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  • Harriet Mella

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    July 21, 2022 at 4:40 am
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    Tell me about the difference it makes! You need to have fresh, vigorous seeds (even non pelleted works nicely)- that is key. Otherwise they germinate and are gone.

    There is a DIY seeds cleaner that works with a vacuum cleaner in the net from the “Real Seeds” (not the weed sites but the heirloom seed company!) site in the UK that does a wonderful job on lettuce seeds in case I can get you into saving your own. My faves are Pablo, Venezianer, Forellenschluss, Sweet Valentine, Eisenhappl and Truchas. They are slug proof in good conditions and fantastic quality.

    Beans: That is an interesting one. I think that there is two factors at work, Nr. 1 is the general nutrient shortage at the onset of reproduction and Nr.2 is that I have seen legume and corn seeds very quickly go into fermentative metabolism in germination. I would suspect that the same can quickly happen when maturation is delayed. I have had slugs climb one meter into the air without damaging anything and then eating the pods of large snow peas exactly and only where the seeds are.

    They seem to be really fond of anaerobic, rotting processes and alcohols/protein breakdown products seem to be a top cue. The typical “damage at the most sun exposed spot” of a spheric body – like melons or the shoulder of a tomato or pepper or only there is probably polyamine stabilization of osmotic stress.

    Now: the speculative area is paramagnetism. What I see is that in good paramagnetic conditions the plants are much more stable waterwise. By the look of things we are witnessing a better wetting angle and a speed up in Rhizophagy. The influence on Rhizophagy is not tested, but likely.