A customer has a question and I hope we can get some opinions on it, thanks.
“Germinated in water no problem. Planted into a peat based soil. All plants sprung up. Three are doing great but on the others the seed pod stuck to the plant top. Day 6 I wet the seed pod down good and tried to remove. Damage the plant so I let the others alone. They died. Any suggestions on how I can prevent this in the future ???”
This has happened to me in the past (though I was able to remove it without damage to the seedling)
You could try planting he seeds a little bit further down so that they have to emerge through more soil which might help it shed its husk prior to emerging from the soil.
typically when I put my seed into the medium I’ll have a 3/4" tap root (+ or -) and I insert the seed with the tap root facing down. You could try placing the seed so that the tap root is facing up what this will do is cause the tap root to curl around and grow downward giving the seed more time to break open and the friction from it being pushed through the soil should be enough to shed the husk.
When the husk remains on the seed what I do is I’ll wet the seed a few times every couple of minutes and take some tweezers and try and pop it open more to be able to remove it. Be sure to remove the membrane as well.
Happened on one of my Blueberry Autos. Got the seeds off but didn’t notice the membrane stayed around the stem. Two pair of tweezers took care of the problem, came right off with a light opposite tug @Jmesser80
Happened on my SQ1 on a few Plants, just gently remove, some of my tap roots after doing the wrt paper towel method actually had the seed off and little yellow leaves poking out