Seeds Not Sprouting?? THIS is Why!

so you've done the hard part you bought the seeds you figured out when to plant them you got them in the soil and now you've been patiently waiting for some signs of life to appear but nothing's happening in today's video we're going to talk about why this sometimes happens and how you can prevent it [Music] so even with our greenhouse getting a lot closer than what it has been i'm still planting a good number of my seeds in the house just so i can control the temperatures a little bit better because it's been taking some pretty big swings out here really cold some days really warm others so whether you're starting seeds indoors ahead of time or you're planting right in the soil one of the most frustrating things that happens is that the seeds just don't come up so the first thing to consider is old seeds seeds do have a shelf life and it kind of depends on the variety but after you know this three to four year mark you're going to have a steep reduction in how well they germinate these bean seeds are from 2014. i'm not going to throw these away but i will probably plant a lot more seed per row out in the garden to just take in account that some of these are probably no longer good to keep your seeds fresher longer make sure you're storing them in a cool place some people put them in a refrigerator some people even put them in their freezer i don't do that i just keep mine in our basement which is dark and cool you just want to make sure they don't get hot in storage and they're not exposed to a lot of light so a quick little test you can do just to kind of give yourself more information or test seeds you have in storage you can do a germination test you just want to take a couple pieces of wet paper towel and then the seeds that you're wanting to test and a resealable plastic bag like a ziploc and then we're just going to lay out a number of these seeds i like to use 10 because it makes the math easier when we're figuring percentages i'm gonna lay them out on the damp paper towel cover them up and stick them in the bag and seal it so they don't dry out and then we'll just make sure the paper towel stays wet put this in a warm place and then we'll just watch if 10 out of 10 seeds sprout we know we have 100 germination rate if eight of them sprout we have 80 if none of them sprout we know these are probably completely dead probably should toss them so it just kind of gives you a little bit of an idea of what to expect if you are dealing with old seeds so i will keep an eye on this and we'll see how it goes i don't expect a lot of these to sprout because they're really old but we'll see so the second big reason this happens is because the soil you're planting your seeds in is still too cold and that's why even though we built our greenhouse this year i still started my seeds in our basement like i normally do because i needed to be able to control that temperature and some days it's really warm out here like today i'm sweating but other days it's dropped well into the 20s even now that it's april and so that's not going to work for germinating seeds so you want to make sure they're nice and toasty between 70 and 80 degrees fahrenheit is a sweet spot for a lot of seeds some of your heartier varieties like spinach or lettuce they might germinate even around 50 or 60 but as a rule of thumb you're going to have a lot quicker germination when you're keeping things a little bit warmer so i'm experimenting with my soil blocks out here and it still might be a little chilly for them to germinate i mean it's pretty warm in here today some tomatoes out here hopefully coming cabbages and i just use these bags to kind of cover them up to give them a little extra protection trap some of the moisture in so i have a soil thermometer and i was going to show it to you but i think the guys buried it when they were building the beds so i can't show it to you but it basically looks like a meat thermometer you stick it in the soil and it gives you a reading it's super easy and then you'll know if you're in the ballpark for being warm enough another really important factor is the amount of moisture your seeds have during the germination process the biggest issue is that sometimes they will dry out because they definitely need to stay damp once they start to do their thing and they dry out it's all over now that being said it is also possible to drown them you can give them so much water they don't get oxygen and then they don't germinate because of that so we want damp soil but we don't want soil that is extremely wet and we don't want it to ever completely dry out so i just am constantly feeling it i mean i want to feel some moisture in there i just don't want it to be standing water by any means i don't know if you can tell from the video but like these soil blocks are a little bit drier than i'd like them that's why i'm watering them right now anything more dry than this and i'm going to be concerned especially if it's a seed that hasn't come out of the ground yet once the plants get a little bigger like these cabbages they can handle slightly drier soil but during that germination process it's gotta be damp the whole another thing to remember is the variety of plants that you're waiting on there are certain varieties like peppers come to mind that take forever to germinate and there's been many times where i feel like i'm just going to give up on the peppers but then they finally pop through the soil we even have this variety of pepper the which one did i do here i had bullnose peppers here they all came up quicker but the poblano guys they were a lot slower like we have one that just came up even though his friend has already got those leaves going and this one's just barely coming out of the soil like yesterday so was that one so the poblanos were even slower than the bullnose peppers which were way slower than the mess of tomatoes we have over here so label your plants and remember everybody's different so one of the biggest things that will happen that i hear so many complaints and questions about is when the seedlings start to get spindly they look really tall they're kind of weak they're kind of falling over what's causing that and what do you do about it the reason a seedling starts to get spindly is because it doesn't have enough light and it's just stretching to try to reach whatever light it can the way you remedy that is by increasing the intensity of the light so if you're growing in a system like i have here with lights and racks you want to lower those lights down really really close just a couple inches above the seedlings you can see i have my tray of tomatoes up here that haven't started germinating yet but i have that light lowered way down i could even be lower honestly but this has usually been okay for me same down here these guys i could even go a little lower if i wanted they look pretty healthy and strong right now and they'll be going out into the greenhouse soon but if i was concerned i would be dropping this even further another issue that sometimes gardeners will have with seeds that have just started to sprout is they do something called damping off and maybe you've seen this before they start to come out of the soil but then they basically rot and just keel over and it's actually caused by a fungus and it can be extremely aggravating now i haven't dealt with this very often but if it were to become a problem what i would do is make sure i'm using clean potting soil because this fungus can live in garden soil or in old potting soil and also if you're really really struggling with it just make sure you're using clean containers or you're sterilizing your containers before you plant your seeds in the spring so it's four days after i started my little test here and i kind of sorted through these guys but so there are six of them that have started to germinate you can see little tails coming out there these other four may or may not have sprouted if i'd given them more time but i didn't see any action happening as of today so that means my seeds that are basically seven years old still had a 60 germination rate so they're still usable i'll just plant a few more per row and no need to throw them out there's a new growing method i'm going to try this year i just have to put it together first so this is a green stock vertical garden they sent it to me to try out i'm really curious to try it because i know i have a lot of people who watch this channel and listen to my podcast that are living in small spaces and i think this could be a really cool option wait mom there's something left no something left mom i forgot the little brownies that goes in between each tier so whoops okay that's going to be where you put the water in can you reach it yep water goes in there i'm gonna be filling with potting soil and experimenting to see what i can grow according to the instructions you can do squash carrots lettuce broccoli tomatoes greens the whole nine yards i think this could be a good option for people who live in an apartment or only have a balcony or only have you know a little concrete patio in their backyard so i'll keep you posted if you would like my little trick for keeping all of the planting dates and seed starting information straight and not all confused and jungled check out this video for my seed starting calendar hack

Channel: Jill Winger - The Homestead Mentor

Views: 46,752

Rating: 4.9849944 out of 5

Keywords: Seeds Not Sprouting, garden tips and ideas, garden tips and tricks, getting your seeds to sprout, jill winger, the prairie homestead, prairie homestead, homesteading, how to, gardening, seed sprouting, top 5 reasons your seeds may not be sprouting, The Trick to Knowing EXACTLY When to Plant Your Seeds

Id: v4Ta7gO4Mdc

Length: 9min 48sec (588 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 07 2021