tomatoes
Senior Member
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Post by tomatoes on Jun 19, 2018 21:00:17 GMT 10
I have some sprouting seeds - kale, cabbage and others - stored in mason jars that have been vacuum sealed. They were then just put on the shelf, not in the frig/freezer. I just decided I didn’t have room there so I’d see how they went. Haven’t been growing sprouts as much for the past 18 months or so.
Last week I bought a pkt of broccoli seeds to sprout, so I did a tray of those (use by date of sometime in 2020) and added a tray of kale seeds from the ones I had stored. They were use by Sep 2017, so I expected that I wouldn’t get as good a rate of germination, but I expected something.
They’ve been going for 4 days and the broccoli (new seeds) has sprouted really well. I cannot see any sign of sprouting at all from the kale (old seeds) though.
My theory that as long as I have quite a lot of seeds it doesn’t matter if they are a little out of date was wrong. I thought the germination rate would just drop but at this stage it’s zero germination for the out of date seeds.
I’ll be putting in a seed order next week and will have to rethink how to store them!
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Post by SA Hunter on Jun 19, 2018 23:45:33 GMT 10
Funny that - I ordered some Siberian Tomato seeds - cold resistant - planted about 10 seeds - only 1 came up - use by date was about 2020.
Then I have planted carrot seeds 5+ yrs out of date, and over half came up!
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Post by spinifex on Jun 20, 2018 19:31:52 GMT 10
I have some sprouting seeds - kale, cabbage and others - stored in mason jars that have been vacuum sealed. They were then just put on the shelf, not in the frig/freezer. I just decided I didn’t have room there so I’d see how they went. Haven’t been growing sprouts as much for the past 18 months or so. Last week I bought a pkt of broccoli seeds to sprout, so I did a tray of those (use by date of sometime in 2020) and added a tray of kale seeds from the ones I had stored. They were use by Sep 2017, so I expected that I wouldn’t get as good a rate of germination, but I expected something. They’ve been going for 4 days and the broccoli (new seeds) has sprouted really well. I cannot see any sign of sprouting at all from the kale (old seeds) though. My theory that as long as I have quite a lot of seeds it doesn’t matter if they are a little out of date was wrong. I thought the germination rate would just drop but at this stage it’s zero germination for the out of date seeds. I’ll be putting in a seed order next week and will have to rethink how to store them! Seeds are tiny living things. They need some oxygen to survive. I wonder if vacuum packing actually suffocated the poor little blighters. |
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tomatoes
Senior Member
Posts: 1,065
Likes: 1,089
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Post by tomatoes on Jun 20, 2018 19:56:05 GMT 10
I have some sprouting seeds - kale, cabbage and others - stored in mason jars that have been vacuum sealed. They were then just put on the shelf, not in the frig/freezer. I just decided I didn’t have room there so I’d see how they went. Haven’t been growing sprouts as much for the past 18 months or so. Last week I bought a pkt of broccoli seeds to sprout, so I did a tray of those (use by date of sometime in 2020) and added a tray of kale seeds from the ones I had stored. They were use by Sep 2017, so I expected that I wouldn’t get as good a rate of germination, but I expected something. They’ve been going for 4 days and the broccoli (new seeds) has sprouted really well. I cannot see any sign of sprouting at all from the kale (old seeds) though. My theory that as long as I have quite a lot of seeds it doesn’t matter if they are a little out of date was wrong. I thought the germination rate would just drop but at this stage it’s zero germination for the out of date seeds. I’ll be putting in a seed order next week and will have to rethink how to store them! Seeds are tiny living things. They need some oxygen to survive. I wonder if vacuum packing actually suffocated the poor little blighters. Interesting idea. Especially as lots of us vacuum pack food to make it last longer. I had always assumed that as long as my grains/beans weren’t too old I could possibly grow from them - especially as they’re all organic. I do have at the end of a very long to do list that I need to test that, but maybe it’s more important than I thought. |
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