Pre-Germinate Grass Seed Without The Mess
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 14 ต.ค. 2024
- This was the simple way I pre-germinated buffalograss seed this Spring to grow a new lawn space easily, quickly, and consistently even in a seedbed that was a little too cold for a warm season grass.
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I have pre-germinated cool season grass seed in buckets using the cheesecloth steeping method and found it to be very messy and wasteful since so much of the seed rooted into the cloth.
The method that I featured in this video seemed much cleaner and I wasted virtually none of the seed.
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I do landscaping work and i offer this. I submerge TTF and Kentucky blue grass mix in water for 12 hours change water and submerge for a other 12 hours. then after that its out of the bucket for 6 - 9 days of just watering the bag with the hose out side. I make sure to flip the bag and mix the seed around its never failed on me and had great results.
I usually do 2 batches. A small one, and a big batch 2 days later.
When I see the first batch sprouting, I KNOW the big batch is 2 days away, instead of just guessing. So I can throw down the big batch just before germination.
I have much worse results if I spread it after germination, as the damage I do to it is much greater, so I prefer doing it before.
Spectacular piece of advice! Thanks a ton for sharing this tip!
Thats smart 😂🤙
This is the BEST pre-germinating video on TH-cam!!! No one else talks about the need of oxygen!!!!
And your warm season seeds look soo different than cool season seeds!!!
Ohh man, what a cool comment. Thanks for that. It's that one thing that gets glazed over by most people for sure. As for the seed, of all the grasses I've seeded Buffalo is the weirdest looking one of them all. I did however just plant corn next to my front yard. Most people don't realize its a grass. The seed is just a corn kernel, looks like a dried up kernel that dropped on the floor for a week. Other than those two "grasses" every other grass seed I've worked with looks pretty normal. I'm hoping to do some Kikuyu seed videos sometime eventually too. That grass is common in southern California and it seeds similarly to corn and buffalo. It's got silvers that stick up above the foliage which self-pollinate the female part of the plant that sits low in the canopy, so I guess that one is also pretty weird to compared to Plain Jane Perennial Rye or Fescue. LOL
great video, so much more accurate than every other pre-germinate grass video. thank you.
You got me thinking about the oxygen thing. I'm going to put my bubbler that I use to keep my minnows alive for fishing in my bucket while soaking my seed. Great video. You did a lot of work producing it and it shows. Liked and subbed.
This is very much like the method for sprouting seeds to eat which is often done on the kitchen counter in a smaller vessel. One difference is that I rinse the seeds twice a day and need to be aware of the heat that is generated by the seeds. They can get too warm without a rinse. Thanks for the info!
Thanks for clarifying that seed needs oxygen.
People on TH-cam kept saying to keep seed submerged, but every time I tried it failed. Once I stopped submerging seed it worked
the faster germinating stuff like rye can germinate much better in the submerged water with a couple water changes but the longer to germinate stuff (especially when we're talking about expensive seed) its so important to let that seed breathe between water changes. In this pre-germ experiment for this video I let me seed sit in the bowl after draining water on average for 12 hours each day, one of the days was closer to 15 hours. It stays wet the whole time just fine in the house/garage. Makes a big difference. I also wish I had said in the video wrapping all that seed in cheese cloth or burlap for the steeping is so incredibly messy when it comes time to spread the seed and you waste so much of it because it sticks to the cloth or even roots into it. That metal mesh colander is the way to go for smaller amounts of seed by a landslide, zero waste and nearly no mess.
@TurfMechanic I use an old pillow case to contain the seed and an old bed sheet to spread it on to dry it a bit before it goes in a spreader
I could see that working, kind of like my tiny paper towel I used in the video for illustration
@TurfMechanic
I used paint strainer technique with Fine Fescue. Had very average result.
I only basically dunked the seed in hot water for few minutes each day . I wonder if it being crammed into the strainer most of seed doesn't get oxygen.
Also when you say warm water . Are you using as hot as.possibke from tap? Or just warm . At a temp where you could run hand under tap? Interesting I didn't find dealing with paint strainer to painful. Let seed dry for few hours . Then seed in strainer brushes out. Then used some Humiate as a carrier.
Thanks for video.
Good job! I never know a homeowner could mess with the city side walk curb like that.😂
LOL, I didn't ask. I figure they don't mow it so if I have to I had better be able to prepare it to my liking. :D
I’m excited and hopefull after watching this. I have a troubled area at our new house.
Always like your take on things, I've seen several videos on pre germinating and tried it once myself but nice additions for me here as well. What I found to be challenging was the clumping of the seed, I saw you used a nice dry sand, I had a soil that was not as dry. You're also kind of pushed when the germinating happens (if you're waiting for it), you need to be ready! Also as a cold season grass-man that seed looks very strange!
