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Grittyville, WA

Well sorry I may not be able to post a pic but here's what I did....
I weighed all 96 seeds from a not-much-worth pumpkin from last year and labeled the weight and the seed coat size (small medium large). The seed weights ranged from .27 to .71 grams.

I found that despite some seed embryos weighing much less than others (after subtracting the respective seed coat weight for each size of seed) there was good germination of all the seeds except two of the very smallest seeds. Although some of the smallest seeds did have trouble shedding the seed coat and emerging, others were surprisingly vigorous.

After four weeks, the cotyledons and stems of the seedlings from the heavier seeds are much larger. I don't believe the smaller seedlings are necessarily flawed genetically, and the heavier seeds did not produce uniformly perfect seedlings either, but it was clear to anyone looking at the tray of seedlings that the heavier seed weights produced the bigger seedlings.

In summary, germination was very good for light weight seeds. However, the heavier seeds resulted in larger seedlings.

Really the only conclusion I can offer with certainty is that persons who are testing seedling mixes or doing other germination experiments should note that naturally varying seed weights will, alone, produce highly variable results...

Experiments should use seeds of the same size and weighing the same amount. This does not eliminate all variability, however, it is easy to do! My results suggest this can reduce error in such experiments by 90% 9 out of 10 seeds in my test germination did conform to the easily observed correlation between seed weight and seedling size.

I may post pics of this and other experiments in my diary later this year!

Have a good year.

2/26/2017 9:45:28 PM

Grittyville, WA

Also I did not observe with certainty any benefit to partially filing half of the seeds in this experiment.

It's possible to germ seeds without filing.

There may be a small or slight benefit to filing but with these particular seeds it was not possible to say with certainty that there was any difference.

2/26/2017 9:55:55 PM

Central Illinois

Thank you for the work, do you have any plants still growing,how do they compare one two and three weeks later

2/27/2017 10:27:51 AM

Colorado

Glen-very cool.Years ago when the 567.5 mombert was the hottest seed on the planet.kirk gave out the last of his seeds which were runts and half filled.Some of those funky seeds produced some of the biggest fruit.Dont get me wrong-I always want a plump seed/vigourous seedling but wouldn't give away a 2009 Wallace if it was a half filled/potato chip.You cant tell how much fight is in the dog looking at the newborn pups. However nice early plants did seem to work out good for the willemijms in 2016:)

2/27/2017 11:43:53 AM

Buffalo, MN (Billsbigpumpkins@hotmail.com)

I have stopped filing my seeds, I think filing, shallow seed depth or/and high temperature increases the possibility of seed coats staying on when germinating. Glenomkins would you email me.

2/27/2017 2:55:51 PM

Grittyville, WA

good info cojoe. Thanks. I appreciate that info.

As for baitman I think the question u are asking is ... does the performance of individual seedlings begin to diverge because of varying genetics or the question is ... does performance converge (the smaller seedlings catch up to the larger ones) maybe because of an effect of growth rates or environmental limits...

Not sure I can answer either very well but i think there is drift in both directions a few seedlings (randomly?) rotted. A few have white spots on their leaves. Some of the smaller plants are still growing well though and most of the larger ones are still relatively healthy. They are in a standard 96 small-cell seedling tray and they are no doubt hurt by the limits of their environment. It's gonna be a game of last man standing...

I will post a new post if I notice anything unexpected...

2/27/2017 7:48:32 PM