(For better understanding of this blog, it is recommended to refer to the first blog of this series, A Beginner's Guide to Stratification where we get a proper insight about what stratification is and how it is crucial for in-home gardening.)
For a quick recap, we now know that stratification is imperative for breaking seed dormancy, or in other words, activating the seeds. Yet you know, this is not a very limited process. Nature over eons and eons of years has provided itself with so much variety and distinctions that any natural process is everything but limited. Different seeds need different types of stratifying based on their adaptive mechanisms, habitat and needs. But you know, baby steps, so today let's talk about two very basic types, wet and dry.
Natural cold stratification takes place over the span of winter to spring. Perennial plants, usually flowers have hard outer coverings for protection from breaking and sprouting earlier than expected. These seeds should thus not be sown directly in spring. Over winter they are buried under cold soil/ snow. From here till spring they get time to thaw with the gradual rise in temperature and thus the hard covering is shed off. Now these conditions can be replicated at home very easily in a handful of ways. The easiest being paper towel/ cotton method and soil method.
1) Paper Towel/ Cotton method
This takes us back to our second grade activity with chickpea seeds. All we need to do is wet some cotton or tissues and put 8-10 seeds of choice on it. Give it two to three folds, cover it using a zip lock bag or put it in a plastic cup and keep it in the fridge for 3-4 days. One example for this would be oranges. This will help in imitating the natural requirements for triggering seed activation. Once the seeds sprout, they can be directly planted into soil.
Some seeds in paper towel can be directly put into a pot with soil and be sprouted. The pot can be covered with a plastic bag or bottle for providing sufficient humidity. Dragon fruit and lemon can be grown this way.
2) Soil method
This is too a very simple way to activate the seeds. Here you can just skip the whole paper towel thing and directly put soil in maybe a small plastic box or a zip lock bag, put seeds in the soil and keep it in the fridge. It is however imperative to make sure that proper moisture and cold is provided to the soil. The balance between dryness and moisture decides everything.
Growing plants from scratch may be tedious but if grown the right way can benefit a lot long term. The most difficult task is when you have to patiently wait for a seed to sprout. Till then you're always anxious if it will sprout or not, if you've done something wrong and your efforts will go waste. Yet if done the proper way, the journey afterwards is all smooth. So in the upcoming blogs lets try to take this journey forward a little more :)
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