I was suspecting that any liquid, nontoxic, of course, would get germination
going. But as Tom points out, it needs to be planted once it starts to
sprout!

Suzy, Zone 5, Wisconsin
"- Tom -" wrote in message
news:Hiqme.5211$Ub.1962@trndny09...

"Winston Smith" wrote in message
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Has anybody else ever done this?

Last year, I repaired a large portion of my lawn after extensive
excavation work was done on my property. A friend told me to brew a
strong tea from 10 teabags and combine it in a five gallon bucket with
grass seed and enough tap water to make it mushy. I filled the bucket up
with this mixture and let it sit overnight in the garage. The next
mooring I could see that some the seeds had already sprouted. I spread
the seed by hand, breaking up the clumps of wet seed as I went. I over
seeded this with a little dry seed and raked it over. I watered it
faithfully. In less than a week I had grass growing!

According to my buddy, the tannic acid in the tea breaks down the hulls
of
the seed and allows the germination to begin at a faster rate. I was
very
surprised to see how well it actually worked. I was just wondering if
this is common knowledge or am I onto something new here?



I've never used the tea but I have soaked the seed to get it started. I
did it at work with ~ 40# of athletic turf seed. Soaked it and left it in
the sack, draining, at the end of a work day to get started the next
morning. Supervisor took me off that task to do something else. Returned
to
the task the next day and the seed was uselessly entangled with roots.
Once nature gets going there's no stopping it.

--
Tom