Helmets

[bower]

Yep they drive me nuts.
When everyone else is ready to pot up, there are these few that just won't shuck it.

I have already used the mister for helmets that could be persuaded.
I have heard of the magic of spit, but has never worked for me personally.
I have attempted surgery in the past, which rarely produced the right results.
Patience, many times, saw the tip rot away leaving nar a cotyledon, wasting my time.

I may as well leave them for hopeless, and start some more seeds.

What do you do?
Have any new secrets emerged, to hey presto doff helmet and present cotyledons?

[Tormato]

I get a lot of helmets with 6 or 7 year old seed. So, I don't like to use anything older than 5, with 8+ having very poor, to no, germination.

I sow very shallow, seeds are about a dimes thickness below the surface. They emerge quicker, with the trade-off of little seed starter to grab and shuck the seed coat during emergence.

I wet the seed coat, grab it (like grabbing a dime by its edges) between thumb and forefinger and very gently squeeze. All I'm looking for is to have the seed coat open up a little. If it starts to rise up off the curled-up cot, I keep squeezing until it comes off. If it doesn't come off, I'll try the next day, if it hasn't come off over-night. My success rate is about 99% after years of much practice. After several days, when the stem emerging from the seed coat is not light in color, it often means that it is headless.

Sometimes I might break off the tips of the cots, but that doesn't effect anything.

[rxkeith]

i only have micro tomatoes, and peppers going right now.
what i have done with helmet heads this year is i put drops of water
on them several times a day. usually, if the cotyledons are in decent shape,
they will push off the helmet within three days or off enough for me to take the
seed coat off without decapitating the plant. if the helmet doesn't come off, it is
usually because the cotyledons are severely damaged or not even there. in that case
i expect the plant to perform poorly even if i manage to get the seed coat off.
so far, so good. everything is alive and growing.


keith

[zeedman]

Temperature seems to at least partially influence the percentage of helmets. I germinate most warm-weather seeds in a temperature-controlled mini-greenhouse. Because I used to start peppers & tomatoes at the same time - often from older seed - I usually set the temp at about 80 F. degrees. Germination was fast; but I too had a lot of helmets on the tomatoes, and nothing except for frequent misting helped. But having observed the difference in growth rates, I began planting tomatoes 2-3 weeks after the peppers, and germinated the tomatoes under lights at room temperature (about 70 F. degrees). Germination was slower, but there were far fewer helmets. I repeated that process last year, with different tomatoes, but similar results.

[MissS]

I moisten them either with water or saliva and allow them to sit for a couple of minutes. Then I repeat the moistening and will very gently try to budge the seed coat. Most times it will slide right off but there are times that it wont. In that case I will moisten it again in a few hours and try again. Sometimes I will only be able to move it just the tiniest bit but it is progress. With patience I can usually get it done in 24 hours.

Someone once told me that the deeper the seed is planted the fewer helmet heads. Their theory was that there was more moisture in the soil and more friction to move the seed coat. I too have more helmet heads with older seed, but since they are older and I consider them weaker, I don't plant them as deep.

[JRinPA]

I definitely think that the deeper the seed is planted, the less helmet heads. But if some won't shed, then spit.

[Toomanymatoes]

I go all out surgical....



...works about 50% of the time.

[bower]

I sow pretty shallow just like Tormato for the quick start, so I get the deeper soil idea, being more to push against and scrape it off - also keeping it moist probably. Last year I kept the seedlings in a clamshell on the heatmat and afterwards kept it on until they all shucked - humidity chamber worked.

But I am really interested in the temperature question brought up by zeedman, which I hadn't considered before. Actually have some replacement seeds stuck on the heat mat since yesterday, I think I'll turn it off overnight and put them under lights tomorrow morning instead.

[ddsack]

Once helmets are up, use either spit or a large drop of water, then encapsulate the helmet in a tiny hat of saran wrap held on by the water tension. The stubborn dry helmets need a long time to soften, and just the 5-10 minutes of open moisture in a dry house may evaporate too soon. You should be able to see the moisture drops clinging to the saran wrap. A good half hour of sitting in the moisture hat should pop the healthy ones open by themselves. The stubborn ones can be helped off with a straightened safety pin while the seed coat is still soft and flexible.

[worth1]

If the first leaves are growing out of the helmet I just leave the plant alone.
Any damp paper towel fragment on the seed coat works well too.

