The Best Way to Soak Your Seeds

There's all kinds of mystical solutions that your seeds can take a nice pre soak bath in that are meant to have some kind of positive effect but which one is the best? Or is it all a big myth? I put the most common methods to the test to see who would be crowned the champion of germination!

Methods Tested:
- Chamomile Tea
- Black Tea
- Bottled Water
- Tap Water
- No Presoaking
- Chamomile Wrap
- Black Tea Wrap

Peppers:
- Cascabel
- Jalapeños
- Cobincho
- Camba
- 3 Year Old Seeds
- 5 Years Old Seeds
- Seeds from Crushed Chillies

Full Writeup:

Support me & my little green friends:

[shanewest]

I've been growing Peppers for many years now, and this year I decided I was going to soak my seeds for the first time. As I average around 400 Pepper and Tomato plants each year, you have just saved me a lot of time. The best scarification is no scarification. Cheers for this!!!

[GrapeApesOfWrath]

Thanks for conducting this experiment! Helped me out a lot. I am beginning a, uh, strange pepper experiment during furlough and this helped me with some decisions!

[krisbanner]

This video was amazing! The scientific method used and statistics was life. Thank you for creating the video I needed in my life. You are amazing!

[spacedmushroom]

Your videos are brilliant I started watching them recently and I've just started getting into growing this has saved so much time with education thank you

[stuartmccloud]

This video has 65 likes? what the hell, this should be the authority on germination!

[TheHighPriestess]

Oh boy, the crescendo of the music did it for me. I was bobbing my head to it. I did not presoak my seeds this year and I’m going to see if it makes any difference from last year’s germination. Good video. Thanks by the way.

[hayleemckinley]

This video is great!!! Thank you so much. I had no idea about chamomile helping so much.

[peppertomato]

great video especially the edditing. i don't know why your result turned out like this i now always soak my seeds after expriencing the huge difference i found especially in super hot peppers and rocotto so not all kind of seeds will benefit from soaking like tomatoe seeds for example always takes 3 days to germinate in a seed tray whether soaked or not there is alot of academic research that show the benefit of soaking seeds and other pretreating methods but depend on what kind of seed.thank you for the video

[aphsg]

Hi Daisy Dawes, love the video!! May I ask why you placed the chilli seeds in a spritzed paper towel and into a ziplock bag? What conditions does this method set that allows the seed to germinate? Thank you so much!!

[valeriesanchez]

I did 4 ounces of tap water in a jello cup.
1 drop of chlorine bleach.
3 drops of 3% hydrogen peroxide.
Had a jalapeño seed in about 2 days.

[rezo]

please can you test to see if refrigeration seeds for 24 / 48 / 72 hours etc.. help with germination ?

[cooltoonist]

i just presoaked some spinach seeds an hour ago... time to change it now

[jgiles]

Nice job! Great test and glad to see you put the effort in to doing this. I'm curious if you noticed any difference between the type of pepper as this was another variable that could impact the results? Also, I'd love to see some superhot varieties tested as these are difficult for me to germinate. I've been using Chamomile presoak and for watering seedlings for a couple years now.

[tbluemel]

AWESOME JOB!!! Do you think pre-soaking longer, say 16 hours, would have changed your results? And thank you for your delicious sense of humor!!!

[bdfreedom]

which one is better for germination??middle one ...right??

[bdfreedom]

can we mix fertilizer with coco peat before plant??

[coletaylor]

What if instead of 8 hours you only soaked for 45 minutes?

[tripd]

It's almost like evolution wins everytime....

[JamalHossain]

Some people soaks their seeds in hydrogen peroxide for better germination

[tvHTHtv_is_A_Crackhead]

Wait what kind of pepper seeds were you using because super hot pepper seeds are notoriously hard to germinate and you should’ve gone straight into dirt from the pre-soak not into a napkin and also putting seed in a wet napkin is essentially the same thing as pre soaking you’re scarifying the shells or softening the shells by making them wet and softening them up