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[ninnymary]

I feed Luke barley hay (a.m., alfalfa p.m. )
and it must have been cut when some of the heads were more mature because the manure and corral rakings I deposited in the garden have little green sprouts all over. Like a green crew cut, haha.

Hey! or hay? That would give me weeds to pull!

Mary

 

[Ridgerunner]

My wheat straw sprout also. Not nearly as bad as hay but enough. As long as I don't wait too long it's easy to pull out of the mulch.

 

[thistlebloom]

I'm not worried about the sprouting barley, at least not at this time of the year. It will get frozen to death any day now.

 

[Beekissed]

My quickie style hay bale raised bed. Moved it today and layered in bark, leaves, cardboard, and hay on top of the existing layer of hay on the floor of it. I'm hoping we get enough rain and snow to get that stuff on the way to composting before spring.

Will put a good rope around the whole bed to keep the bales nice and tight as the strings start to rot.

 

[Beekissed]

Well...the reportedly hard to germinate sweet onion seeds have germinated in 4-5 days and it looks like most of them germinated, whereas they say only expect 2/3 of them to germinate. Needless to say, I'm tickled pink to see all those little sprouts!

Now...if I can just KEEP them alive and growing.....

Studied up on how other folks grew them and picked up a few pointers on how the experts do it, so this could contribute to any seeming success on this.

One old fella said, in order to plant them evenly spaced in your seedling tray, mix the seeds with some of the soil thoroughly, then just sprinkle the mix over the top of your potting soil in the tray. That worked like a dream...these sprouts are VERY evenly distributed throughout the tray.

I wondered if I could presoak them and get better germination rate, so I searched about it...found an article that said it might help. Said not to soak longer than 24 hrs, so I did that. It seems to have helped as all the other sites and videos said it could take up to 10 days for germination and to expect poor germination no matter what.

I also invested in some super potting mix...I used it the last few years with really good results, so it's likely this has contributed to the good germination as well.

First step towards spring!!!!

 

[flowerbug]

i thought of this method while daydreaming one evening. no idea if it will actually work or not, but here goes:

take some TP or cheap paper towels and dab some corn syrup with a toothpick in whatever spacing you want for the seeds. then sprinkle seeds on and let them stick to the syrup and dump off any loose ones. let dry.

when planting then you just put it down where you want plants to grow and put however much soil on top that is needed for seed depth.

if anyone actually tries this let me know if it works. i suspect you won't want to store them for long as they may attract ants and the seeds may fall off, but it sounds like a fun project...

the other method i have actually used was to put down a thin line of seeds and then use a rake one way and then shift it a bit and go the other way (then bury seeds at correct depth and water in). much faster than fiddling around as the above method, but then you still have to thin in places.

 

[flowerbug]

My wheat straw sprout also. Not nearly as bad as hay but enough. As long as I don't wait too long it's easy to pull out of the mulch.

being annuals and a nice looking grass if it weren't in the way of anything else i'd let it go and grab the seeds before they dropped. when i grew winter-wheat here and winter-rye both were nice to look at instead of bare dirt. was fun to watch the chipmunks jumping up to pull the heads down to get the seeds. was not so much fun to hear Mom complain about plants sprouting from the seed stashes they made around the place... hahaha!

 

[Ridgerunner]

Well...the reportedly hard to germinate sweet onion seeds have germinated in 4-5 days and it looks like most of them germinated, whereas they say only expect 2/3 of them to germinate. Needless to say, I'm tickled pink to see all those little sprouts!

Now...if I can just KEEP them alive and growing.....

Studied up on how other folks grew them and picked up a few pointers on how the experts do it, so this could contribute to any seeming success on this.

One old fella said, in order to plant them evenly spaced in your seedling tray, mix the seeds with some of the soil thoroughly, then just sprinkle the mix over the top of your potting soil in the tray. That worked like a dream...these sprouts are VERY evenly distributed throughout the tray.

I wondered if I could presoak them and get better germination rate, so I searched about it...found an article that said it might help. Said not to soak longer than 24 hrs, so I did that. It seems to have helped as all the other sites and videos said it could take up to 10 days for germination and to expect poor germination no matter what.

I also invested in some super potting mix...I used it the last few years with really good results, so it's likely this has contributed to the good germination as well.

First step towards spring!!!!

Bee, what temperature is the soil? Pretty warm? I think that has a lot to do with how fast any seed germinates.

 

[Beekissed]

Bee, what temperature is the soil? Pretty warm? I think that has a lot to do with how fast any seed germinates.

Don't know for sure...likely around 50-60* where it's sitting at. I checked today from being gone all weekend and more are up, many ready to unbend into a taller stance, so I removed the plastic over the top to let them get some air and some room.

Now that they have germinated and are up well, I'm moving them from that window into a cooler one while we are having this warmer weather this week. They will still get good sun for most of the day while the sun is out but they won't be getting too hot or too dry by being in the cabin with the wood stove going.

 

[Beekissed]

Had to move the onions back to the warmer window/room nearer to the wood stove...the soil just felt too cool. They responded well to that by springing up even more sprouts and they are all getting unbent.

Will likely give them some very fine mulch of leaves and hay this weekend to preserve moisture and also will water with a dilute urine mix soon.