agongos
Full Member
Posts: 18
Joined: Sun Jan 02, 2011 6:28 am
Location: Northern Wisconsin

Storing seeds

What is the best way to store seeds for the 2012 & beyond planting seasons.
Instead of buying a little packet of seed for 3 bucks, I bought larger quanties, (1000 seeds for 6 bucks). I plant 34, forty foot rows of vegetable each year. I read on-line that most vegetable seeds keep for years, with a few exceptions like corn and spinach. Lots of conflicting info on-line, as usual. Here's what I've done, & I'd like opinions please:

- Got seeds in mail last week.
-Seperated out of each package what I thought I'd plant in 2011,& vaccum pact the seed for this year and stored in fridge.
-Vaccum packed original large seed pacakge, & will store in a critter proof container in the basement.
Low temps and no humidity is most important right? Should left over, stored seeds be kept in basement, refridgerator, or freezer? I know for sure I messed up on a few things I bought. Like five pounds of greenbean seeds. I'm 60 years old and five pounds of greenbean seeds will last longer than me! :wink:

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jal_ut
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Posts: 7447
Joined: Sun Jan 18, 2009 10:20 pm
Location: Northern Utah Zone 5

I think they will be fine in the basement as long as they are in a container that keeps the humidity low. Lettuce seed is only good for about 3 years. I have kept cucumber seed for 6 years and it still came OK. I don't know on a lot of the other varieties. I always have a bit of seed from last year, or maybe two years ago and it will grow. I germinated some wheat that was eleven years old and it came 50%. It had been sealed in a can in the basement. You do lose some viability each year it seems.

Six years ago I bought enough seed to plant my whole garden, twice. I sealed half of it in a #10 can and put it on the shelf in the basement. This was a backup in the event it became impossible to get seed for some reason. I need to plant it, I guess, and see how it fared, to complete the experiment. In any event, I need to buy fresh seed for this purpose and store it for bad times.

There is a local garden store that buys seed in bulk, and will sell enough for this years planting for about 60 cents a packet. Corn and beans are more because of its size, but still much less than mail ordering packets from any of the nurseries I have looked at online, or those that send out catalogs. I don't mind buying fresh seed each year at these local prices.

TZ -OH6
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Posts: 2097
Joined: Fri Jul 25, 2008 7:27 pm
Location: Mid Ohio

I heard only one year for lettuce, but that might be to guarantee high germination of seeds that were already sitting around before sale.


I would separate out the seeds for each year and put them in the deep freeze. If I were just going to open a pack and take out the seeds I needed each year I might go with the refrigerator. Freeze thaw/w ith associated condensation is not as good as continuous freezing. Some seed banks use ultra cold freezers (-180F). The new international seed bank in Norway simply has everything in a permafrost cave at a recommended temp of 0F.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svalbard_Global_Seed_Vault



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