Pre germinating Peas or Beans

Sometime you may find yourself with some seeds that are well out of date but you may still want to try and grow them either because they are rare, scarce or of unknown origin

When it come to Peas or beans one of the ways to get the best germination and also avoid lots of wasted compost or space on a propagating bench is to pre-germinate then before sowing

Technique

Take your seeds and in a container cover them with luck warm water and leave somewhere like the kitchen for 12 hours during which time the outside coating of the seed will soften and allow moisture to enter swelling the seed which encourages the seed to germinate.  Any that don’t discard at this point

Drain the seeds and place a piece moisture retentive cloth like that has been dampened but is not soaking wet into the bottom of a plastic container.

Place lid on the container and keep at around 75 degrees as we want to achieve quick germination and peas are affect quite a lot by temperature

Germination temperature for peas : 40 F to 85 F – Days to emergence: 9 to 13 –

Optimum around 75 F.

9 days when soil is 60 F.

13 days at 50 F.

It may take as long as 4 to 5 weeks at 40 F.

As soon as the peas show the first emerging shoot carefully pick them out of the container and place them into short root trainers pots of Multipurpose compost  roughly 2cms deep and cover with more compost.

When the peas emerge grow them on in a cold frame till around 5cms high when they can be planted out into a growing bed.