http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=353x1948This is new ("new" for the lesser forums on Skins's island), and so apparently no primitive's been at this bonfire other than the old primitive who originally posted it.
old mark Donating Member (505 posts) Wed Jun-25-08 09:09 AM
Original message
Saving "outdated" seeds
We are having large-scale work done in our yard this summer, and have been growing salad vegies in windo-box plastic planters on the patio. We found that the Spring '08 seeds were all recalled from the stores, but we had some seeds from previous years in ziplock bags in the freezer.
We planted them, and they are growing just fine. We found we only use small amounts of the seeds in the standard retail packets, so we will be freezing the remainders and using them in future years.We have had success with seeds up to 5 years old. Just keep them in the original packet, tape them shut, put the packets into one big plastic bag and freeze them. Works great.
I dunno.
I think "dating" seeds is a marketing ploy by the garden-seed industry, to get people to buy new ones instead of using old ones they already have.
One time I did income taxes for somebody in the big city, a really tiny modest job, no big deal, and I knew at the time he had a couple of boxes of Dollar General flower and vegetable seeds in his garage. Not needing the money or anything, I suggested that since he was going to throw them out anyway, I'd take them in payment, as I wished to jazz up this real-estate.
These seeds had expired 4, 5, 6 years previously.
These were all sorts of seeds, although I tried putting the vegetable seeds apart from the flower seeds.
This place looked like a middle-of-the-Sandhills botanical garden by the end of summer.
And so I dunno; perhaps the quality of the plant that erupts is lesser from old seeds, than from new seeds, but essentially, even ancient seeds seem to sprout, no problem at all.
