Dummies guide to germination!

[Grassman]

I was wondering why seeds can sit in the ground for many years and not germinate.
Then all of a sudden they choose to spring up and spoil your crop.
They have moisture.
They have soil contact.
They have warmth.
They cant know what crop is there as they haven't a brain!
Daylight they don't have but if you drilled corn in the dark and it never saw daylight would that not grow?
Educate me please

 

[Bury the Trash]

You forgot Oxygen.

 

[7610 super q]

That's an interesting point. Be nice if you were to have a fallow one year, and every single weed in the seed bank grew, and got it over and done with.
Nice green manure ( cover crop ), and no herbicides needed for the next decade.....

 

[robs1]

Cut some oats yesterday and about five osr plants per acre, all in flower, not had rape in that field since 2011, so why did it chose this year to grow

 

[Grassman]

You forgot Oxygen.

You recon its a bit of fresh oxygen that triggers it?

 

[Bury the Trash]

You recon its a bit of fresh oxygen that triggers it?

yeah, well ill be so bold as to say they need oxygen , moisture, the right temp threshold the amount light bit is a bit more subtle
just beyond germination daylight is needed for sure for photosynthesis....

google is ones friend....

 

[Dave W]

I was wondering why seeds can sit in the ground for many years and not germinate.
Then all of a sudden they choose to spring up and spoil your crop.
They have moisture.
They have soil contact.
They have warmth.
They cant know what crop is there as they haven't a brain!
Daylight they don't have but if you drilled corn in the dark and it never saw daylight would that not grow?
Educate me please

You get some excitement on your side of the valley. Wondering how weeds grow.
You must've had that thought while the gps was working

 

[Old Boar]

Scientists in Israel have confirmed that an ancient date palm seed retrieved from the rubble of Masada and successfully germinated is about 2,000 years old.
So you may have a while to go before you are weed free.....

 

[Boysground]

I think there was a thread in the old BFF day’s suggesting seeds needed to see light to germinate, the discussion was about a chap who only ploughed in the dark to stop germination.

That’s not for me my ploughing is bad enough when I can see where I’m going

Bg

 

[Wuffler]

Scientists in Israel have confirmed that an ancient date palm seed retrieved from the rubble of Masada and successfully germinated is about 2,000 years old.
So you may have a while to go before you are weed free.....

Wild oats have germinated that were found from the tombs of various Kings/Queens in Egypt unearthed 4,000 years or so apparently...that doesn't bode well for my current wild oat problem/explosion!

 

[PSQ]

Wild oats have germinated that were found from the tombs of various Kings/Queens in Egypt unearthed 4,000 years or so apparently...that doesn't bode well for my current wild oat problem/explosion!

It just goes to show that for all his gold and wealth, even Pharaoh couldn’t afford to use Axial and Adigor.

 

[Robt]

A friend of mine and new thinking farmer in Essex. He believes very strongly in the fact seeds need sunshine to trigger them. He will slowly fill the drill and leave cover off so the seeds see sunshine. He is convinced. I think he is right.

 

[Frodo]

Wild oats have germinated that were found from the tombs of various Kings/Queens in Egypt unearthed 4,000 years or so apparently...that doesn't bode well for my current wild oat problem/explosion!

Inside a tomb, where it is, dark, bone dry, with no Temp variation, is possibly ideal conditions for preserving germination, completely different to the conditions in my malting barley field.

 

[Grassman]

I vaguely remember some experimental job back in the 1980's about what is the trigger.
I can't remember the results. Anyone remember it?

 

[Bogweevil]

I was wondering why seeds can sit in the ground for many years and not germinate.
Then all of a sudden they choose to spring up and spoil your crop.
They have moisture.
They have soil contact.
They have warmth.
They cant know what crop is there as they haven't a brain!
Daylight they don't have but if you drilled corn in the dark and it never saw daylight would that not grow?
Educate me please

It is called dormancy and seeds go through cycles of being able and unable to germinate moving in and out of dormancy, damn nuisance as otherwise we could apply treatments to subject seeds to light, fluctuating temperatures, elevated oxygen and nitrates and get them to germinate to have really effective stale seedbeds. And yes seeds can measure time actually, clever sods. Bloke called Roberts, deceased now top man but never met him, investigated this in the 1960s at Warwick:

Evidence that buried seeds of many
species are not constantly ready to germinate
came from studies on germination
periodicity. In these studies, seeds
were planted in soil outdoors, and at
regular intervals the soil was stirred
(plowed). Most species exhibited a germination
peak during one season, but
some germinated during two seasons; a
few had no definite germination season
(HAkansson 1983, Roberts 1964). Some
species exhibited germination peaks during
a particular season(s) for several
years.

from an open access review: https://www.researchgate.net/public...rmancy_Cycle_in_Buried_Weed_Seeds_A_Continuum

 

[Bald Rick]

Neil from the young ones has the answer ....

 

[Bald Rick]

I think there was a thread in the old BFF day’s suggesting seeds needed to see light to germinate, the discussion was about a chap who only ploughed in the dark to stop germination.

That’s not for me my ploughing is bad enough when I can see where I’m going

Bg

It is cultivation rather than ploughing... the Co-Op tried it using night vision goggles

 

[Bogweevil]

Burying weed seeds makes them dormant and also highly sensitive to even tiny amounts of light so that even moonlight can trigger germination so nocturnal cultivation is less effective than you might think. All the same some experiments claim an 80% reduction in fat hen germination if tilllage done by night compared with daytime soil movement.

 

[toquark]

I sprayed off 15ac of very old permanent pasture last summer which sat longer than I’d have liked before it was ploughed and reseeded. It hadn’t been touched since at least the war. Aside from the usual suspects, there was quite a decent amount of wheat which appeared. So by my guesstimates those seeds were probably spilt grain from at least 75 years ago germinating as soon as they got the chance.

 

[GeorgeK]

Some seeds are supposed to emit chemical signals when they germinate that stop nearby seeds of the same type germinating to stop them competing with each other. So a stale seed bed will only ever get a small proportion of seeds to germinate.
On our clay based soil, seeds get trapped and protected inside clods of soil and will only germinate when the clod is brought up and the seed exposed