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Stratification for Dormant Seeds

Bob Wildfong

Have you ever planted some seeds, but they didn't grow? Of course you have. Every gardener has seen that happen. Maybe it was because the seeds were old, and couldn't sprout anymore. But maybe they were seeds that needed special conditions to germinate. Many perennials, wildflowers, tree seeds, and some herbs are like that - they go into a dormant state and won't sprout until they get a special signal. Most of the time, that signal is a long period of cold temperature.

I remember my first experience with dormant perennial seeds. I had bought some perennial sweet peas in a packet, and planted them along a bare fence in the spring at the same time as my edible peas. Sweet peas are a relative of regular peas, but they aren't edible and they come in two kinds: annual (Lathyrus odoratus) and perennial (Lathyrus latifolius). Annual sweet peas are famous for their scent, but they only survive for the spring/summer season. Perennial sweet peas are often not scented, but they live just about forever, and make a nice flowering vine to climb on a fence.

My regular garden peas grew, my friend's annual sweet peas grew, but my perennial sweet peas didn't. Not a single one. So I did the normal thing: I gave up on them and planted something else instead. Then a year later, I noticed some sprouts growing in a nice straight line along that fence. Of course I couldn't remember sowing the sweet peas, but I soon figured out what had happened.

Perennial seeds, like my sweet peas, need some kind of safety signal to know when winter is over. If they sprouted right away in the fall, the tender seedlings would suffer too much, so they have to wait until spring. Mostly, they do this by going into a deep sleep (called dormancy) which is broken only by repeated freezing and thawing. Since my seeds had only been stored indoors: in the store, probably in a warehouse somewhere, and in my house, they had never felt the chill of winter. Without freezing and thawing to break their dormancy, they still thought it was the fall, so they waited underground for a whole year until another winter had passed before they germinated!

Why don't annuals need a cold treatment to stimulate germination? The reason is simple: most of the garden plants that we grow as annuals (like tomatoes) are actually perennials somewhere else in the world where it doesn't freeze hard in the winter. Tropical plants such as beans, peppers, petunias, and impatiens don't need a safety switch to tell them when winter has passed, so they are mostly able to germinate right away, with no special treatment. Only the plants that originate in colder latitudes need their seeds to break winter dormancy, and as it happens, many of those plants naturally survive cold winters so we think of them as perennials.

That's why many of our garden perennials, wildflowers, and native trees are difficult to raise from seed. Essentially, all you have to do is simulate winter conditions, so the seeds think it is spring and "wake up". The technical term is "stratification" but you can also call it "chilling", or "dormancy breaking". Many seed companies pre-stratify their perennial seeds, but not all, and certainly your home-saved perennial and wildflower seeds will need the treatment. 

The most common method of stratification is to moisten the seeds, then chill them for a few weeks. Some gardeners have found that it works to simply put the dry seeds in a refrigerator for 2-3 weeks, but dry seeds don't normally break dormancy when you chill them - that's how we store seeds in seed banks (dry and cold), to keep them dormant for a long time.

First, soak the seeds at room temperature for a full day. This will ensure that even the toughest seeds will absorb moisture through their seed coats. Then do either of two things:

1) Place the soaked seeds in a plastic bag of good household potting soil, and keep it sealed in a refrigerator for several weeks. The exact length of time depends on the species, but count on about a month to get good results.

2) Sow the seeds in garden containers, and put them outside during late winter or early spring, where they will experience about a month of temperatures near the freezing/thawing point. March or April is usually the right time.

After the seeds have experienced winter (indoors or outdoors) raise them like you would do with any seeds, and watch them grow! 

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Bob Wildfong is Seeds of Diversity's Executive Director

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