Thanks Arietje! Yeah, the carrier, in this case I used a mix of super dry sand and powdery soybean meal, needs to be as dry as possible to suck surface moisture off the wet seed to keep it from clumping. Thats why Milorganite has frequently been used for this in so many videos but anything that is super dry would likely work. For bigger more expansive areas this stuff can easily go through a lawn spreader but of course I just used my hands. Because the carrier is dry you do have to get right on the watering once it's on the ground but that's not usually the hard part. As for the seed, yeah, Buffalograss seed looks like it's from another planet! I've worked with Zoysia, Centipede, Bermuda seeds and they look pretty normal, buffalograss seed is in a class of its own. LOL
Have to attest to the importance of this. Made the mistake of using what I thought was dry peat moss as a carrier in a 4:1 ratio of carrier:seed and there was too much clumping. Figured I should try Milorganite the next time.
@@SteveinJersey1234this does not give me much confidence 😖😖😖 I’ve been pre-germinating KBG for 4 days now and have been planing on using peat moss as my carrier, because apparently we don’t get milongranite here… uhhggg. Maybe if I add a bag of sand to that 4:1 ratio.
Well if you want to use peat moss, the thing I would strongly suggest doing is adding seed gradually to the peat and not the other way around. I mistakenly did the opposite and found it was hard to mix that way. I believe that adding the seed to the moss should allow for much greater control, including spreading the seed/peat mix in stages if you prefer - i.e. mix a portion of your seed in with the moss to the desired amount, spread on lawn, repeat. But caveat: I am brand new to pregerminating and this is just experimentation.
I wish I did this method last year with my blue grass... Being able to keep an eye on it the whole time pre-germinating would have put me weeks further ahead. I did the 4-5 day paint/ bucket water change out.... Didn't seem like it saved me any time...Well done!
i think that's the best way i have seen so far. Thanks I will try this
Going to try this method
Hope it works for me
Thanks for the lovely explanation 😊
That looks like a great method to pre-germinate your grass seed, but how would you do like 100lbs of grass seed if you were seeding a large area?
Excellent! Thank you very much for sharing your precious knowlege with us.😍
Yeah........
Brian I can only imagine your wife's face w all this "experimentation" in the kitchen.😂😂
Kudos for your dedication!!!
I tried pregerminating Fescue last year and it didn't go well.
NEVER AGAIN!!!🔥🔥
I'd rather just schedule 7-14 days at home (ish) to keep watering the lawn.
Less Stress.
Great video as always.
New property coming along nicely
lol, she does a great job not rolling her eyes too much; it helps that my antics bring home a regular paycheck though; the experiments are easier to forgive. LOL As for the pre-germinating, I felt like I needed to do this video because people ask me my opinions about it from time to time but I agree, I don't think it's worth it for the regular lawn owner. Only in a few select situations does it make sense. In a gold course setting and probably a pro sports field setting those guys are always in the cycle of pregerminating seed to fix the turf as close to overnight as possible. It makes sense but for most people at home I am all for the quick priming method or just seeding like normal and watering. So much simpler and not a lot slower when done at the right time of year. Thanks for the compliments on the property. Slowly but surely right?
If you pregerminate for a reno or overseed, can you use mesotrione? Does it matter if it starts to shoot out roots already?
Not good news for me 😢 I germinate my TTTF regular way . Soaking it for almost a week and changing water every 20 h or so…nobody in whole YT mentions need of oxygenate seeds 🧐. Now it’s day 4 since seeding and still nothing . Thank you for video , very helpful I just should watch it two weeks before 😢
Thank you for sharing this video. I tried pre-germinating KBG but the worst part was clumping of seeds. I saw you used sand, what else do you recommend to mix with the seed so it spreads nicely using a Scott’s drop spreader?
Can i use sand as a carrier?
I tried the method of submerging the seeds for several days and there has been no germination (now day 7) while the normal way I got germination in 8 days. Also my tap water was pretty cold probably. So this batch is probably a bust. Just started a new batch with the learnings from this video.
I've got an idea that follows up with a question. If you were going to do the bucket route to soak seeds, you mentioned oxygen was important. We have a few aquariums in our home so we have a spare air pump/stone around. Could you drop a air stone in there to create surface agitation and help with oxygen. Probably a stupid question
It's not a dumb question at all, imo it would work great if the stone added enough oxygen to the bucket. I've seen gardeners do things similar to this to make liquid fert full of oxygen loving microbes that would otherwise not thrive in stagnant water. You'd probably still need to do at least a water change every day or two though, not sure about this one but Ive read seed soaking in water can release toxins that should be flushed away. That's something I'd have to research more though. Also, related to this video, the seed that I took all the way to root development before spreading it on the ground is lagging WAY behind the seed that I spread on day 6. I personally would almost never recommend the average lawn owner to wait until roots emerge to spread. It can work for divot repair on golf tee boxes and fairways when mixed densely with sand, but for the lawn tons of seed goes to waste. I'll post some pics soon (maybe a video) showing the huge difference I'm seeing in my parkway strip.
