I would like to know if it’s beneficial to help a seedling as it emerges from the media. Should you help open the leaves if they seem to be stuck? Or maybe they appear to just need a nudge to be completely out of the soil. What about the seed shell? Just leave it till it falls off or pick it off if it looks like a hinderance?
I appreciate the replies and advice.
Man these things are tough, their goal in life is to reproduce and survive. They’ll find a way to break through the soil. If the seed pod won’t come off get a needle or tweezers and gently remove it. But I would let it break through the soil and grow a little before I did that
You can help… but… is it beneficial to do so…?
I like to make them tough and fight… but I clone for up to 6 years…
If I was just starting out and wanted to get to harvest… I might help out a lil bit… but not much… you want her to fight for herself without your interference… she will do good… or she will do bad… such is life…
Sounds like good advice to me. I just didn’t want to over do it. It’s tempting to fuss over them in the name of helping. I agree they are tough plants.
I grow from seed and do as little as possible to interfere - survival of the fittest, I say! I have not interfered when the seeds get stuck on the cotyledons, and though they look a little messed up at first, that seed eventually pops off and the plant make sits way to normalcy.
%lightbender…Mother Nature has a plan. Usually I will not interfere. However, when seeds hatch, if the seed husk is stuck…I will VERY GENTLY remove it with a needle.
If the inner covering on the first leaves is stuck and keeping the leaves from opening…I will take a needle and VERY VERY Carefully stroke the surface of the inner covering until is slides off.
NOTICE…the emphasis on VERY VERY GENTLY n CAREFULLY???
Gently…I’ll go along with that.