[bower]

Hadn't thought of a safety pin as implement - nice. I make a lousy surgeon though. Mostly there's nothing to brace myself on for operations on seedlings, which I would certainly do for any similar fine motor control thing.
There's definitely a point where you know, this helmet is bad news. Any sort of movement where you can see the cots being pulled out is promising, but the worst ones are like matchsticks straight up. If this goes on for more than two days, it is too late, the cots just rot inside. Will definitely go for intervention without delay if my replacement seeds don't shuck immediately.
For myself, I'm tempted to be fatalistic and just say, well this is what I got, I'll work with these numbers and forget the lost ones. But working with someone else's seeds and varieties for the farm, hard to know how many to oversow to have the right number of vars that fit the farm plan. I have enough Amish Paste extras from 2009 to fill the greenhouse but, ah, not enough of the other reds. Go figure, old vs fresh seeds!

[worth1]

I've never noticed a difference from old to fresh.
With old one's I soak in a diluted solution of the blue stuff.
Carolyn's term for mericle

[worth1]

I've never noticed a difference from old to fresh.
With old one's I soak in a diluted solution of the blue stuff.
Carolyn's term for miracle gro.

[bower]

I soaked the old ones overnight - maybe I should've soaked the new ones too

[JRinPA]

Pretty sure it was Carolyn that mentioned saliva versus water, a few years back on a similar thread.

I just did 4 flats pepper seeds today and decided I would pre-spit on the older ones. Some from 2016. That got tiresome.

[ddsack]

There are some that can't be saved. It's usually because the little hole where the stem emerged is too dry and tight for the leaves to pull through, even with the saran wrap cap soak. The seed casing will be soft, but the rim around the hole has stiffer material and won't flex wide enough for the leaves to get out. It does take an gentle touch to work with the safety pin. You have to gently hold the seed head steady with two fingers, and use the pin to scratch and lift on the helmet. Remember the cots are curled up inside, so it's best to first try to push the helmet off in a downwards circular movement, following the curve of the neck. Nicking the top of the hole rim is good if it's soft enough. Then you can peel off the sides. Sometimes the rim just won't give, and you can try peeling off the sides first to free the leaves and then work back to do the rim last. Pushing too hard if the hole is too tight will snap off the head, but you will likely lose it to interior rot anyway in a few days. Don't worry if you happen to tear off the ends of the cotyledons, they can grow just fine with some damage. Even a bit of green is enough, it will just slow down growth. Obviously, if you have started a lot of seed and don't need the extras, it may not be worth the busy work to save the helmets, but sometimes when you have few, old and rare seeds there is pressure to save every one you can.

If your hands are not steady, try arranging it so that you lean forward pressing your arms on the table edge, about 5 or 6 inches below your wrists. Luckily, I still have very good close up vision without glasses (unlike my distance vision) this is micro surgery, so it may not be for everyone. Personally, I find it a fun challenge to see how many I can save.

There was a mention of temperature in possible helmet formation. I think there is something to that. I have taken to turning off my heat mat at night so that there is a drop to 65-68F and I found that I have fewer helmets. With high heat at night, any night sprouting seeds grow more quickly and end up with those lanky white stems that are more likely to have trouble pushing off a helmet while they search for the morning light. It seems like keeping the stem shorter by cooling at night to slow growth, might give the seedling a shorter distance to drive energy to push off the helmet. I like the mimicking of normal temperature variations that the seeds might experience in nature. I guess the downside is that it may take them longer to germinate.

[zeedman]

For some seeds with stubborn helmets, I've had fairly good results squeezing them with a small pliers, as long as the tips of the jaws are serrated to prevent slippage. I squeeze gently on the wide edge; not to remove the helmet, just enough to crack or weaken it. The application of moisture usually allows the seed to expel the seed coat after that.

[Sue_CT]

I have used tweezers or needle nose pliers the same way.

[zeuspaul]

I soak all of my seeds until they germinate before planting them in their starting pot. I would think 2+ days of soaking would soften the seed but I still get about 10% helmets. I let them fend for themselves and most of them survive the ordeal without intervention. I start extra seeds so I can cull the least favorable plants, some cull themselves. I would only operate if I had no more of the same seed.

I wonder if a drop of vegetable which doesn't evaporate oil would soften the head?

[svalli]

I sowed tomatoes to moler clay granules, which is one type of DE. This year most of the seedlings emerged with the helmet on and to my surprise all of them were able to grow the cotyledons out from the seed. I had to keep the cover off most of the time since the seeds germinated at different times. I kept spraying the helmet heads at least three times a day to keep them moist until I saw that the leaves are emerging from the seeds.

I started peppers already earlier and germinated the seeds on wet paper towel in a plastic container. I had one which I needed to do surgery to get the helmet off and I cut a bit too much. Other pepper plants have already 5 sets of true leaves and that damaged one is finally starting to grow the second set. Tomato seeds are so small that I try to avoid doing surgery on them, because I have had so low success rate doing it.