How PCF Is Preparing For The 2025 Growing Season

It’s mid-march and the snow is beginning to melt at our sites, which means our growing team is preparing for the 2025 growing season. Since November, our team has been hard at work ordering seeds and configuring our growing spaces for this coming year.

Now, our team is ready to begin the first phase of the growing season. First, before we can start our seeds, we complete a hot water treatment to prevent diseases. This is a vital part of our integrated pest management practice to prevent seed born pathogens this growing season. These pathogens occur more in our cruciferous vegetables (broccoli, kale) and in solanaceous vegetables (peppers, tomatoes).

Steps for Hot Water Seed Treatment

Step 1 | Prepare The Seeds

Place seeds in envelopes. We used fiberglass screens we turned into envelopes to hold the seeds in place. We then labeled our seed types with plastic labels and secured them with a paper clip.

Step 2 | Prepare Seeds for Treatment

We place our labeled seeds in envelopes in a bowl of 100 degree water first to thoroughly wet them for 10 minutes. *This helps pre-warm the seed and prepares it for the 100+ degree water.

Step 3 | Place Seeds in Hot Water Treatment

After 10 minutes the pre-treated seeds then go into a sealed container for 20 minutes. In the photo, we are treating our brassica seeds that require a high temperature of 122 degrees.

To learn more about specific seed treatment temperatures please refer to the Hot Water Seed Treatment guide by the University of Wisconsin-Madison linked below.

Step 4 | Shock The Seeds

Once it has been 20 min. place the seed envelope in a bowl of *cold tap water for 5 minutes to quickly end the seed treatment.

Step 5 | Dry The Seeds

After 5 min. in the cold water remove the seeds from the bowl and keep in their envelope. There are multiple ways to successfully complete the last step. We placed paper clips through the envelopes attaching them to a box fan and let them dry out over night.

Other ways to dry your seeds can be found below, using the University of Wisconsin-Madison Hot Water Seed Treatment guide.

*indicates usage of wording from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Hot-Water Seed Treatment For Disease Management online article.