Hi, First timer here.
My seedling has been stuck in it’s shell like this for 24 Hours, It looks pretty tight.
The soil is wet, temp is 73.4 °F / 23°C and air moisture is around 70%. Should I try to help it? The shell seems to be REALLY tight!
I had one like that. I used something small like a sewing needle to gently pry it off. You just want to split it enough. I was willing to take the risk and it worked out fine.
1 Like
Relax… let it happen. No problem.
All right, that an easy one to handle just use tweezers to lift it up off the pod and if any resistance spray it with a little water then wait a couple of hours to see if it changes. What your looking for is the hull to free itself from the pod. You’re going to loose part of the seeds food leaf so be careful. The plant should be fine as long as you don’t break off too much of the starter leaves. I had one seedling that grew 5" before I could get the hull to come off and it lost over half of its cotyledon or the starter leaf. That one is a bush right now getting ready to start it’s 4 th week of flowering.
The problem she can have is the hull beginning to get dry and harden around her as it’s no longer in wet dirt. I generally just delicately remove it from them. A small tool like a toothpick will come in handy. Be gentle as the hull is removed it will pull out the goo sack between her leaves. Slow and gently to not rip her head off and she should be good….
Try burying your next beans slightly deeper or slightly tamp the dirt down and make sure it’s not too loose to not provide enough pressure/ resistance to remove the hull. Or possibly your media is getting too dry prior to full germ.
2 Likes
After about 48 hours there was still no progress on the shell, I kept lightly spraying it and keeping air moisture at around 70%. Eventually I did as 3 of you suggested to carefully remove the shell.
I kept the shell moist but Sadly 1 of the cotyledon leaves was stripped of and one of them don’t look that healthy. The middle of the plant looks healthy, I’m just holding my thumbs.
There was nothing else you could do on this one as I told you the hull might pull the starter leaves off. Don’t over water it and don’t let it dry out and you should be ok. The seedling might fall over as you water it, don’t pack the dirt down to fix it. I just place a piece of bark next to the shaft of the plant to keep it up right out of the dirt. I water these little ones with an eye dropper using plain water. I don’t know what your doing for water but I use an aquarium pump to bubble off the chlorine from the tap water I use. I give each gallon two days to bubble. A couple of more days and your out of the woods on this one. Then all you have to worry about is things like insects attacking your plants; your area getting a cold snap that downs the power; and the worse one of all is mold attacking your buds from inside out. So, by the time you reach harvest time you’ll be all but forgot about this little issue with the hulls. When I started growing back in 1985 there wasn’t a forum to help, but now you have dozens of growers here ready to help. Give us an update in a couple of days.
My lights just came on and it’s time to go to work, no rest when the lights are on as there is always things to do or check on. The life of a farmer is good!
1 Like
Just thought I’d share some update pictures since last update (2 1/2 days ago), She’s defiantly getting bigger so I suppose I’m in for the “long” run now.
She’s an Autoflower, so I hope she didn’t get to stumped. It’s been 5 1/2 days since she came up from the ground, I just think she looks pretty small 
maybe she’ll catch a growth spurt
1 Like
It’s going to take its sweet time
Without cotyledons to provide moisture from the high levels of humidity you’re maintaining root development is most likely going to be slow going initially.
It will pick up the growth rate once a root system sufficient to carry on has developed