Pre-Germinating Jonathan Green Seed For The First Time (Part 1) 

I pregerminated JG sun and shade mix last week (1 day of full submersion and two days of rinsing) and saw germination 2 days after sowing with what I am assuming is the rye. The TF and KGB will follow soon.

Could've left them in the shed @MrFerguson

Have used many of the Jonathan Green products during last few years . However for some reason I live in NJ and didnot realise that were based in NJ also 😯..Thanks for that info Mr F . Love your videos .

I'm going with JG Ultra this year. For some reason the bluegrass in the mix in my region (TN) is the hyrid texas BG for our area.

Mr Fergy! Glad to see you do this experiment...hope it's successful..BTW ..your lawn is looking great! As I mentioned last week, I finished seeding etc last week (GCI) and since then we have had 3 days of misting rain! This morning I looked out and it looks like I had baby grass sprout overnight! Am I lucky or what? I was dreading a washout and of course I was concerned about y'all wondering if you were getting a washout! Can't wait to see what happens with your twin buckets of JG!

I love the concept. On 9/1 I pregerminated United Seeds Snapback Tall fescue along side some Jonathan Green Black Beauty and was changing water at least every 12 hours for about 4-5 days. On day 5 the Jonathan green bag had a very high percentage of germination evident, however the United Seed showed no germination at that time. Since I wanted to get it down all at once I spread the seed with milorganite and it all went down really well. After another few days it became evident the united seed had a very low germination rate while the areas I spread the Jonathan Green had high germination and continue to look great 3 weeks later. The seed is staying wet through 4 waterings a day and area that I overseeded was prepped well with dethatch, compost/peat spread, and rolling of seed into soil to ensure proper contact. I contacted United Seed as it seems there was an germination issue with their seed but unfortunately they never responded. I ordered another bag of Black Beauty Ultra hoping I have the same luck as the first go round with the Jonathan Green seed and will overseed the remainder of the lawn with that this go round. I'm not a fan of starting this process over but with all the prep that has been done I feel like it would be a bigger waste of money not to. Best of luck to you Mr Ferg in journey! I totally feel the struggles you are having!!!

I wouldnt worry about how many days in the buckets, wait til you see some sprout, THEN its seeding time, save on the water bill

I don't think PRG will handle summers. I would only try pre germination with KBG. I feel this "Heavy Traffic" would be better suited for northern climates and not so much transition.

Milorganite is still cheaper, even though prices have gone up a lot, and works well. I did use a mixture of soil conditioner, humichar, and milorganite for my carrier. I would suggest 5 lbs per bag. I also wouldn't recommend pre-germinating a blend. Really should stick to one type of grass.

Just did this last week and changed water every 12 hrs for 5days. I used TTF and after 5th day I drain seed then added milogranite too seed in wheelbarrow. Let it mix and dry a few minutes then spreaded on yard. After watering for 4 days I have new seedlings as of today. It works!!!

I would only fill the bag half way there is a good chance only the seed on the outside is getting wet

Mr Ferguson, I’ve had JG for a couple of years now and I have nothing but good things to say about it. I’ll suggest looking at twin city seeds in the future whenever you decide to overseed again. They have much newer cultivars, are blue label and is cheaper or the same price as similar JG seeds. Although it’s sold out, their tuff turf after dark series has the newest, darkest cultivars of TTTF, KBG, and PRG all in one bag and was 10 dollars cheaper than black beauty ultra. Just a thought for the future. Take care.

I've done this recently and had good results, but i don't like spreading wet seed, so I'm going to stick with the old-fashioned way. Less stuff to deal with. Anyway, I would submerge the seed for 1 full day, then I would drain and let dry, then fully soak for 5 minutes each day and let dry. Germination would happen in about 3 or 4 days, so really, you only save about a day or 2 versus doing it the other way with way less stuff to deal with including buying malorganite or something else to spread the seed with.

excited you're testing this! I noticed the bags are almost full, the seed will expand as is begins to pregerminate, you may need an extra bucket or two in a couple of days.

