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vernalization

Publié le

Varnishing: how the cold affects your plants

Plants that you sow in the fall often need low temperatures to bloom when spring comes. As a result, they often remain vegetative and do not produce shoots. So, if you are a passionate gardener, like us, you will have seen how the cold can affect your plants, making it essential at times, since it has a fundamental role in their good development and in key functions such as germination, growth and flowering.

This cold process has a name, which is vernalization.

But what exactly is it, how does it work and what does it do for the plants?

That's what the Kilograms team will explain to you in this new article dedicated to gardening tips! Grab your shovel and fertilizer and follow us!

What is vernalization?

Have you ever heard of stratification ? It is a method of facilitating the germination of certain seeds and cores with hard envelope, as it is the case of our seeds of cannabis. Stratification aims to reduce the dormancy period of the seed by creating adequate conditions similar to those found in the natural state.

This is a pretty smart process, as itensures that the seeds don't germinate until after the cold winter, thus greatly increasing their chances of survival. They're survivors, our seeds!

And then we come to vernalization, which is another example of the vital role that cold plays in plant development. It is theacquisition of the ability to flower as a result of prolonged exposure to cold. It is literally the result of stratification 😉

Basically, seeds must go through a period of cold weather - up to several months at temperatures between 1°C and 7°C - before they can begin to flower and complete their life cycle. Without this cold weather to trigger them, these plants would remain in vegetative growth indefinitely.

How does the vernalization process work?

Vernalization is an evolutionary adaptation that allows flowering plants to gain an advantage over their competitors when the growing season begins in spring. Indeed, the latter will germinate and begin their development in the fall, before the winter cold sets in, while the other plants will be forced to wait for milder temperatures to begin their growth. And yes, while our little plants are slowly developing since the previous fall, the other annual plants are still germinating or in the seedling stage.

In addition, some plants need a period of cool weather to activate winter dormancy, which allows buds that developed in the fall to open and form leaves. But this period of cold exposure needs to be long enough, as short periods of cool weather will not be enough to activate flowering or release the plants from bud dormancy.

This is why this type of plants only responds to the long cold periods of winter, causing the inhibition of the reproduction process until spring.

Which plants need vernalization?

Generally, the plants that need vernalization are those called biennials, but also winter hardy annuals, but only in temperate zones. Yes, it's very specific isn't it 🙂

Biennials are plants that have a life cycle of two years, because the first year they use it to build a healthy structure, taking advantage of it to store energy in their roots to survive the winter. Then the second year, they dedicate it to reproduction, that is to say to the blooming and the fruiting of their branches.

We tell you about cannabis plants that benefit from vernalization, but did you know that they are not the only ones to use this method?

Indeed, there are many varieties of biennial vegetables, but they are mostly grown as annuals. So you have beets, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, celery, endive, kale, rutabaga, turnip greens, leeks, onions, parsley, and parsnips that use the vernalization process to optimize their growth and flowering.

As for winter hardy annuals, you have beans, peas and spinach mainly. But you also have cereals, such as rye, barley, wheat and triticale, which are also ideal for use as green manure cover crops to protect and enrich the soil during the winter, as they can be harvested and incorporated into the soil well before sowing vegetable and other fruit seeds.

How does it work?

It seems that plants that need cold to flower have active copies of these genes, called Frigida and FLC(Flowering Locus C) respectively. FLC is a repressor that activates in autumn and inhibits the expression of key genes in the flowering mechanism. While Frigida, activates and increases the level of FLC in the RNA of the plant.

There is another process, which applies rather to the species of grasses, as the barley for example, but we are not going to develop more than that, since what interests us, it is that for the cannabis. Just know that the induction of flowering is inhibited by a gene called VRN2. Exposure to long periods of cold weather increases the expression of VRN1, another gene that acts to repress VRN2, allowing flowering induction. Here you go 😉

Varnishing for faster flowering

The vernalization technique is often used to induce plants to produce a crop faster than would otherwise be possible.

Indeed, in their quest to improve crop productivity, agricultural researchers have discovered that by exposing sprouted grains to carefully calibrated temperatures and a specific photoperiod, the time between germination and harvest can be significantly shortened. Using this technique, they have been able to harvest up to five grain crops per year, where previously only two were possible.

De-greening

Just as cold causes vernalization and gives plants the ability to flower, heat can be used to reverse this process.

Devernalization is the return of the plant to its initial non-flowering state by exposure to high temperatures. To do this, seedlings are exposed to temperatures slightly below 30° C for 2-3 weeks prior to planting, returning them to a non-flowering state so that they can remain in vegetative growth and produce beautiful buds when they return to a normal growth cycle.

Conclusion

That's it for the vernalization, we hope you enjoyed reading it as much as we enjoyed writing it. As always, don't hesitate to give us your opinion, your experiences and your results on our Insta!