# How To Soak Seeds Before Planting & The Reasons For Soaking



## The_Blob

> Soaking seeds before planting is an "old time" gardener's trick that many new gardeners are not aware of. When you soak seeds before planting, you can significantly decrease the amount of time it takes for a seed to germinate. Let's look at the reasons for soaking seeds and how to soak seeds.


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Seed Soaking: Tips For Soaking Seeds Before Planting


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## Davarm

A trick that I use to fool cool weather plants into sprouting when it is too warm/hot for them to germinate naturally is to put the seeds in a container of water and sprout them in the refrigerator.

This works well for late planted spinach, after your first planing goes to seed and dies out, a second and even a third can sometimes be planted and spinach can harvested well beyond its regular growing season.

"It's not nice to fool Mother Nature" but it does sometimes have its advantages.


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## Corkster

I germinate my spinach in the fridge between 2 sheets of damp paper towels. Really helps ensure growth. I normally germinate leaf lettuce under a light to ensure it gets going, especially if I am container planting.


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## catsraven

I have always soaked bean seeds. What other seeds should be soaked? Is there any that should not be?


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## zorro

I put some type of seeds in the fridge too. I learned it from a 90 years old farmer neighbor. The guy explained me that some plants are meant to live where there are cold winters and thus their seeds expect a cold season and wait for the cold followed by hotter days to grow. Humidity is definitely important for germination of many veggies seeds. My boyfriend also is able to germinate a lot of seeds I never was able to. His trick? Put the seeds in a ziploc bag with dampened paper or cloth. So my experience says temperature and humidity are the most important factors for germination. But if you don't soak the seeds, you can succeed for most veggies by keeping the earth moist during the first month after sowing - and the earth hot enough.


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