When do dormant seeds germinate

Yet, there remains one activity that can still be done to help repair or thicken the lawn for next year. That task is known as dormant seeding. The idea is that the seed will remain "dormant" due to the cold soil conditions, but begin to germinate as soon as the soils start to warm in the spring. This avoids having to prepare the soil when it is still wet and cold in the spring and can result in a head start of several weeks in getting the lawn established.

This method generally works best when the newly seeded areas are covered with several inches of snow soon after seeding that remains in place over the entire winter period. Dormant seeding works best when you want to reseed bare soil areas or help thicken up thin lawns.

It is not as effective where lawns are thick and dense because good seed-to-soil contact is necessary for the grass seeds to germinate and grow next spring.

The time to dormant seed is important. Put down your seed while the ground is not frozen, but is still cold enough so germination of the grass seed will not occur until next spring. Usually this is sometime from late October to mid-November depending on your location within the state.

Other than the time of year for dormant seeding, the actual process of preparing the area to be seeded is virtually identical to establishing grass from seed at other times of the year. When choosing the seed to use, be sure to select seed mixes that are well adapted to both your site conditions and the amount of maintenance you expect to provide during the growing season. Search Field. Germination: Seed Dormancy.

International Specialty Supply. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The woad seemed to germinate reasonably. Then she would dampen them on a moist paper towel. That part would go on for a week or more as the towel kept drying out! Thank you for your excellently informative and beautifully designed pages, I am doing a seed propagation unit for my Horticulture diploma and accidentally found your treasure of a site. Folk Fibers Blog Many plants have dormant seeds as a biological mechanism to ensure that seeds will germinate at the right time and under conditions that are favorable for the growth and survival of the next generation.

In nature, Scarification occurs naturally when a bird swallows a seed that then passes through the digestive system. Acids eat through the tough seedcoat. When the bird eliminates the seed it's ready to germinate! Always check to see if the seed you are germinating requires pretreatments. Virtually all tree seeds are dormant: Some are described as deeply dormant - they are completely unable to germinate until pretreated.

Some are described as shallowly dormant - they only germinate slowly and over a narrow range of conditions until pretreated. Some are described as hard-seeded - they do not germinate until their impermeable seed coat has been pretreated.

Deep dormancy Some seeds exhibit 'deep dormancy' - the embryo tissues absorb water, begin to metabolise and respire, but remain outwardly inactive at all temperatures. See graph to observe: Untreated 'deeply dormant' seeds do not germinate at any temperature. There is an absolute requirement for relatively lengthy pretreatment to bring about any germination at all. Germination capacity tends to be better at lower temperatures.