@TurfMechanic Thank you for very detailed reply! I've been digging around methods for seed pre germinating seed. The reason behind is I did a full lawn renovation of the front yard a couple years ago with super seed stores SS6000 fine fescue and kbg blend. Just under 2k sq yard. We watered that 3 times a day for a good week or 2, the fine fescue started poping up after about 5 days. This year I'm planning on doing the back yard which is about 3 times the size as the front ( need to measure still to be exact) got super seed stores tall fescue blend of 3 cultivars. Really trying to avoid the intense watering for this size of yard..
From your comment it's looks like there might be a small window for the perfect time to get this on the lawn. I'll check in and see how yours turns out :) thanks again man🫡
Love it. Great guide!
awesome to hear, glad you caught the video.
So do you use sand or peat moss? And when you were mixing it by and, you couldn't see a single seed. And what is the ratio of peat moss to seed?
Another great video, Brian! FYI, I had excellent results about a month ago (mid-April) here in New Jersey spot-seeding with tall fescue following a previous video of yours on pre-germinating with warm water. The tall fescue came in strong in probably half the time it would have normally taken.
I now have another bare spot (about two square feet) that's cropped up after I got a little overzealous in applying herbicide to kill off some clover. My question: is it now too late to seed the spot with more tall fescue given the much warmer temperatures here in late May? Should I wait until the fall, or is it worth reseeding now using the pre-seeding technique in this video?
glad to hear the last video helped a lot. As for spot seeding a space that size I'd say definitely. Small repairs like that are low risk, if they take then that's great but if they don't then you didn't waste much seed time or effort. Here in late may germination will be even faster than when you did it in April so do a warm water prime, mix it afterwards with a bit of peat moss or coconut coir and drop it on the bare spot. It should be growing in probably a day less than it did 6 weeks ago with your soil temps having come up since then.
@@TurfMechanic Great to hear! Will do and FWIW will post results as a comment here.
can't wait to hear how it goes!
You could fill the sink up with warm water too for a heat sink and let the bowl sit in there. Water holds heat like stone. That might help reach that 5day mark.
How long do I pre germinate Kentucky blue grass you think? 14 days?
What about using an air stone in your mixing bowl so you dont have to change the water, would that work?
I'm sure that would work. We use one in our fish tank and I've seen other people use it successfully for plants. I just haven't tried it myself.
Yay first! 🎉 we have what looks like fungus spots in just our front lawn. Like circles of little orange patches of dead grass? Is that a fungus?
you win! LOL - as for the question it most likely is a disease. Hard for me to diagnose without seeing it though. I have a couple vids on the channel about rust fungus and powdery mildew but I'm not strong on my fungus ID and it's something that I try to prevent as much as possible through turf health because I'm not a fan of using fungicides in the lawn. If your problem is bad enough though then try to identify the disease and then hit it with curative rates of your selected disease product. It could be rust fungus due to color but based on your description I'd bet it's something else. Head over to Google images and search for "yellow spots on lawn fungus" and you'll see a ton of different diseases and patterns. Find the one that looks closest to your situation and try to diagnose as best you can because many of the cures for different diseases are different from one another.
@@TurfMechanic I think it may be from the weed and feed killing off the Bermuda that we have patches of in my yard. Because I reseeded the whole front yard with Rye and Fescuel a couple times last year. So I'm really wondering if the weed and feed killed it? I told hubby I am being super cheap till my credi card is paid off so the best I am going to try is dethatching to thin it out and rural king has milo on sale near me for 12 bucks right now lol. I will let you know if it helps at all!!!
Sprinkler heads on both sides of the boulevard? Leveled up!!!
That's right baby, this guy means business 😁
hose or sprinklers are something you wont need here in Northern Ireland 300+ Days of Rain every years
@frankw9836 lol, I can't imagine such a life lol 😆 I havent seen a drop of rain in so long. Morning dew yes, but actual rain, that's very rare here outside of the winter months.
@@TurfMechanic it's miserable, believe me
@@frankw9836 🫨
How do you keep your patch weed free until buffalograss fills in? Just manual pulling?
