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old mark Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jun-25-08 08:09 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Saving "outdated" seeds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.

mark
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yy4me Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jun-25-08 04:23 PM
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1. What Spring 08 seeds are you referring to, please? n/t
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old mark Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-26-08 06:10 AM
Response to Reply #1
3. Flower and vegie seeds, in retail
Edited on Thu Jun-26-08 06:12 AM by old mark
packages from stores. We are currently growing verious salad greens and parsley from frozen seeds several years old we did not use when they were new.
We have also frozen seeds we saved from pumpkins and several fruits, but have not tried them yet.
mark
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kestrel91316 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jun-25-08 05:19 PM
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2. I kept all my old seeds in the fridge and only pulled them out to plant them.
Some of them kept for over 5 years.

IIRC, onion and related seeds are the least likely to carry over from year to year. I think this might be covered in Suzanne Ashworth's excellent book "Seed to Seed".
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hippywife Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jun-28-08 10:28 PM
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4. We've kept ours
in their original packaging in a zip lock bag on the door of the freezer.
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Kolesar Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jul-08-08 12:00 PM
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5. I put silica-gel-dessicant into an envelope with my seeds in the refrigerator
The silica gel is sold in craft stores for drying flowers. It turns blue when it gets saturated with water. You can bake the silica gel in the oven to drive the moisture off.

The product is basically activated sand. It is so inert that food companies even put it into some foods to keep the food pourable.
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old mark Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Aug-05-08 06:21 AM
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6. Follow-up; all old frozen seeds are successful this year.
The various salad greens came up first, as did spinach and the 5 year old swiss chard is doing fine.


mark
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