We put our garden in late. I mean really late. The corn was planted on July 4th and the rest of the garden went in on the 5th. So I thought I’d test out a seed starting method recommended by my grandma and the folks down at the local co-op where I picked up a few of my seeds. In order to get your seeds to sprout sooner, you soak them overnight before planting. So I did. I soaked bean and corn and beet seeds. One of the tricks of this method is to get the correct number of seeds soaking that you want to plant. Not too many, not too few. I didn’t do very well at this. Not enough corn, too many beans. I just kept planting the beets until they were all planted.
Then I thought I’d try an experiment and plant the soaked seeds alongside some dry seeds and see how much quicker the soaked seeds grew.
Well, the weather had some fun surprises that hindered my controlled experiment. A day after we planted, it started raining. And raining. And raining. These weren’t just sprinkling storms, they were flooding type storms, day after day after day. This is highly unusual for July in Utah, and especially right near the desert where we live. So, needless to say, within a couple days of being planted, ALL the seeds were thoroughly soaked and by the time I got out to check on them a week after planting they had all sprouted. And the dry seeds didn’t look any different than the pre-soaked ones.
But there was SO MUCH rain, it really wasn’t a fair experiment. We’ll have to try this experiment again with average watering and see if the pre-soaking makes much difference. I’ve since had another “hurry up and grow” method demonstrated to me and I’ll be showing that one here in the next week or so.
In the meantime, the late-start garden is growing fine except the really old (2001) yellow squash seeds that haven’t sprouted and I don’t think will sprout at this point, but it was worth a try.
Oh, and the weeds are loving all the rain as well. The baby chinese elm trees are especially plentiful this summer. Ahhh, weeds. One of the joys of gardening.
Keep preparing! Angela
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We soaked our pole beans before planting this year. We have never tried that before and it seems to have worked great. We were quite surprised at how quickly they came up. Sorry about your weather. Too much or too little rain can sure mess up a planting season.
That was an interesting experiment. I cannot wait until the next one. You give me hope for all the late things I planted. I live much further south from you, so maybe I will have a bit of produce.
My garden is about finished and I’m getting ready to prep the beds for fall planting. We may as well be in different hemispheres. :)
always worth a try!!