I've been trying to germinate some IcarosDNA seeds for about 2 months now and having no luck. I was expecting to see something by now.

My first attempt turned green so obviously that was far too moist. The second attempt I actually thought had worked but on closer observation, what I thought was a seedling, was just some other algae like substance and my third attempt was same soil and moisture as the second, but showed no activity whatsoever

The soil was left to drain after it was soaked so I'm guessing the drainage is pretty crap in my current soil mix, so I may add a little more sand and perlite to help that on the way.

But does anyone have a good recommendation of ways to check the moisture is correct that an idiot could understand.

Like it I ring the mix out like a sponge after thoroughly moistening is that a good idea?

I have some small pots with gravel in the bottom 1/3 up then 1/3 soil mix then 1/3 space to cut down on direct sun contact.

I really want these babies to grow. I got like 1000 of them for a little trial and error here and there but I certainly want a good few to brighten up the place

I never water after I premoisten the soil. I stick in a humidity dome of some type(in this case a clear donut hole case)and close it so it doesn't dry out too much at all if it looks really dry I might spray the top once in 2 weeks which by that time most are germinated anyway I got close to 100% with icaros DNA seeds out of about 15 seeds.

I'm not watering them at all after the initial moistening. I just need to know how moist they have to be.

As moist as they can be without standing in water (at all), about 99% humidity for the first 3 months or so...

Ya, just place them on top of the soil with some sort of clear top, I used saran wrap. If you see that there is no condensation forming on whatever dome type contraption you use, things got too dry.

Certainly no danger of that so far. If anything it looks like the windsreen of a car in hard rain

I've put some more on the go today using microwaved soil with superior drainage and it does seem adequately moist enough at the moment and my pots that have been standing there for a month or 2 actual seem to have slight puddles in them.

Perfect.



No puddles!

Put gravel at the bottom of the container if this is a problem.

Yeah those really wet ones turned a little green so my latest attempts have 1 1/2" gravel at the bottom with 1 1/2" soil mix on top. I've added a little perlite too so the whole thing drained quite nicely before I bagged them up, so hopefully this time

Well the two new pots don't look like the soil is all that wet, but it's definately kicking up some good humidity in there. I think the perlite has helped out quite a lot.

Hope I got it right this time