Growing a "Green" Orange Tree

Step 3 Husk the seeds

 Orange seeds have this annoying little husk on them. The husk keeps the seeds from soaking up with water and sprouting inside the fruit. If you peel this off, more of your seeds will germinate. They'll sprout faster too. Most of my seeds sprouted within a week (some varieties take longer, don't get discouraged if yours do) without the husk and I gave up waiting on the ones with the husk. I never found out how long it takes, but it IS a lot longer.

Comments

[Qcks]

The seed coating sounds similar to the seed coatings that protect Cucumber and Tomato seeds.
In the case of both Tomato and cucumber seeds you should ferment the seed coating off of the  seed instead of manually removing it.
I'd be a little surprised if this wasn't a simliar siutation.

[queuetue]

I posted this as a reply on the intro page, but I thought I'd repeat it here:

Removing the outer layers of seeds, in my experience, increases the rate of germination, but produces weaker plants in the long run.  I don't know if this is the case with citrus, I've never grown any.  With many varieties, the process the young plant goes through to generate the pressure to burst the hull strengthens it and helps it survive as it matures.

[xfirexstarzx]

 Theres still a hull on the seed. There's a thick husk that seems to keep the seeds from sprouting in the plant and a thinner hull that goes around the seed. The seed still has to break through that.  If you watch them every day, you'll see a bulge in the hull from the root really soon and it'll travel around the seed then break through.

My plants are growing remarkably well, so I don't know how much difference it makes in plant strength.