What are the Best Seed Treatments for Lettuce in Rainy Growing Conditions?

With all of the rain that has impacted California’s growing region, you may be wondering; what are the best seed treatments for lettuce in rainy growing conditions? With unpredictable weather patterns, the threat of planting followed by potential surges of rain or flooding, and the potential of disease outbreaks due to extremely wet conditions; there are conventional and organic seed treatments that may help your lettuce crops succeed in rainy growing conditions.

Lettuce Fields Flooded by Heavy Rain | Photo courtesy of Western Farm Press

Best Seed Treatments for Lettuce in Rainy Conditions

First, let’s start with seed priming. Some growers are opting to cut costs by reducing the number of seed treatments they apply to their seeds. However, seed priming is one treatment that should not be cut from your cultivation plan.  Seed priming can help your crop emerge quicker so that your plants can get both your first true leaves and roots established before the next rain. Also, priming will contribute to improving the overall uniformity of your crop for harvesting.

Benefits of Seed Priming Include:

• Faster speed of emergence
• Improved uniformity to optimize crop harvest
• Earlier canopy development to help plants overcome extreme environmental conditions
• Increased final population
• More yield and enhanced product quality

Second, you may want to consider stacking your seed priming with a heavy seed pellet such as the OxyKote® pellet.  The purpose of a heavy pellet is to help your seed stay in place during flood irrigation and or if you anticipate the potential for excessive water.

Lettuce Lab Samples 3 Day Germination | OxyKote® Lettuce Pellet

Benefits of Seed Pelleting Include:

• Produces bigger, rounder and smoother seed pellets to improve planting efficiency and singulation
• Allow for precision planting in the field
• Ideal carrier of crop protection treatments such and fungicides and insecticides
• Improve ability to handle even the finest seeds
• May be stacked with other technologies such as priming, filmcoating and micronutrient application as offered in our health technologies category.

Lastly,  you may want to consider applying a crop protection filmcoating to protect your plants as soon as they emerge.  Germains offers the following crop protection seed treatments:

Conventional Filmcoast Options

• Allegiance –fungicide
• Apron – fungicide
• FarMore® F300 –fungicide
• FarMore® FI400 –fungicide/insecticide
• NipsIT® –insecticide (CA/AZ only)
• Thiram -fungicide

Organic Biological Options

• Actinovate® -fungicide
• T-22® -fungicide

In conclusion, seed priming, pelleting and filmcoating are excellent seed treatments that can help maximize your crops performance in times when your growing conditions are unpredictable. All three treatments may be combined with our goseed® micronutrient applications that may also help you overcome some of the environmental obstacles you may be facing. Click here for more information about our goseed® technology.

Germains strives to provide growers with innovative seed treatment solutions for a variety of growing conditions and disease pressures. If you have questions about selecting the right seed treatment for your growing conditions, please contact us today, nasales@germains.com or call 408.848.8120.