Shriram Dev Seeds — Vegetable seed reference | shriramdevseeds.com

Shriram Dev Seeds — Vegetable seed reference | shriramdevseeds.com

How to Sow Seeds: Depth, Treatment and Watering

The sowing sequence in order: check the lot, place the seed at the right depth, hold the temperature, and keep the surface moist until emergence.

Step one is the seed lot itself. Run a germination test: 400 seeds counted as four replicates of 100, with the sprouting percentage recorded over a fixed period. A lot that comes back weak is replaced or sown heavier.

Step two is depth. Tomato seed goes 0.5-1.0 cm deep. Lettuce is the named exception — it needs light to germinate, so it stays on the soil surface.

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Step three is temperature. Hold tomato beds at 20-25 °C for emergence in 5-10 days; pepper wants 25-30 °C and 8-14 days; lettuce germinates best at 15-20 °C and stalls above 30 °C.

Step four is the first watering and the days after it. The top centimetre, where the seed lies, has to stay moist through the whole emergence window — 5-10 days for tomato, 8-14 for pepper. Water gently enough that shallow seed is neither washed deeper nor exposed; lettuce seed lying on the surface is the easiest to dislodge.

The typical failures all have names and numbers: seed deeper than 1.0 cm, beds outside the crop's temperature band, surface seed buried by heavy watering, and old lots sown untested. For rates and spacing see Seed Rate and Spacing per Hectare; for temperature windows see Germination Temperature and Days by Crop.

  • Test: 400 seeds, four replicates of 100
  • Tomato depth: 0.5-1.0 cm
  • Lettuce: surface-sown, needs light
  • Tomato bed: 20-25 °C, emergence in 5-10 days
  • Keep the top layer moist until emergence

Further reading