stone said:
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If you saw seeds from the compost growing... that seems like the compost was not to blame for your seeds not growing.... But rather... something else.

Good point.

Weed seeds are adapted to growing in almost anything. That's why they're weeds. Vegetable seeds are not as forgiving. If I scatter tomato seeds on my lawn, I won't get tomatoes. If I scatter weed seeds there, BOOM. Compost can have salt, and bizarrely high nitrogen (as well as micronutrients). It's hard to keep it suitably wet, and once the plants are growing, offers only minimal support to the plant. If you've been successful germinating in compost, let's just call it lucky.

stone said:

I'm still not understanding.
Did you bury the seeds in your compost pile?

When I've sown seeds in the native soil types we have here in middle Georgia... I get poor results... every time.
By top dressing the soil first, I usually achieve some measure of success.

When I've gardened in areas that had decent soil, (Think mid-west), topdressing the soil first wasn't required.

If you saw seeds from the compost growing... that seems like the compost was not to blame for your seeds not growing.... But rather... something else.

The compost was not to blame, I compost everything I eat and in my garden. So the papaya seeds that I threw in sprouted, but not the seeds that I want to grow in them. Seeds in moist environment always sprout naturally, I can't even stop them from growing.
Why is that a problem. Just saying grow new seeds in compost is iffy at best.

DougL said:Weed seeds are adapted to growing in almost anything. That's why they're weeds. Vegetable seeds are not as forgiving. If I scatter tomato seeds on my lawn, I won't get tomatoes. If I scatter weed seeds there, BOOM. Compost can have salt, and bizarrely high nitrogen (as well as micronutrients). It's hard to keep it suitably wet, and once the plants are growing, offers only minimal support to the plant. If you've been successful germinating in compost, let's just call it lucky.

Doug, I hear ya on the weed seeds!!! I don't even have to scatter them on my lawn for'em to come up...I think they magically appear out of thin air!!!!

DougL said:Weed seeds are adapted to growing in almost anything. That's why they're weeds. Vegetable seeds are not as forgiving. If I scatter tomato seeds on my lawn, I won't get tomatoes. If I scatter weed seeds there, BOOM. Compost can have salt, and bizarrely high nitrogen (as well as micronutrients). It's hard to keep it suitably wet, and once the plants are growing, offers only minimal support to the plant. If you've been successful germinating in compost, let's just call it lucky.

My compost is like black sticky matter, it's the break down of the plant matter, not always friable either.

Doug, why do some seed packets say to broadcast and what does that mean? To scatter seed but not cover with soil?

Broadcast means that if you don't care if your plants grow in an organized way, like in rows, just toss the seeds out, press into the soil with a board, and toss some soil on top of them. Then thin so they aren't too close to each other (which they wouldn't be if you had planted them one-by-one). This can work for small seeds bearing small plants like radishes, but I'm not sure why anyone would want to do it for more major veggies. It can be a time saver in planting, but probably not in cultivating and harvesting.

Thanks. I thought it meant maybe for seed that doesn't have a long root. Like grass or something. I bought a packet of cat grass and it said to broadcast. I planted them about a quarter of an inch deep because I wasn't sure what to do. Sure took a long time to come up. You would think the grass would pop right up.

Well, for grass, I can't imagine why you'd want to have it growing in rows. I can imagine seeding a lawn with Bermuda one-seed-at-a-time. Wouldn't that be fun?

Is Bermuda that rough, hard and scratchy grass? That puts out runners of some kind?

Don't some of the lawn seeders work similar to drop-spreaders resulting in grass growing in rows until the rows of grass spread and merge together? Especially for new lawns?