Seeds left in water

cedillamuerta · Thu Nov 29, 2012 7:03 am

I was cleaning some Virginia Pine seeds last night by putting them in water and extracting them after all the extra stuff was separated. I ended up having to go do something and I forgot them and left them floating in the water. I extracted them today and was wondering if they would be affected at all by that. They're dry now, but I'm just curious if any damage would have been done to them.

ElizabethB · Fri Nov 30, 2012 12:45 pm

Oh well. You can only try and see. This past spring I forgot about my bush bean seeds in water for 2 days. I planted them any way and had about a 10% germination rate compared to seeds that I had soaked for 4-6 hours 90% germnation. Yes you can soak your seeds too long.

cedillamuerta · Fri Nov 30, 2012 2:06 pm

Thanks for the reply. These were only left in the water for about 12 hours so maybe they're not too far gone. Do seeds need to be refrigerated or just kept dry and isolated?

ElizabethB · Sat Dec 01, 2012 1:16 am

IDK some people swear by refrigerating. I just keep mine in an envelope in my pantry. They do fine. I haven't noticed any decrease in germination rate.

rainbowgardener · Sat Dec 01, 2012 2:12 am

In my experience seeds just left out, stored in envelopes at room temperature don't do as well for me--not terrible but lowered germination rate. I store them in paper envelopes in frig or freezer. Haven't noticed any particular difference whether in frozen or just cold.

For seeds that need cold stratifying, just storing them dry in frig/freezer doesn't count. They need to be in moist potting soil and then the container wrapped and in cold storage.