Soaking seeds before planting? |
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By:
Hunt98
Date:15-Sep-24
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For lawn seed I’ve read that you can soak grass seed in water for like a week or so with the idea of getting a faster germination once you spreader the seed onto the lawn.
Will this work for clover, brassicas or any other food plot seed?
By:
SD
Date:15-Sep-24
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I've done it before. It's risky if you don't have plenty of rain in the forecast (lawns are typically irrigated while plots are not). Get them to germinate then sit in dry soil is not a good recipe. Conversely, if rain is forecasted why soak?
If you do give it a try you'll have to dry them before planting. Wet seed doesn't go through spreaders or drills well.
By:
BullBuster
Date:15-Sep-24
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It’s called scarification. I usually do it with my hairy vetch seed. https://morningchores.com/seed-scarification/
By:
SD
Date:15-Sep-24
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Soaking seeds in water is not scarification.
By:
Buckdeer
Date:17-Sep-24
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scarification is treating seeds like when animals and birds eat seeds or you can use some acid treatments to break down the outside.Stratification is processing seeds such as what happens over winter months, freezing and thawing
By:
drycreek
Date:17-Sep-24
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It’s not necessary. I have planted in dust and I’ve planted in mud, or damn near mud. The only failure I’ve ever had was planting in ground wet enough to germinate seeds, then getting no rain, or….the one time army worms hit me.
Plant before a wet front and you’ll be good….if you get some more rain in a timely fashion. It’s always a crap shoot, but I win way more than I lose.
By:
DonVathome
Date:21-Sep-24
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A week seems very long. I would guess a day at the most and if there is no rain in the forecast it would speed up germination. Germination will not start until seed has adsorbed enough water to germinate.
By:
cnelk
Date:21-Sep-24
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Way back when we farmed, we would count out 100 seeds of each crop we were going to plant - oats, wheat and barley.
We would lay paper towels on a tray and place the seeds on the tray equally spaced. Then cover the seeds with more paper towels and then wet everything down.
In about a week or 10 days we would then see the germination rate and then adjust the planter accordingly - i.e. if the germination rate was 93%, we would up the seed rate by 7%.