Saving "outdated" seeds

[old mark]

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

[yy4me]

1. What Spring 08 seeds are you referring to, please? n/t

[old mark]

3. Flower and vegie seeds, in retail

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

[kestrel91316]

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".

[hippywife]

4. We've kept ours

in their original packaging in a zip lock bag on the door of the freezer.

[Kolesar]

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.

[old mark]

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