Let me preface this by saying that I usually follow proven and accepted ways of gardening. But occasionally through stupidity or ignorance I've done things that were considered to be No-Nos and they worked anyway.

I'm wondering if you have, too?

Here's the latest of my ignorant moves.

I blame it all on the mouse. Back in mid-February a mouse knocked the cover off my little greenhouse sitting on a heating pad on the floor and messed around with them, destroying everything that had just popped up, mostly lettuce. The soil dried out pretty badly by the time I discovered it, since I kept them only moist, not wet.

So I started the seeds again and put them up on a table. Of this new batch, none of the 12 pepper seeds, eight of the 20 lettuce seeds, and only two of the 24 tomato seeds had germinated after two weeks. Things were not looking good, and I was getting anxious about having plants to set out at a reasonable time.

So two days ago I decided try again with the peppers and tomatoes by germinating the seeds in paper towels and baggies in hopes of speeding things up. Purely on impulse, remembering that human saliva softens seed coats that cling to cotyledons, I applied a dab of saliva to the paper towel piece and placed the seeds on top of the wet spot, thinking that if the seed coats were quickly softened, the seeds would germinate more quickly. Then I added enough water to moisten the entire piece of paper towel.

Only after I did this did I think I'd better check to see if it had been successfully done before. Bad news. Almost every research report on the internet says that human saliva is a seed germination *inhibitor*. It looks like researchers isolated the relevant enzymes and applied them to seeds and they refused to germinate. Just great...

I did find one site that claimed one enzyme in human saliva inhibits seed germination at first but then appears to be a germination booster.

So today I checked, pretty sure I'd put a real bad mojo on those seeds. To my surprise nearly all of the pepper seeds have root bulges and four of the tomato seeds have put out roots. So I guess I didn't kill all of them! I certainly don't know if they are germinating at the same rate they would have if I'd just added water.

The peppers will be the real test in my mind. They are Jupiters, sent to me in a seed exchange with a GWebber a couple of years ago, and pepper seeds aren't viable for much over two years. I couldn't get any of them to germinate last year.

Anyway, this was something weird I did that isn't recommended, and we'll see if it works or if I end up with dead or mutant Ninja pepper and tomato plants.

Just wondering if you've inadvertently done something to your seeds and plants that isn't recommended but it worked anyway?