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Originally posted by chris
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Try chitting your beans and sweetcorn.
The way I do it, is to soak the beans overnight in quite warm water. In the morning, drain and rinse, then leave them in the tupperware box. Rinse them the day after, and each day to present any mould issues. As mentioned, I do mine in a tupperware box (lunch box thingy), and leave it on a sunny windowsil.
The water from the rinsing is enough to keep it damp and humid in there.
That way, you can see which beans will germinate (or peas, sweetcorn - whatever seed you're chitting - you can even do it with parsnip), and not waste your compost - or have them rot in cold, wet pots.
You can see from the picture below the stages in the beans chitting - from right to left (at first you'll notice the beans go really wrinkly, then over night they plump up and smooth out). Right hand side you can just see the root starting to force its way through the outer covering (look to the left of the white eye in the right hand bean - small bump is visible if you look carefully), then progressing further left you can see the root start to emerge:
At the left hand stage I drop them into 3" pots to grow on a bit before I plant out (to help in the battle against slugs/snails).
The way I do it, is to soak the beans overnight in quite warm water. In the morning, drain and rinse, then leave them in the tupperware box. Rinse them the day after, and each day to present any mould issues. As mentioned, I do mine in a tupperware box (lunch box thingy), and leave it on a sunny windowsil.
The water from the rinsing is enough to keep it damp and humid in there.
That way, you can see which beans will germinate (or peas, sweetcorn - whatever seed you're chitting - you can even do it with parsnip), and not waste your compost - or have them rot in cold, wet pots.
You can see from the picture below the stages in the beans chitting - from right to left (at first you'll notice the beans go really wrinkly, then over night they plump up and smooth out). Right hand side you can just see the root starting to force its way through the outer covering (look to the left of the white eye in the right hand bean - small bump is visible if you look carefully), then progressing further left you can see the root start to emerge:
At the left hand stage I drop them into 3" pots to grow on a bit before I plant out (to help in the battle against slugs/snails).
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