Jonathan Green is expensive, and you want to experiment with it by pre-germinating the seeds, taking a chance of it not working and waste it? Jonathan Green is not cheap!

This time I will dry the pre germinated seeds a little more before mixing with the carrier . The hard part is spreading it. I also think it is too much seed in the bag and one type of cultivar would be better than a mix. To me it works best to repair spots and not so good for a whole lawn Good luck

I put down Barenburg turf type tall fescue with water saver RTF last fall . When I put it down mid September , a week later we had a terrible storm that washed out a good 10% and I decided to just let it go and hit all the bare areas with new seed this year. After the LONG drought here on the eastern shore of Maryland and without watering the yard since the begining of August knowing I was going to reseed this fall I can say Barenburg has held up and is coming back in wonderfully. I wanted to see what would happen if it was not watered and I may have lost 5-10%. Over all but We had no water for 8 weeks!!! And that's after the no water from end of june until August. It was like 12 weeks no rain over all. Needless to say I just bought 100lbs of Barenburg and will be completing my 2 year renovation next weekend. I decided to wait until after the September storms to lay my seed so it's going down NEXT weekend. Yeah it's on the lat side but university of Maryland calls for over seeding up until mid October. So I decided to wait. Rolling the dice !!! We shall see but Barenburg has held up great thru the worst drought we have had in a long time. Very happy. Is it the best. By all means NO. I don't believe it's the best but it for sure isn't the worst!! Good luck!!

I've heard that you don't want to use the water that you're changing out on your lawn. I've heard it can kill existing grass if you dump discarded water on the lawn. Can't verify personally, be careful. Interested to see your results!

My neighbor did this to his seed but he spreaded a tarp on his driveway and put the seed on there to let the seed dry back out in the sun for only a few minutes then he put it in his spreader he didn't use fertilizer to absorb it

What about a cheap blue tarp. That way the rain won’t over fill the bucket and a 5lb weight would be good Looking forward to results

The perennial rye will grow in 1 day insure that bucket haha just kidding.

Try not to handle the full strainer bags too roughly. I had one bust open on the bottom. Freakin seeds went everywhere.

Staying tuned … glad fall seeding time is finally here

Why even bother?

Great video, thanks so much for putting this together. It’s great to see the process from the beginning and to finally know what type of bags to get. I have confidence this is going to work well!

@MrFerguson, I think you getting fooled by it's name. Perennial rye don't like hot sun, will go dormant & may die fast there in NC. Black Beauty original would've been best. Those TTTF grass gets deep roots. PRG grass has shallow roots. But for fall & spring, it will look awesome tho.

The Jonthan green sun and shade mix is great as well, still have some going strong since I first started three years ago.

I happened to see your video talking about the ProVista. I have 2 years' experience with it so you may want to research about the glyphosate tolerance section of your video. Just a heads up. I know Uncle Al is selling it now, but your claim is not accurate in all fairness.

I use full 1 gallon n-ext jugs to hold the seed down in the bucket.

An unknown RU-vidr had a RU-vid short on germinating grass seed like you are trying he had contacted his local state AG department they had told him for the seed to germinate you need oxygen to get to the seeds which isn’t happening to the method you are using. The AG department suggested laying the seed on a large surface and keeping it as moist as you can replacing “dirt” with a porous material such as burlap or gardening mat to hold off weeds. The RU-vidr never said if it was successful but it makes sense

I don't know what to say...

No worries, works well. Done this several times. TTF in 5 days.

🤦🏾‍♂️❤

Too much seeds in the strainer, they will double the size

I've seen a few try this but haven't paid much attention to it. I'm curious how this turns out!

Mr. Ferg. I've always been scared to pre germ, and now I'm using slightly more expensive seeds, so I don't think I'll do it no time soon. Best of luck to you.