Autumn is making its way through our gardens, the vegetable gardeners are harvesting the last fruits, pulling the rest of the plants, if they are healthy they take them to the composter, and if they are sick they pack them in bags and take them to the landfill or destroy them in some other way. In those remains, weed is also found, which, thanks to those several days of rain, has sprouted.
Gardeners, if you forgot let us remind you. Weed plants can only be placed in the composter if they have not formed seeds. Otherwise, we will only unconsciously help them get distracted. The seeds of some species retain their germination even seven decades. The plants do not have to sprout the next growing season. He will wait a few years and then he will surprise us unpleasantly.
The same thing happens during the growing season, when the gardens are weeded or the weeds are destroyed by hoeing, so the plant herb is placed in the composter or left in the bed as mulch.
When weed seeds will germinate depends on many factors
So, weeds are undesirable plants on all agricultural plots, regardless of what is grown on them. The man regularly destroys them, but – it happens that one of them slips through, or with treatment is too late and the plant forms a seed that produces a new plant the following year. And does every seed always germinate the following spring?
This is not mandatory, because abundance of seeds produced by each weed plant, only a small part germinates the following year. Most remain in the soil and sprouts in two, three, and possibly even in seventy years. Since humans are constantly destroying them, weed plants have made sure to somehow extend their species.
Weed seeds can remain viable for many years
It is known that the seeds of weed plants blows up in various ways (water for watering, wind, cultivation, animals, and there is also man) and reaches various soil substrates. It’s a seed biologically resistant to loss of germination and can preserve it for many years.
So, for example, the willow plant (rosomača) retains its germination for 16-35 years, poponac 22, plantain 16, bulka more than 12, mouse 10. The recorder is sharp (tavalj) which can germinate even afterwards full seven decades. It is followed by ash, which grows even after 40 years, fly agaric and its helper – 39, and mustard, which germinates 35 years from the moment the seed reaches the ground.
WEEDS: EVERYTHING you need to know to get rid of them completely!
How long a seed will remain dormant in the soil depends on many factors. When the seeds reach bad soil, with unsuitable climatic conditions, will not germinate they will wait for next spring more convenient moment.
Unripe seeds also have a forced dormancy period, and sometimes it is created by humans by deep plowing and burying to a greater depth. Some weeds are “specialized” only for certain crops: chaff for wheatbuckwheat for alfalfa. Due to the large production, the seeds sprout successively.
Four “produces” the most seeds
The largest number of weed seeds in our fields germinate at a depth of one to five centimeters. If it reaches a greater depth, it germinates later or in subsequent years. When it will be depends on the plant species that have been grown on that plot for several years.
The conditions that humans create for plants also correspond to weeds, so it is not difficult to assume that most weed seeds that fall to the ground give rise to a new plant. The better the conditions, the higher the percentage of deposited seeds will germinate.
How many seeds are in the soil is not difficult to guess when you know how many seeds are produced by just one weed plant. And here the star is in the first place: leave only one behind 3,560,000 seeds.
Followed by the swan with 600,000, safflower 270,000, cinderella 123,000, great flycatcher 51,000, magpie 49,000, helper 40,000, watercress 18,000, pied flycatcher and great fox with 15,000 each, wild sorghum 10 .000…
Considering that each seed can preserve germination for many years, it is not difficult to conclude that there is no clean field and that undesirable plants should be regularly destroyed before they produce seeds so that the amount of seeds stored in the soil does not increase even more.
Source: www.agromedia.rs
