Lettuce seeding woes

[gdecaires]

I'm a gardener in Barbados and am having a hit or miss experience with seeding lettuce.

I'm using a seeding mix of equal parts peat, vermiculite and perlite. I've been wetting the mixture in the cells to get it good and moist then put a seed in each cell before sprinkling a light layer of mix on top and misting with water. I then leave the trays on a shelf in my house where them temp is 29 C year round.

Some times this works fine but often as not I get little to no germination and I'm using seeds from the same pack. I use butter crunch seeds from Johnny's.

Can anyone share some tips for a more reliable germination?

 

[Bleeckerclerk]

That is WAY too hot for lettuce. That is a cool weather crop.

 

[Chuck]

Not only is it a cool weather crop but I would guess you are covering up the seed too deep. All you need to do with lettuce seeds is to give them good soil contact with NO soil covering them and if you do cover them use a very very small amount of soil. Lettuce is one of the few vegetables that require sunlight to germinate.

 

[Oliver Buckle]

I do it in a tray, sprinkle the seeds on the surface then go over it gently with my finger tips. That way there is some on the surface, some half buried and some just under. Then I give them a water with a fine sprinkler. Something will germinate and I can prick them out as soon as, later watering I do from below.
Lettuce seed usually comes in packs of a couple of thousand, I always assumed that is partly because you are never going to get anywhere near 100 percent germination. Putting them one per cell I would expect a lot of duds.

 

[YumYum]

29C is 84F. That is a little warm but still doable. On a side note they aren't really going to like the heat after germination which will make them grow fast and then bolt on you not to mention making it bitter tasting.

You may not be storing or keeping your seeds properly. Keep them in the fridge or freezer and keep the seed packets out of the sun which will bake them and guaranteed to make them sterile.

I plant mine all Summer long in potting mix and some shade and cover them up about 1/4" deep. No problems here. I keep them damp during germination, not wet or dry.

 

[Meadowlark]

I'm a gardener in Barbados and am having a hit or miss experience with seeding lettuce.

I'm using a seeding mix of equal parts peat, vermiculite and perlite. I've been wetting the mixture in the cells to get it good and moist then put a seed in each cell before sprinkling a light layer of mix on top and misting with water. I then leave the trays on a shelf in my house where them temp is 29 C year round.

Some times this works fine but often as not I get little to no germination and I'm using seeds from the same pack. I use butter crunch seeds from Johnny's.

Can anyone share some tips for a more reliable germination?

Here's something that has worked for me to germinate and grow lettuce at temps above 29 C.

An experiment in Hugelkulture in containers

do fig trees take a few years to produce? Yes. They will sometimes produce fruit in the first year or two, but it won't fully ripen, and the tree sheds it. After about 3 to 4 years, you can expect production that fully ripens on the tree. They produce for 50 years...and I know this is true from...

www.gardening-forums.com

My climate is hot(very hot at times) and for years and years I attempted but failed at growing lettuce. One needs to germinate the seed during the hottest months to get plants started in time so it will produce before first frost.

I discovered there is something "magic" about Hugenkultur containers that enables lettuce to germinate at temps in the 80's and 90's. Now I grow large supplies of lettuce in HK containers every year. It works for me...and I suspect it would work for you also.


Check out this reference thread I posted:

Lettuce in East Texas in 100 deg F weather?

I had completely given up on growing our own garden lettuce here in East Texas after several failed attempts to do so.... that has all changed since I started using the Hügelkultur containers. I have had miserable results with lettuce in the past here. It's just too hot and humid and by the...

www.gardening-forums.com