This is Mike Wellik, the owner of this site. The info on this page had gotten stale so I decided to start over rather than editing the page. Over the years my germination methods have changed. Part of the reason is that I approached germination from a perennial grower’s perspective. I grew hundreds of thousands of various perennials and then started growing alpine strawberries for plant sales. It was always about volume. I over-sowed tray cells with more than one seed to reduce or eliminate cells that we call skips – no seedling in the cell. More recently I started selling seeds to home gardeners and those who grow less plants but I never went back to update my methods.
My methods now are a lot different from methods years ago. I am no longer growing large volumes of plants. I now germinate seeds in 2 oz Jello Shot cups with 1 tbsp of course sand as shown in this picture. The lids hold the moisture in and work great for labelling. Water is added as needed with an eye dropper. I also germinate seed that I will use for growing plants for seed saving.
An added benefit of the use of sand is that issues with algae and fungus gnats that I fought for years has all but disappeared. I now see a fungus gnat once in a while in my germination area.
The other part of my method for germination is that I am using Jiffy 7C coir pellets and Jiffy Growblocks. Once the seeds germinate in the shot cups they are moved to a Jiffy pellet or a Growblock. Fungus gnats are no longer a daily battle.
Newly germinated seeds are simply moved with a tweezer or an opened paperclip to its new destination. Their age ranges from seeds that germinated overnight to seeds that germinated 2 weeks earlier. I have virtually no skips anymore but I think the biggest advantage of these new methods is that the first seeds to germinate are many times if not most times very vigorous. Their progeny tend to be strong plants with quick germination and this is what I want to select for. I believe the seeds I sell now are much more vigorous and robust than seeds I sold 10 years ago.