Topic: Germinating peas and Sweetcorn help please..

[gavinjconway]

I am new to these and need some help please..

Early Pea - Dwarf Hatif d'Annonay.. I'm told to start them in mid Feb. I will do these in toilet rolls and plant out when ready.
Q. Do I soak seeds overnight before sowing in the rolls?
Q2. When I do the main crop direct in the plot do I soak in paraffin for the mice?

Early and late Sweetcorn in toilet rolls.
Q. Do I soak overnight before sowing - or what method to get good germination? I want to sow in the home and GH so I get a good germination.

Thanks - Your help will be appreciated as always.

[saddad]

Hi Gavin,

I would soak the peas for2-4 hours only... not overnight
and if mice are a problem lay glass on the soil until the shoots show.. then prop up with a brick on one side then the other...
Sweetcorn... don't soak the seeds at all, you can soak the tubes. Sow very shallow as many need light to germinate well...

 :-\

[plainleaf]

i soak both in room temp water 4 hours then plant. the only difference is i dust the pea  seed with Pea and Bean Inoculant. before planting

[Kleftiwallah]

Planting peas into toilet rolls is too fiddly, fill up yard lengths of guttering with compost and plant them in there, sliding the seedlings into a pre prepared dip in the soil when ready.

Plant sweetcorn seeds into the plastic coffee cups from the machine after burning a hole in the base with a soldering iron.  :D Cheers,     Tony.

[Hi_Hoe]

Personally, i'd never soak anything in paraffin (molotov cocktails aside..!....Ahem!.) Wouldn't want that in my soil -no sirree bob.

Id also agree with Saddad - soaking overnight seems contradictive to what we want in our seeds? We want free draining soil yet some of us soak our seeds overnight subjecting them to the opposite of what we want?? Maybe its just me....

If i were you Gavin, id soak for a few hours on a damp kitchen cloth if it makes you feel more confident, but i'm sure you'd get good germination anyway even if you didnt soak them! ;) Better still, do your own experiment - soak only half and compare?! At least that way you'll know what works for you.

Best of luck either way

Hi-hoe

[lavenderlux]

The way I sow peas is that I soak overnight in a jar of water, then transfer them onto damp kitchen roll and cover with a piece of kitchen roll and keep damp, they will germinate within two or three days.  After about a week I sow in their growing position, taking out a hoes' wide drill, cover with soil and cover the row with a piece of old sheeting or old fleece material, placing soil over the edges of the material and stamp down, once they are showing through I remove the material.
I don't use paraffin to soak the seeds in.  This method has worked fine for me for a number of years.

[Digeroo]

I put both peas and sweet corn onto damp kitchen roll and then covered with plastic.  The sweet corn then go on a sunny window sill and the peas onto the north.

Once they have have the smallest showing of root they go outside under bottle cloches.  These come off once the peas are a few inches tall, and when the blade comes out the top for sweet corn.

I do not use parafin for anything.

[Robert_Brenchley]

Soaking larger seeds is a good way of starting germination off, but I've never found it made much difference except with really big beans. I have done it with peas, but I wouldn't bother again as they come up so well anyway. Same with sweet corn.

I remember my father using paraffin and red lead to keep mice off broad beans. It's hard to see the point; if the paraffin really put them off, the lead wasn't needed. If the method depended on poisoning rodents after they'd eaten a bean, why use the paraffin? I wouldn't use either myself, and definitely not the lead!

[tricia]

For sweetcorn I do the damp kitchen roll method in a sealed freezer bag. They germinate after a few days and are ready to pot up individually. This way I don't waste pots or compost.

I also follow Jeannine's advice and sow about three weeks before I plan to plant out in their final raised bed. This gives me good strong plants which are not too big to cause root disturbance when planting out.

Tricia

[gavinjconway]

Hi Everybody... thanks so much for all the advice.. I WILL be growing a great crop of peas and sweetcorn after I sift through all the tips and advice.  ;D  ;D

[kt.]

I sow sweetcorn in modules and transplant when they are about 5-6" tall.   I don't do anything with peas,  just dig a shallow trench, chuck the peas down, rake over, water and leave alone till harvest.  (adding support for them to grow to though)

[gavinjconway]

I sow sweetcorn in modules and transplant when they are about 5-6" tall.   I don't do anything with peas,  just dig a shallow trench, chuck the peas down, rake over, water and leave alone till harvest.  (adding support for them to grow to though)

Thanks KT - thats what i'll do as well..

[Robert_Brenchley]

If I try growing peas your way, KT, the pigeons get most of them, every time. The only time I've been able to make it work was when I cloched a row. I start them in pots now.

[green lily]

I do the gutter thing for earlies and start in the poly. Maincrop go straight outside with a good soak. Mine get eaten by the sparrows who perch on the support branches..... So another throw of mesh/netting usually goes over the lot..... ::)Don't you just love wildlife? imagine if we had elephants roaming......

[kt.]

If I try growing peas your way, KT, the pigeons get most of them, every time.

I don't sow the zigzag pattern as laid down in books,  I do a liberal sow of 1 packet which makes a row of about 20ft.  This guarantees a full row with no gaps between plants.  Worth it for ease.

[gavinjconway]

Good advice as always - thanks peeps..

[antipodes]

I never bother trying to pre-grow peas, it's never worked for me and I don't have room. I now sow direct, and cloche them with large plastic bottles, side by side. Don't seem to get eaten. I water very well to help germinate. Once they start pushing on the side of the bottles, I take them off, add a low row of string to my trellis to start them climbing and off they go. I think I maybe fleeced them last year till they were over a foot high.
BuT i can sow direct here from early March.

[gaz2000]

I did my peas in modules last year and had great results

Sweetcorn in peat pots.They can dry out very fast in the gh so need regular watering

Also started beetroot off in doors which was fine

[manicscousers]

We started some of our early ones in milk cartons stacked in a plastic box last year, 6 per pot. That seemed to work well . Then the guttering comes out  ;D

[chriscross1966]

Sweetcorn in toilet-roll tubes pushed into 24-cell modules, but not for a while yet, about the second or third week of April is about right to get them out early mid May, maybe a week or tow earlier if they're going in a polytunnel.

Peas I don't soak, I sow them about a dozen seeds or so in a bedding strip module, you get four or fiove strips in a seed-tray sized block... each struip is a foots worth of run, plant out when they're 2-3 inches tall.. I'll be going through my peas soon adn if I've got some early sowers then I'll ge them going, but once again probably not for a while yet, I don't liek planting them out until the weather is a bit better. I find a gravel tray of bedding strips a lot more wieldy and easier to transport than metre long sections of guttering.... but if your GH is on th eallotment it's a perfectly valid technique... my GH is at home, so anythign staerted there has ot be ferreid up to the plot...

chrisc