, Peroxide used to be used for nearly everything, but it fell into disuse mainly due to easier (chemical) products. It could be that the lack of information is due to it finally beginning to re-emerge as a popular household tool.

Here are a few of the links I found in a quick search;
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/ista/sst/2003/00000031/00000001/art00008

http://www.agron.missouri.edu/mnl/60/191greenblatt.html

http://www.sciencebuddies.org/mentoring/project_ideas/PlantBio_p001.shtml

Give it a try and let me know how your experiments pan out!