SUCCESS

Yes, folks, you read correctly - after only THREE days, our corn has germinated. 

Here are some downright awful photos of the tenacious little sprouts.

You can hardly see them, but my crappy camera wasn't getting any closer than that. 

Our control corn (unaltered/untreated) and the corn treated with cloning solution/fertilizer had little to no growth. The corn we scraped with sandpaper also had little to no root growth. All the other corns have either poked out the tiniest nose of a root or have a sizable root as the ones above. Sunglow soaked for two hours had two small sprouts.

The best growers by far were: Sunglow soaked overnight (12 hours) and even better than those were the Precocious soaked for two hours in water. The roots on those Precocious were surprisingly large and hairy - I'm concerned that they were moldy and pulled two out to plant in pots. Two of the Sunglow also went into pots. Needless to say...we are REALLY excited that our corn germinated in two or three days. The conditions inside the baggies seemed favorable - Erin had the light on for about four hours today when she took a heat reading and the temp inside the baggies was around 80 degrees. The paper towels dried out so we'll have to be vigilant about rewatering those and the little fiber pots. 

At the moment we have those four planted seeds under plastic bread baggies. For now these will work as mini hot-houses - when the plants start to grow, we can just unroll them for extra height (read: free mini-hothouses).

What's interesting to me is the disparity between the two hybrids here - the Precocious sprouted much faster after being soaked for only two hours rather than twelve - and the opposite is true for the Sunglow. Neat-o. :)

I found an old mini-blind slat (yeah, just one) and chopped it up for plant markers. It works perfectly with a Sharpie (read: free plant markers). I wrote the type of vegetable and planting date on one side, and on the other side I wrote the hybrid name along with the date of experiment and how long each seed was soaked. This way we'll see who survives the transfer to the pots.

:) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) 

(If you've read this far...thank you.)