Hey everyone, welcome to another very exciting episode right here on the Am I Gardener channel. I am so glad to be back and you might be asking yourself, were you ever gone? Yes, I was. I was missing Friday. If you all follow this channel pretty regularly, you'll find that I had no Friday episode.
That's because I was really sick. I was outside shoveling snow for several hours, came in, said, I kind of have a little sore throat, woke up the next morning feeling like absolute death. And so I missed Friday, Saturday I was in bed, Sunday I was in bed, and today I'm feeling a lot better.
Still a little nasally, but it's just kind of one of those things, you know, you gotta get over it. But I'm feeling 100% at least, and that's all that matters. So I'm ready to grow big or go home, hopefully you all are as well.
Let's get into today's video. So in today's video we're going to be talking about stratification. What is it? Why it matters?
how to do it and seeds that need it versus seeds that don't. So we've got a lot of stuff to talk about and so I figured I'd jump right into it and talk about first what is cold stratification. Stratification is the process of putting a seed through a dormancy period and this is almost always a cold dormancy period. Stratification happens in colder climates through winter. It happens very naturally.
However, ... In warmer climates like California or down south or places that just don't get below freezing for very long, have a very difficult time with stratification. Here in Michigan, we don't have too hard of a problem with that.
And so things stratify naturally when you leave them outdoors. But if you harvest your seed and bring it inside, you'll have to stratify it because it won't sprout. Stratification is very important with things like perennials.
So I want to get into plants that require it, plants that will... help the germination process along, and then plants that really don't need it are all of the rest. Perennials need cold stratification.
Things like strawberries, as I mentioned, blueberries, all of your perennial fruits and vegetables, they need that type of stratification because they're perennial. So the reason why perennials need stratification is because they're used to growing through cold winter and then regrowing. Thank you.
And so if the seed actually were to sprout without any cold weather, what would happen is the plant would not have a good enough established root system to survive through that cold winter. So it's actually built into the biological, you know, to the genetic code of the plant to not germinate until it's gone through cold weather so that it knows that when the warm weather returns, it will have a full growing season. Pretty cool, huh?
Another one. that a lot of people miss but don't always remember is a requirement, is things like alliums, onions, garlic, chives, shallots, doesn't really matter. Anything in the allium family is a perennial bulb. And in order for the bulb to divide itself and to multiply, onions will form seeds, obviously, but garlic will divide into cloves.
Shallots will divide into... More shallots, I guess, ahead of shallots. Chives will multiply out via bulbs.
So you have alliums that need to be cold stratified. If they're not cold stratified, they'll simply just flower. So now I want to talk about some crops that I have on hand here that don't require cold stratification to germinate, but your success rates will be much higher. So I have two right here, mint and lavender.
But I also have other herbs as well, things like rosemary. Rosemary is also in the lavender family. A lot of your Mediterranean herbs, things like tarragon, parsley, thyme, oregano, they don't really have to be cold stratified, but your germination rates will be much higher. Things that typically take about a week and a half to three weeks to germinate will do better if they're cold stratified and they'll germinate much faster. faster for you as well as have a higher germination rate.
The reason why the germination rate drops when they are in just a dry, unstratified form is because the seed itself takes so long to germinate that the moisture content in the soil often leads to rot before the seed germinates. That's why if you can give it a little bit of a kind of a jump start, kind of say, hey, okay, it's time to germinate, time to get ready for spring, it will help... speed up that process and it will actually kind of expedite the sprouting process so that rot and mold and mildew don't take advantage of those seeds with longer germination times. And that's why you'll see a difference about three to four times the germination rate when you're comparing non-stratified versus stratified seed. Now let's go upstairs and talk about how you can properly stratify your seed.
I think it's really important to do and I definitely see not enough people doing it correctly. because there is certainly a correct way to do it and an incorrect way to do it. Okay, so we are in the kitchen now, ready to cold stratify our seed, and there's definitely a correct way and an incorrect way to do this. So oftentimes I see people saying, oh, just take your seed, throw it in the fridge. The problem with that is that this does not simulate nature whatsoever.
