HI, I"m Carolyn from the old AOL tomato Forum, LOL, who would also sneak into the pepper Forum as well. What was....aha, it was Cajun who was the main poster in the pepper Folder.
Anyway, it was I and actually Craig, who used to also post there, who I think first talked about the K Nitrate.
It needs to be used at a concentration of about 0.2% and that comes out to be about one teaspoon per gallon.
Soak the seeds overnight in it and then I used to also use it to water the seeds until I saw some germination and then would switch to plain water.
That being said, Craig and I tried all sorts of waker uppers such as giberellic acid with or without K nitrate, different soak times, microwave and more.
And the conclusion I came to, at least, was that the best results I had were obtained just by soaking seeds overnight in plain water, believe it or not.
Byron used to swear by the use of cold tea for peppers and there's a thread here now in this Forum about that, but when I have to wake up old tomato seeds that are dessicated I do it just with an o/n soak and also add a pinch of blue stuff such as Peter's or MG or one can also use a few drops of liquid fish or seaweed prep.
Addition of those fertilizers in small amounts ups the nitrate ion level which is supposed to be important in seed germination.
Many years ago I contacted several seed physiologists to find out what it did, and they didn't know either.
