Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Planted some old seeds

The classic time to plant a garden here is memorial day because we usually get some frosts in May. Anyway I put in some green house grown tomatoes and peppers, plus some seeds. I had left over zucchini seeds from 2018, and I bet they all germinate. I also found some retro 2004 cantaloupe seeds, so we sowed those. I wonder if they will germinate?
A few years ago there was a story in the local paper. A old timer found some heirloom tomato seeds he has saved in a jar for something like 30 years. He gave them to the son of the guy that originally grew them. Anyway the son planted the seeds and had a big variety of heirloom tomatoes. So the son became the local heirloom tomato grower just like his dad, and the son is pretty big time at the local ag fair. So the hobby was passed on with 30 year old seeds.

Seeds can stay viable a long time under the right conditions. Years ago I worked for a seed company. There was a large cellar under the building that they used for seed storage. One day the warehouse manager came in with a bag of about 20lb of carrot seed that he'd found in a back corner. The lot # showed that it was nearly 40 years old. The boss had me run a germ test on it and I got a 65% germination.

I’ve had seeds ten years, they came up fine.

I have bought and planted out of date wildflower seeds on my bank several times, and they didn't germinate either time. I guess they were older than the package said or were a scam from the company.

Grass seed, and soybean seeds lose gemmation fast. Corn, and weeds seem to last forever.

Keep them dry and bugs out of them and they will germinate forever. I put leftover seeds in a coffee can and store them in the chest freezer. They always come up.

Wildflowers can be very difficult to germinate. Many of the seeds need sunlight. In nature, they lay on the surface in damp soil while the sun gets them going.

I tried to find the original tomato seed story but I found articles on germination at 50 years. Another store said 80 years.

http://www.tomatodirt.com/old-tomato-seeds.html

I heard some seeds like that need frozen. We pick annual wild flower seeds and leave them in the shed all winter. We add that stock to a new bag or two of butteryfly/humming bird mix. We grow some big areas some years if I get an urge to till. This year I put in about a 1/4 acre. I plowed and seeded in april, and it looks like I have a good batch started. I don't know the germination rate on our recycled seeds because we mix them with fresh seeds. I should put some in a bowl and see the rate.

About 8 years ago, a 93 year old woman had me dig through her freezer for some seeds that her and mother used plant and save/plant and save, etc.

They were dried and dated 1979 in a Sanka coffee jar.

Speckled butterbeans.

They all did really well,

Kelvinator chest freezer by the way, old school with frost

My partner, who has a PhD in horticulture, tried for years to germinate elderberry seeds. He tried every trick in the book and never got a single one up. Yet in the wild, they're thick. They're also impossible to transplant because of all the rocks. The roots wrap around them. He wanted them to try to draw birds away from his fruit trees.

Still planting Collard seed from 1976 from a quart mason jar from my grandfathers sister. She gave to me and said they had been in family for over 100 years at that time and to keep passing them on. My son of 30 is still growing and leaves a plant for seed ever year to keep going. Yes they only see daylight to be planted out of freezer....

I found some old seeds in the shed when I was rearranging things. The radishes are up, the carrots are either taking their time or not planning on showing up.

I bought a pack of sweet 100 cherry tomato seeds off of amazon about 6 weeks ago. I planted about a dozen in peat moss planter cups and put them on shelves in the south facing windows of my garage. So far only 1 has come up.

The celebrity seeds I bought at a local store have all came up and so has my pumpkin, squash, and onion starts. Sweet 100s, bell peppers, and cucumber starts no luck.

Bb

Do Mary Jane seeds keep well?

Occasionally a story comes out about some seeds from ancient Egypt that are planted and grow. All of them so far have been debunked. A seed that's viable after 50 to 75 years is extremely rare. The only way to keep a seed longer than that is to freeze it in liquid N. While seeds are dormant, they're still living things and are using energy at a very slow rate. Sooner or later they run out.

The story of seeds from ancient Egypt is true as far as I know.

The seeds were a type of wheat . It looks like a cross between rye and wheat. It has been grown in north central Montana for many years.

Also there is a story about honey taken from a tomb that was still good.

Stranger than fiction. Maybe

Honey story might be true. Kept dry, it is basically anhydrous sugar and does not deteriorate.

It's called emmer wheat. The species is several thousand years old but what was thought to be actual seeds that old turned out to be false. It's still raised in a few locations in the middle east so none of the seeds are that old.

some seeds need to pass through a bird's digestive system to germinate, when I did my chili Pequin seeds I soaked them in a vinegar solution. only about 10% germinated.