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yellow rattle

dave56armstrongdave56armstrong Posts: 50
in Plants
I am doing some community gardening, its an area that has been neglected for decades and a few of us have made a start. There is a lot of grass so having heard about Yellow Rattle as a grass suppressant I bought some seeds, only to find they say they need to have been in cold ground for  4 months before spring in order to germinate. Have I wasted my money or is there a way of getting them to germinate now? (They weren't expensive.)

Posts

  • ShepsSheps Posts: 2,236
    I was going to suggest the same as @pansyface I think you have to do the same with Strawberry seeds.
  • DovefromaboveDovefromabove Posts: 88,147
    Yellow rattle is best sown fresh … but given that you have what you have, I’d pop it in the fridge/freezer for a bit and then sow it. Make sure you sow it into established grass … it’s no good sowing it at the same time as the grass. 
    Let us know if it’s successful 🤞 

    Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.





  • nutcutletnutcutlet Posts: 27,445
    unless you sow the Yellow Rattle in something it can germinate in, putting it in the fridge is just storing it. Cold and dry is how the seedbanks store their seed. As Dove says, it doesn't keep, I'd sow it and hope we get enough frosts to get at least a few germinating.


    In the sticks near Peterborough
  • bédébédé Posts: 3,095
    edited April 2023
    I started my colony from scrumped seed.  The first year I sowed them in pots and they germinated well, but didn't transplant well.  I then read up on them and found that they are biennial, and need to be sown in the summer (normal seed season) and left to germinate in the spring. 

    Now they are self-sustaining.  I jhave enough to make a show, not just for their grass-suppressing function.

    If you want to put them through a freeze-thaw cycle or two, better do it it damp sand.  It may not be the freezing, but the leaching of inhibitors that is needed.  Cover yourself with both  angles.

    One good thing about their lifecycle is that they won't weaken a neighbouring well-mowed fine lawn.  Evolution thinks of everything.
     location: Surrey Hills, England, ex-woodland acidic sand.
    "Have nothing in your garden that you don't know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."
  • bertrand-mabelbertrand-mabel Posts: 2,697
    @dave56armstrong I wish you all the luck. We have tried over many years to introduce yellow rattle in our orchard. We have followed all the advice that has been given by wildlife people, forum experts and online. We have never had germination.
    @bede yours sound fantastic. Brilliant.
  • dave56armstrongdave56armstrong Posts: 50
    thanks everyone. 
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