Germinating & Dead Peas in Thermos Flasks

Goaty_McGoatface

Tried this a couple of times over the past few weeks and couldn’t get any heat/CO₂ produced from the peas. Tried soaking our peas from 24-72 hours and still no success. I think it’s our peas, they date back to 2016 so they’re probably too old. Does anyone have any ideas what peas work best or should any dried peas work?

For those that don’t know the experiment, the video below demonstrates it well.

Fran

Goaty_McGoatface

Not done this experiment for a long time but I’m sure I had a cheat for it!

Will need to have a search and get back to you 😀

MiracleTech

Goaty_McGoatface
Your peas are pretty old. Can you try fresh dried peas or even Mung beans instead of peas? The Mung beans work a treat albeit it’s been a few years since we have done the demo but it did work. A short soak for about 30min beforehand is recommended. I’d guess your peas are a little on the old side. Did you store them at room temp? I try and keep my seeds in the fridge if possible in an air tight jar. We still have a jar of Alfalfa seeds that still germinate and they are BBE 2000 but they’ve been kept in the fridge in a closed screw cap jar. Seems to extend the shelf life by a far bit.

Goaty_McGoatface

MiracleTech I tried mung beans but admittedly they were a couple years old too. The peas were stored at room temperature but I’ll consider storing them in the fridge in future.

I tried to get the teachers to bring in new dried peas after the old batch didn’t work but they tried with tinned and frozen peas instead. As far as I know both are cooked before they’re tinned/frozen so as expected they didn’t work either 😄

MiracleTech

Goaty_McGoatface
I try and store my seeds in the fridge as much as I can. It makes a bit difference. I learned that as a young lad from a keen gardener in the family. The peas in the can are cooked inside the tin at high temperature and the peas will have zero active enzymes left. Definitely dead peas there. 😁 Frozen fresh peas are flash frozen and they will not be viable for germination either I’m afraid. Processing seeds will make them unsuitable I’m afraid for the the experiment if you need them to germinate.