Sowing Guidline
Learn best practices for soil preparation, watering, and timing to ensure healthy, thriving native plant growth.
A Simple and Straightforward Guideline for Sowing Native Grasses
1. Weed Control
Native seeds are a natural product, they haven’t been modified or breed, so they retain all their natural survival traits. This includes staggering their germination to guard against dry spells and align with rain events. As a result, they establish much slower than introduced species. This makes effective weed control essential before sowing. For best results, ensure the seedbed is completely free of weed seeds by manually removing contaminated soils or by stimulating (watering) the weed seed to germinate so it can be controlled before sowing the natives.
2. Avoid Fertiliser
No fertiliser is necessary. In particular, avoid any phosphate-based fertilisers. However, the addition of organic matter will assist soil health and plant growth.
3. Test Seeds
While the soil is under preparation, it is a good idea to sow a few seeds into a weed free seed raising mix and be kept moist until germination. This will allow for easier identification of the seedlings once the area is sown.
4. Loosen Soil
Before sowing, the soil surface should be loosened with either a rake or harrows to ensure adequate seed to soil contact.
5. Shallow Sowing
Spread the seed evenly over the prepared surface and rake it in, so it is lightly covered. Native grasses prefer a shallow showing depth, seed sown deeper than 15mm may not germinate.
6. Roll Soil
Where possible, try rolling the area as it lightly presses soil particles together and ensures grass seeds are in good contact with the soil. This will eliminate air pockets that could interfere with seed germination and growth, and a rolled seedbed also holds moisture longer.
7. Keep Moist
Keeping the area moist for the first few weeks will help however you should only expect 30% of the seed to germinate in the first germination event.
8. Be Patient
Now this part in really important, be patient. We cannot stress this enough. While you should see germination around 3-4 weeks, sometimes native grasses can take 6-8 weeks to start to come up. They will then progressively germinate over the coming months.
9. Don’t Worry
Finally, don’t worry too much if the area initially looks a bit sparce as the natives have the ability to self-seed and thicken up over time.
10. Contact Us
If you have any more questions or issues along the way, you can always give us a call back and we will do our best to provide you with advice.
Seed Storage
Native grass seed is, in general, long-lived and can be stored for extended periods with good results. The factors that lead to seed losing viability are the same as for other grasses, that is too much moisture, lack of air and too much heat.
The seed should be kept dry so that it does not start germinating whilst in the bag. This process can sometimes work to ‘prime’ some types of seed prior to sowing, but is not known for native grass seed and we recommend that all seeds be kept very dry for the duration of their storage.
Seeds should be stored in air-impermeable bags so that air exchange does not occur whilst the seed is in storage. This prevents the entry of moisture from the air that is the greatest contributing factor for seed decay.
A storage temperature that is too high will rapidly cause deterioration in the quality of seed. Seed viability drops very dramatically with exposure to hot conditions and decreases further with every degree above 35 degrees celsius or less.
Cold storage under temperatures of 10 degrees celsius or less is worthwhile if possible for both short-term and long-term storage of grass seeds.