Q: I planted Imperial Whitetail Clover in several of my plots yesterday. The soil I planted in is rich, and the plots are flat — good crop dirt. However, it has been a little drier than normal here recently, and the ground is pretty dry. The good news is that we normally get plenty of rain throughout the year, and the forecast is calling for rain in a couple of days. How long will it be before my clover germinates and starts growing?
A: Provided our planting instructions are followed, Imperial perennial blends can appear and start attracting deer within as little as a week or two. Exactly how long it will take depends on whether or not your soil had any moisture in it when you planted, as well as moisture and temperatures after you planted.
Even though you said that it has been drier than normal, if your soil had a little moisture in it, the odds are extremely high that your Imperial seeds germinated almost immediately. If your soil was dry when you planted, the seeds may not have germinated right away, which of course is a good thing — the last thing you want is for your seeds to germinate with slight surface moisture, for example morning dew, and then immediately die because the tiny seedling roots can find no moisture in the soil. That’s called “false germination,” and it can wipe out an entire plot in short order. That's one reason why the Whitetail Institute coats the seeds in its blends before they are packaged. Plots planted with uncoated seeds are at MUCH higher risk of falling victim to false germination, and the coatings on Imperial seeds greatly reduce that risk.
The soil doesn’t have to be “wet” for Imperial perennials to germinate; there just has to be a little moisture in the soil to dissolve the coating. In that way, the coatings on Imperial seeds are like an insurance policy. Ideally, you want a little moisture in your soil, but the coatings can also give you more latitude in planting conditions than you would have with uncoated seeds.
Once the seeds germinate, the seedlings can appear above ground in as little as a couple of days. You probably won’t be able to tell that the seeds have germinated, though, until you actually see the seedlings. That’s because once the seeds germinate, they’ll start building some of the plants’ early root systems before the seedlings appear above ground, and the early roots tend to curl closely under the seed and then grow downward.
