Grand experiment-seeds

hunter63 · #1 02/21/08, 02:39 PM

It's that time of year again and time to start the plants in the basement.
Geraniums, cut back and cutting set out to root, plants rerooted and are going.
Grand Experiment- Old seeds

Found tomato seed from 2001, 1999, 1993.
I set all the seeds in seperate containers, marked, I want to see if they still germinate.
Have new seed, but for some reason, I have a real bad time throwing old seed out.
Seems stupid, but that's the way it is.
Who knows, maybe some day this knowledge will come in handy?

Anyone else have this problem?

turtlehead · #2 02/21/08, 03:49 PM

My lips are sealed.

Well, okay.
When we moved from Georgia to WV I finally threw out ten year old seed that I'd been saving for when I had a space to garden again.

You spend so much thought considering which varieties to get, then so much time getting them to sprout and thrive and produce, it just seems a shame to toss their siblings.

Rocky Fields · #3 02/21/08, 04:05 PM

Hey.

Tomato seed from 1993

Rocky Fields · #4 02/21/08, 04:08 PM

PS: My post above should have been followed by a "?". I would love to know if you get a seed to germinate from that 1993 lot;-)

hunter63 · #5 02/21/08, 04:22 PM

The experment is to see how they do.
I always seem to plant waaaay too many plants, and find it hard to thin the poor little things.
So every year I end up giving away a lot of seedlings.
Anyway,
I was wondering as a "what if" TEOTWAWKI, and I did find some seeds, would they grow?
I'm sure the germination rate would be way down, but what if.............
Will keep you posted.

Windy in Kansas · #6 02/21/08, 04:32 PM

When I moved a number of years ago I had more garden space so worked up enough to plant all of my old seeds. Some dabs of packets were more than 10 years old, some really old seeds had come from my parents, and of course I also planted current year seeds to get the varieties I wanted. I think every seed I planted must have grown. I seem to remember harvesting 87 watermelons that fall. That is quite a few for a family of three at the time.

This year, once again, I have some old seed and am thinking about planting every seed in my stash so that I can restock with fresh next year.

I expect what a lot of us should do is plant what we want and then ship the remainder of our seeds into a different gardening zone north of us so that each year most of us use fresh seeds instead of storing older seeds from year to year.
Of course shipping into different zones would me that varieties would have to be agreed upon, and that the varieties would do well in the next zone.

The blessing to old seeds is that you might have an older variety among the many packets that you or someone else would like to use again.

ldc · #7 02/21/08, 05:20 PM

I had tomato seed from 95 germinate yesterday! "double rich" variety from Seeds of Change! ldc

greg273 · #8 02/22/08, 11:25 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by hunter63

It's that time of year again and time to start the plants in the basement.
Geraniums, cut back and cutting set out to root, plants rerooted and are going.
Grand Experiment- Old seeds

Found tomato seed from 2001, 1999, 1993.
I set all the seeds in seperate containers, marked, I want to see if they still germinate.
Have new seed, but for some reason, I have a real bad time throwing old seed out.
Seems stupid, but that's the way it is.
Who knows, maybe some day this knowledge will come in handy?

Anyone else have this problem?

Definitely keep us posted! I found some heirloom tomato seeds from 05, I am hoping they sprout...

edcopp · #9 02/22/08, 12:06 PM

I had a small brown paper bag with some tomatoes in it, the bag was marked so that I knew what kind the were. I then promptly left it on the front porch and forgot about it for 10 years. The tomatoes were all shriveled up and dried. I split the fruits with my trusty pocket knife and picked out some seeds to plant. They grew and were very good too.

Paquebot · #10 02/22/08, 02:09 PM

Although the germination rate of some vegetable seeds drops off sharply after 2 years, some have a long storage life simply left in the packets. For commercial production of tomato seed, the general rule is to grow enough to cover 5 years of sales. At 5 years, the germination rate is almost the same as fresh seed. I bought Tigerella tomato seeds in Germany in 1990. Those seeds still germinated in 2006 despite no special treatment.

Martin

Danaus29 · #11 02/22/08, 06:44 PM

I've heard that tomato seeds will still have high viability even after 50 years if stored properly. Other sees may not sprout as well but it won't hurt to try. A few years back I had cotton growing from 10 year old seeds.

SimplerTimez · #12 02/23/08, 02:09 PM

Someone donated some seeds to me last year, which included some 10 (oops, they are 20 years old!)year old lettuce seeds. I heavily overseeded them two weeks ago thinking they would be low germination. Apparently nearly every darn one sprouted! On the other hand, the expensive organic salad seed that is less than 2 years old has not sprouted at all yet

Edited to show the proper age of the seeds.

hunter63 · #13 03/10/08, 06:42 PM

Happy to report that tomato seed for 1993, 1995, 1999, 2001, 2004, have all sprouted.

I guess I should have counted them to see what the germination rate was, but it looks like I will be giving away "starts" again this year.

tab · #14 03/10/08, 06:49 PM

Thanks for posting that. I have some old seed and I was wondering how you made out. I HAVE to get them started.