Selecting a Mother plant – Part 1: GERMINATION. Alchimia video tutorial

Hi, this is the first in a series of videos we’re making to guide you step by step through the selection of a good Mother, from a pack of seeds.

For a good selection it’s best to start from Regular seeds. For this project we’ve chosen these from Aficionado  French Connection, it’s Rosso Corsa and here’s the information about the parent plants…

We like to germinate seeds in a Petri dish, but you can use your usual method. Take some absorbent paper and wet it thoroughly. In this case it’s R.O. water but if that’s not an option you can use mineral water.

Now it’s time to open our seed pack, that as you can see… French Connection have really luxurious packaging, like a jewel. And here are our Regular seeds of Rosso Corsa. We put the seeds on the paper we previously soaked and, with sterilised tweezers, we’ll place them well-separated so they have space to germinate. A bit more water… and cover them.

It’s important to note the date and the variety, especially if we’ve got various dishes with different varieties. For breeding work it’s vital that we keep a Cultivation Diary, where we note the date and task each time we do something.

To germinate, the seeds need warmth and humidity. On this occasion we’ll use this propagator which is heated to 22-25ºC. As soon as they’re ready, we’ll cover it to keep the light out. It’s very important that the seeds don’t lose humidity, so we’ll keep an eye on them and spray again if needed. We don’t know how long they’ll take to germinate, so we just have to wait.

48 hours later, as you see, all the seeds have germinated. Next we’ll plant them in their pots. Before we do that, we have to prepare the labels with the name of the variety. On the back we’ll identify each individual to guarantee traceability during sexing and later on when taking cuttings.

We prepared 12 pots with our soil mix. And the irrigation water with some root stimulant. We’re wetting the soil first to avoid disturbing the seeds once they’re planted. We make a little hole, fairly deep so we can put the seed in without touching it too much… carefully. In it goes, cover it carefully… and there it is.

We place the pots in our grow tent and leave them covered for a few days, to maintain the humidity. We close it up and now we have to wait.

Don’t forget to note this task in your Cultivation Diary!