Yeah I'm not a fan of the cup either...something about drowning your taproots that bothers me. I lost more that way than any.
The paper towel way needs to be in a ballpark area..if you can hold it up and get water drips it's TOO wet. I simply dab a few different spots on it and let the papertowel soak the water up and distribute it across itself.
Now the real secret is 2 things. I'm probably at a 98% out of the last 150 seeds or so.
#1 add a teaspoon or so of h2o2 to the water. Either cup or papertowel.
#2 trick of the trade... I rarely share..it's how you get those "hard to pop seeds to germ" like ogkb etc..
Take your seed and run them down a fingernail file a few times making sure to get both sides...you wanna see VERY small bits of shell on the file....viola! I promise a great success rate by this method. I bagged these 1.5 days ago after they hit the fingernail file. I just cracked these a week or so ago without the file method got 4/10 to germ. As you see now...10/10 *note the condensation on the bag wall* :)
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