I did a couple weed kill applications last winter while the buffalograss was mostly dormant. Through the spring and summer though I mostly just hand weeded once a month or so after an irrigation session. Next Spring I'll finally be able to apply PE on the strip so there should be nearly zero weed pressure in the buffalo starting early 2025. Even still, this year managing weeds hasn't been difficult. The most annoying thing has been the relentless nutsedge in the space.
What seed brand do you use? I was recently looking at GCI but new to this and looking for some guidance. I don’t need TOP of the line stuff but want to use reliable product. Thank you
what kind of seed are you looking for? In this video I used buffalograss seed, sources for that are far different than sources for other types of seed. Also, fwiw, I don't have any relationships with any seed companies, just my own thoughts and experiences
@@TurfMechanic I live in zone 8a, Texas so I need a heat tolerant grass. I’m thinking Bermuda, maybe st Augustine
depending on the amount of rain you get annually in your area I'd go for Bermuda or St Aug for the higher rain fall areas or Bermuda or Buffalo for the lower rain fall areas. For st aug you have to go with plugs or sod usually but for bermuda it will be either of those or seed...however you are approaching the end of your seeding season for either of those grasses. I seeded Buffalo around sept 20 last year and it thinned out a lot by february. Do you feel like you are in the rainy area of TX 8a or the dry zone of TX 8a? That's your best bet to narrow down. Also, Bermuda will have underground rhizomes which are hard to control but neither Buffalo or St Aug have them. That could help you narrow the grass type a lot. At that point you can start dialing in the desired variety.
@@TurfMechanic and what about a reliable brand to to get either of those seeds from?
Agreed, this is thee BEST...
If you sing “buffalo grass will you come up tonight “ will it grow faster?😊
If I have my seeds in a paint strainer, currently underwater, how would I introduce oxygen to them? Do I just pulled the bag out and set it on top of a lid and move around a little bit to get it circulated?
I'd pull it out and let it drain very well and do pretty much what you said a few times for half a day. Just by letting the water drain out will help introduce oxygen into the void spaces. Jostling it around will help. After a good soak that seed can't take in any new moisture so keeping out of the water for half a day will only help the seed crack more uniformly. Good luck!
With regards to specific seeds, is it possible to do it with the blue coated seed? Im from the Uk and have one called Grosure Smart Lawn Seed, which has a coating that absorbs more water. I’ve heard you can’t do it with that type of
I would think that you can, but I've never tried this with coated seed. I don't see why the coating would hinder things any though. If anyone reading this has any contrary opinions please speak up for the benefit of all of us.
@@TurfMechanic I would agree, the coating only seems to improve the water absorption of the seed, but I don't know how truthful or how effective the science behind it is
Sounds like it just provides a Wet blanket for the seed. As such depending on how tough the jacket is you can try different methods to pre germinate.
Soaking like described in the video.
OR misting regularly.
If dumping after soaking and then dumping again removed the coating then try putting it in the strainer first and instead of dumping you just lift it up out of the container that's filled with water that the strainer fully fits inside.
Do you have problems with birds eating your seed after you plant?
not usually but when I feel like it's an issue (or when I think it may be an issue), I prime my seed first to make sure it sprouts faster (here's a video I made on this topic th-cam.com/video/hPbnFDzwDWY/w-d-xo.html), and then I consider covering the seed with garden crop cover. It's the same stuff you use in a garden to protect crops from frost in the Spring and Fall. It's cheap and can be reused over and over. I've bought a variety of covers like this from a variety of brands; for seed protection from birds the cheapest stuff works just fine. The higher-priced stuff usually gives you better frost protection so just keep that in mind if and when you go to buy the stuff. This is the last crop cover I bought (2021 according to my amazon order history), I just keep it folded up in the garage for the occasional use: www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00M5YPDCE/?tag=turfmechanicyt-20
how long to germinate a Bermuda grass seed
Mr. Turf Mechanic, would this process work with Dichondra seeds ?
This technique should work with any kind of seed. It's a common method used in the garden on many different plants. I don't see why it wouldn't work with dichondra as well.
@@TurfMechanic Thank you, I'm prepping 600sqf. for Dichondra.
have fun with it! I'm sure it'll go well, spaces that size are super manageable using noting but your hands.
This guy is cooking his grass seed
Error! H2o.....there is oxygen in water, no!
Also, when you top dress, are you not stopping oxygen contact$
Without the mess? That looks like it was a hot mess
lol, it gets way messier when you start tea-bagging grass seed wrapped in cheesecloth and doing 2-3 times per day water changes. This is a single water change daily and the fine mesh colander means no wasted seed or messy cloth to pull rooted grass seed out of. It's messy for sure, but much less messy. :D
🤔 sounds bullet proof😅
lol, nothing's bullet proof 😂