Gibberellic Acid / GA3

Anyone used Gibberellic Acid to speed/improve germination?

Dunno why it hasn't occurred to me before, as I did it as a project at college! At that time I was testing germination rates / speed on Lettuce seed I think ... rather than really-hard-to-germinate-exotics !!

Having stumbled over it I had a look to see how hard it would be purchase ... and turns out its cheap-as-chips and readily available on eBay (the listing I found has already sold 1092 units! which must be amongst the highest multi-sell counts I've ever seen on eBay ... so some folk must be using it!)

 

Seems to have a fair few horticultural uses according to this............

 

Well, given it is so cheap I'll give it a go. If enough seed of anything I'll have a crack at a 50:50 test and report back.

 

Having had a Google when you mentioned vernalisation, the article suggested that Gibberellic Acid could be used in place of cold stratification or vernalisation.

 

I have bought some. I think the biggest problem is with the dilution rate - too much / too little and you are back at square one. I did find a PDF file of a huge report on the dilution rates for various species, so I'm going to try that on a few hard-to-germinate things.

 

Well done Kristen - do let us know how you get on.