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Live in Southern Ontario:

Planting beet, carrot, green bean, and pea seeds directly into raised garden beds. I've seen in a few places a recommendation to soak the seeds for 12-24 hours in water beforehand.

what are your thoughts and experiences with this? If it makes a difference I'm pretty diligent with watering and upkeep.

Mathstatsstudent
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    This may get closed as "opinion based", but FWIW I usually soak large seeds (i.e. anything more than about 2mm diameter) especially if they have a hard outer shell. Since tiny seeds need careful water management anyway, there doesn't seem much point. And there's no point at all for very slow germinating seeds like parsley (which can take up to 6 weeks) - though some "old time" advice in the UK (decades before the internet) recommended watering parsley seed with boiling water after sowing, to shock it into life! – alephzero Jun 12 '19 at 15:48

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Best to go by what is on the seed packet. If there is no advice to soak beforehand then it is not necessary. Very occasionally it might be necessary with unusual seeds which need their dormancy broken, but the seedspeople have a reputation to protect and don't want customers complaining that their seeds did not germinate so they do all they can to give good advice to help you to success first time around.

Colin Beckingham
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Some beet seeds (Bull's Blood, for example), recommend a 24 hour soak, but I've never seen that recommendation on any other seed packet for vegetables.

Jurp
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