Seeds broke ground but still in shell

bullwinkle60

Well-Known Member
I germinated 4 BBXWW seeds and all four have broken soil but three of my seeds are still attached. There's the shell and a stem a the slightest bit of green leaf. There under a 400 watt MH in a 27 x27 x72 pro lab grow tent. Do I just treat them as usual and eventually they'll shed the shell or do I need to start over with new seeds?
This is the first time this has happened to me.
 

kryptoniteglo

Well-Known Member
This does happen. Some people say it's because those seeds were just a little too close to the surface and the process of pushing up through the medium wasn't enough to pull the shell off. But you also don't want to bury the seeds too far down either...

You can leave them alone and see if they shed their shells on their own. When this happened to me, I gave them a couple of days to do it, but then it was clear that the plant was getting a little stunted from the shells staying on, so I then removed them manually.

To do this, you want to be VERY careful, because it's easy to damage the seedling. I used the edge of a tweezer to stabilize one half of the shell a bit and then used my thumbnail to gently pry the other half of the shell away from the plant. It was nerve-wracking! Good luck!
 
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