Cold stratifying seed can only be done with moisture. When seeds go through a dormant period, There's things like precipitation, snow, it's usually the wet season, fall and spring. So you have cold rains and snow and freezing conditions, and that helps to soak the seed slowly to get the seed ready to germinate. So you can't just take a dry seed and throw it in the fridge because it will not germinate properly. There's no moisture at all in these packets.
It's good for longevity and viability of seed. But once it comes time to getting ready to sprout, you need some moisture. So the thing we're going to need is just a plastic Ziploc bag and one sheet of just paper towel here.
What we're going to do is we're going to fold it over. You want to double ply it here, or I guess double layer it. It's probably already two ply, but you want two layers here.
Not only will that fit better in the bag, but it will hold on to just a little bit more moisture because the key here to proper stratification is to have adequate moisture. The one thing you don't want is for the conditions to be too dry. But also, you don't want them to be too wet.
Okay, so I'm just going to be taking, I'm just spooning in some water here because I don't want to go past that point. of too wet because I want to show you what too wet is, but I don't want to ruin my seeds because I'm also getting these ready for us to germinate. So I don't want to ruin my chances here. So when your Ziploc bag here has just a few corners that are dry, you'll see this corner here is dry. And this corner here is still a little dry.
That is perfect. That is the ideal moisture. The rest of the bag is wet, as you can see.
It's kind of spongy if I poke it there. And you'll notice that the moisture is slowly wicking upwards. What you want to do is you want to stop.
If you saturate this entire paper towel, you can't tell if it's too wet or too dry. But if you can tell, The moisture is waking up due to capillary action and it's it's it is actually almost completely soaked up now So it's taking all of this too moist paper towel And it's creating equilibrium across the paper towel. This is going to give you really even moisture because too moist and your seeds will rot and mold as well.
Too dry and there's not enough moisture to adequately get the seed ready to sprout. So because you have to remember the seeds are going to absorb some moisture. We're just going to sprinkle our seeds in.
And then what we're going to do is we're going to simply press them in. very important to create good contact. I see so many times people missing this step.
It's very important to press your seed into the growing medium, into the paper towel. They will begin to germinate on this paper towel, but then you'll take it off. You'll cut the perimeter, peel it off, and you'll take tweezers and pull out the seeds that are germinating.
It's really the best way to do it. If you don't, you can take them out after they've been cold stratified. and you can cut them out, put them into paper towel before they start germinating, but I like to let mine germinate right here because it provides the perfect little environment.
So again, press them into their paper towel there, and we're going to lay them flat in the fridge. In the fridge, in the back of the fridge is the best place because the back of the fridge is the coldest, but it's not too cold that it will harm the seeds. So the final thing that I wanted to talk about is how long should I be cold stratifying my seed?
Very simple. If it requires cold stratification, in order to sprout, give it four to six weeks. I don't ever give it more than that because then you risk it rotting and they can become oversaturated with soil, or with water.
So when they're in the soil outside, typically the soil does have a kind of a drying out period, whereas in a paper towel method, it really doesn't have a drying out period. So it's important to give them just as much as they need, but not any more than that. So like I said, about four to six weeks and that's fine.
But if you're growing something that does not require cold stratification, but will benefit from it, like our lavender that we sprouted, I'll never give it more than three weeks. Two to three weeks is that sweet spot. Any less, it'll really be a moot point. You might as well not even do it any more than three weeks and you risk it rotting as well because it does not need it. In nature, the plant will germinate, some of the seeds will germinate just fine.
So the plant does not need to be saturated in cool weather for that long. So make sure you give it about two to three weeks and you're going to be fine. And so there's pretty much cold stratification in a nutshell.
And hopefully it was a comprehensive video. I hope you all enjoyed it. If you have any questions, though, don't hesitate to post them in the comments box below.
And as always, this is Luke from the Am I Gardener channel reminding you to grow big or go home. And we'll catch you all later. See ya. Bye.