How to germinate seeds using paper towel method

Germinating cannabis seeds using paper towel method is an easy process when new cannabis plants start their growth from seeds. This process may also be referred to as “popping”. Germination is the first step in starting your indoor or outdoor grow. The method itself is pretty easy and has a high success rate, meaning that most of the seeds if not all of them are likely to sprout. However, the success rate highly depends on quality of seeds, strain and how they’ve been kept.

There is various ways to get marijuana seeds. One way is getting them from a baggie, if you ever bought weed of the street you might have ran into weed that had seeds in it. Not the best quality weed, but you can use those seeds to grow your own weed plants. Another way is getting them online. When you order seeds online, you get high quality feminized seeds. Feminized seeds are the ones that produce female cannabis plants.

We strongly suggest buying seeds online rather than using ones you found somewhere. This way you get high quality seeds, you can choose the strain you want and you can rest assured they will grow to be female plants. I’ve had the best success with this cannabis seed bank, so if you’re looking for quality seeds and discrete delivery, have a look.

Germinating cannabis seeds using paper towel?

This method that we will discuss is probably one of the easiest ones. There are many methods to germinate cannabis seeds but this one is most common and does not require a lot of resources. So for this method, here is the list of things that you will need:

• Seeds
• Paper towel
• Clean plate

1st step: Take 1-2 sheets of paper towel and soak them with water (distilled water is the best choice). Make sure their soaked but not running wet.

2nd step: Place 1-2 soaked paper towel sheets on one of the plates. Place your seeds on that towel, keep some distance between seeds, like an inch or so. Place the remaining two sheets on top of the seeds. So now your seeds are in between the soaked sheets. Great!

3rd step: Take another plate, flip it and cover the seeds. This will keep them safe and in the dark.

4th step: Make sure that it’s not too cold. The place you will keep the seeds in has to be warm for a proper germination process. Somewhat between 70-90°F works well. To keep the seeds warm enough you can place them on a heat mat. Note: when using a heat mat, you might want to create some distance between the plate and the mat as it might be too warm and dry out your seeds very quickly.

MET certified and durable heating mats

After you have completed the above steps, it’s time to wait. Check the paper once in a while, if it looks like its drying out, put some water on it. Seeds need good moisture to germinate.

Some of the seeds may sprout quickly while others might take a day or two. Once the seed splits and sprout appears you know that the seed has germinated.

It’s important to keep them sterile. Once they germinate, try not to touch the root. This root will become a main stem of the plant. Once you see the tap root, you know you did a good job.

Side note:

You can use toilet paper or tissues for this method too. If you are using tissues, make sure they’re not scented. Seeds are living organisms and they are quite sensitive and fragile in early stages of life, scented tissues have chemicals in them that might damage the seedling.

5th step: Transplanting the seeds. For this step you want to pick the seeds up and plant them in your chosen growing medium. Try not to use your fingers for this if possible, there’s a chance you might contaminate or damage the seedling this way. Good option for this would be using tweezers. You can grab them from your partner or if you don’t have them handy you can always get some cheap ones from amazon.

Pointy Tweezers will get the job done, although you can use any tweezers, just make sure they are clean.

Now for the growing medium, you have many options, like rockwool, soil, peat pellets, etc. I would highly recommend starting them off with peat pellets. Reason for that is, they come as a nutrition rich solution, which is great to boost your seedlings, providing them with essential nutrients. Now that I mentioned peat pellets, there is another method how you can germinate seeds using peat pellet method. It is also a very good germination method.

Pros and Cons of germinating seeds using paper towel method

Pros:

• Easy. There is nothing difficult or complicated about this method and most people already have majority of tools needed for this method at home (paper towels, plates, tweezers)
• Fast. Seeds only take about 1-3 days to sprout.
• Success Rate. This method has high success rate, all you need to do is follow the steps I provided.
• Fun. I always love overseeing the germination process, it’s honestly exciting to see the seeds sprout.

Cons:

• Requires additional supplies. While you might have most of the supplies needed at home, like paper towels, plates or tweezers, it’s handy to get a heating mat. The upside of this is that you will be able to reuse these supplies for your later grows.
• Multiple steps. While this isn’t your regular “stick it in the ground” method, it is quite easy and has a good success rate.
• Stuck shell. A lot of times you will have a seed shell stuck to the stem. You can either gently remove it using tweezers or just leave it be. This is because when you plant the seed in the ground, the stem must make its’ way through the soil and leaves the shell behind, which doesn’t happen in this case since there’s no soil to push through.

Congratulations, you have made it to the end. If you have followed these steps correctly, in 1-3 days time you should have fully germinated seeds ready to be planted into the soil. If you have any questions or additional thoughts, please leave them in the comment section below.