Hello Thomas,
" I've read about priming seeds but I personally don't prime. I mean, nature doesn't prime. "
Well, Nature doesn't formally prime seeds, but some seeds require a cold pretreatment for an extended period, and Nature is doing that to our local native plant seeds right now.
Poison Ivy seeds need some special pre-treatments, and they get that as the Poison Ivy seeds pass through the digestive tract of the birds who ate the berries that contained the seeds.
And some pre-treatments aren't absolutely necessary, but help. Like, for instance, many people pre-soak seeds like Morning Glory, or beans, or peas, before planting them, just to speed up the germination process. Some seeds benefit from having their seed coats nicked, and that could also happen randomly in Nature.
I use a hobby knife to breach the seed coats of my zinnia seeds, to speed up their germination. I guess you could consider that as a pre-treatment. And I routinely pre-treat my zinnia seeds with Peroxide or Physan 20. I know a lot of gardeners pre-treat their legume seeds with a bacterial inoculant that is supposed to help the plants "fix" Nitrogen from the air via nodules on their roots.
Just sayin'. Pretreatments of seeds, accidental or on purpose, do happen in Nature. And in my basement.
ZM
