Garden Hack: How to Germinate Seeds Using Just Paper Towels

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Pre-sprouting seeds before planting them in soil is a great way to see which seeds in your stash are still viable. This method is especially helpful for seeds that are more than a year old. Below, I’ll show you how to germinate seeds using a simple paper towel method.

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Back in 2018, I was deep in my cut flower garden era. My dream was a full-on rainbow cut flower garden, so I bought a lot of seeds. I planted, I grew, and eventually that season of life came to an end. Those leftover seeds? They’ve been sitting in a plastic container ever since.

This year, I decided to pull some of those old seeds out to use for pollinating flowers in my vegetable garden. The problem was, I didn’t want to waste seed-starting soil, supplies, or time on seeds that might no longer be good.

This is what I kept my seeds in back in 2018. I won't be doing this moving forward - it will be mason jars or envelopes!

This is how I stored my seeds back in 2018. Now that I’m {cough cough} older and wiser, I definitely won’t be storing my seeds this way again. It worked well, kept everything organized, and was honestly super cute… but I’m retiring my extra tendencies and sticking with mason jars or simple paper envelopes from now on.

These poor seeds were stored for years in all kinds of environments—storage units, cold garages, hot garages, and even outside. Clearly, I didn’t do them any favors.

::sigh::

Because of that, I decided to germinate the seeds on a paper towel first to see which ones were still viable. Turns out… not many were. And that’s exactly why I’m so glad I used this method instead of wasting soil, time, and effort.

First – Set up your space and Prepare

I suggest setting up your space before you even get started.

germinate seeds on a paper towel with this easy tutorial!

Materials you need to germinate seeds on a paper towel:

Here are a few things to think about before you begin:

  • Have a plan for your materials and know where your seeds will go once they’re prepped.
  • Research your seeds ahead of time to find out whether they need light to germinate or prefer darkness.
  • Pre-label your baggies before you start. Once your hands are wet, labeling becomes much harder.
germinate seeds on a paper towel with this easy tutorial!
Peep that nice house shoe down there in this picture. Make sure you’re comfortable. Comfort is always key.

Next – Dampen your paper towels and place your seeds

  • Lay your paper towel on your work space.
  • Dampen it with your spray bottle.
  • Place your seeds on the paper towel. I like to do little columns and rows… but I’ve also done this method with kind of just throwing all of the seeds on there quickly and moving forward.
Put your seeds on the dampened paper towel, fold it up, and place it in your baggie.
  • Fold your paper towel and put it in your labeled bag.
  • As you close the bag, blow a little air into it to make it puff up. I’ve seen some people use a straw to do this… but I just put my mouth right on the bag. Gross? 🤷🏼‍♀️ Whatevs.
  • This gives it more of a greenhouse effect.

Next – Put them away and let them germinate!

Determine which seeds need light and which do not. The ones that do not need light, I suggest putting them somewhere dark and relatively warm. I put mine in a cardboard box and set it on my dryer!

I suggest taping the seeds that need light to a window that gets relatively good sunshine throughout the day. Putting it on a sunny window also makes it easier to see if the seeds have sprouted!

What do seeds look like when they’ve germinated?

This is a picture of one of my paper towels that had germinated seeds. These are actually bell pepper seeds that I saved from a grocery store pepper! I was curious how the germination rate would be in one that had been purchased from the store (vs. the seeds dried out and stored first).

germinate seeds on a paper towel with this easy tutorial!

Surprisingly, out of all the pepper seeds I’ve started this season, the grocery store pepper has been my fastest growing and strongest pepper plant. I’ll have to give an update once the season is over on how the peppers turned out! YAY for experiments!

Finally, Plant your sprouted seeds!

After you germinate seeds on a paper towel, you can gently extract them from the paper towel (with tweezers) and put them in a seed starting soil mix. You can see all of my preferences for seed starting here.

I ended up putting my planted germinated seeds right outside with my other seedlings. They all have thrived! I live in zone 8, so we get relatively warm temperatures quickly. If you live in a colder zone and have a grow light situation, I would suggest putting them there until it’s warm enough to put them outside.

I hope this has been helpful! I found that to germinate seeds on a paper towel is extremely satisfying – and it really eliminates failed attempts at starting the seeds directly in the soil.

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