For my situation, using degassed water to enhance and speed up germination IS the simplest method. Heating mats and grow lights cost a lot of money that I don't have. Putting unsprouted seeds into six-packs and four-packs, and then waiting two or three weeks to see which cells I'm going to have to replant, costs me time which I don't necessarily have either.
As I just e-mailed to Weeks Seed in North Carolina, last year I tried pre-sprouting some Banana Melon seeds of theirs that I bought ten or eleven years ago. It was either that, or throw the whole packet in the garbage and spend the rest of my life wondering if I somehow
could have gotten some life out of those seeds. And kicking myself in the butt a little bit, for not even trying.
So... it was sort of a "forlorn hope" kind of proposition. Much to my amazement, I got
two sprouted seeds out of about ten
, one of them a much larger sprout than the other, and then planted all ten in a group in my "Three Sisters" rows in our church garden. Along with numerous other varieties of melon, squash, and cucumber.
But that's not even the best part of this tale.
The two Banana Melon plants were the only cucurbits to survive our massive summer heat wave of 2011. I've lived in Albuquerque for ~35 years, and this was the hottest summer yet. Our, um, friends?
from Texas know exactly what I mean.
I got exactly one substantially sized cucurbit fruit from my Three Sisters rows. A big, beautiful Banana Melon that smelled and tasted absolutely marvelous. Like a banana and cantaloupe fruit salad.
If I ever trade or market seeds descended from that one melon plant, I'll no doubt label it the "Sole Survivor Strain." I strongly suspect I couldn't have gotten it at all, without using degassed water for pre-sprouting in the first place.