Over the years I have tried different ways of calculating the germination rate of seeds I have planted the previous fall.
I have found the best way and the most accurate is to actually count the plants in each bed. I believe that, unless you count the plants, then you are just guessing at what your germination rate is.
At first thought your probably thinking that counting plants would take too much time. And I suppose if you planted large amounts of seeds, thats probably true. But you could just count the plants in beds that had a weighed out pound of seeds.
Anyway, For me and my three kids that are still living at home. It takes us roughly 30 minutes to count all the plants that are up and growing from just 1 lb of seeds. And we count all the older plants I have growing in about three to four hours. We do this once a year after all the plants have emerged.
For seeds to be planted. I first have a weighed out pound. Since seeds vary in size, you need to calculate the aproximate qty of seeds in a pound. I use a digital scale to weigh out one ounce of seeds. Then I count out how many seeds are in that one ounce of seeds. Then I take that qty and multiply it x16 to end up with the amount of seeds in that one pound.
Example from one ound planted last fall:
1 oz. counted out to 451 seeds.
multiply the 451 x 16 oz = 7216 seeds.
That's how many seeds are in this pound.
We counted all the seedlings from that one pound of seeds and ended up with 5198 seedling from the 7216 seeds planted. So 5198 divided by 7216 = 0.72 or 72% emerged plants. Note: this also included two beds that had previous Damping Off problems that I treated with Plant Helper,(a little over 50% emerged in these two beds).
So total emerged is 72%. I believe this is pretty accurate. And A few more will emerge the next spring, raising the percentage rate a little.
Plants can be counted very quickly. You start at one end of a bed by laying two sticks down about two feet apart. Then you just count the plants in between the two sticks and write dow the amount. Then you move one stick down two feet past the other stick and count those plants. keep moving down the bed and counting until you reach the end.
I have tought the kids that when they are counting it is better to skip or miss counting plants than it is to count the same plant twice. My kids have alot of fun when we count plants each year. We will probably get to the point were it's just too many plants to count each year. But for counting seedlings from just one pound of seeds will give you a good idea of what your emergence rate is.
I hear people throw out numbers of what their germination percent was. And I have to wonder how they came up with that number. Most the time I think it's just a guess.
Any way, this is how we do it.
Below is a pic from counting two year old plants.
classicfur
