A handful of seed

To grow a seed likes warmth and moisture, exactly what you should avoid when storing seeds! Can you recognise the seeds in the picture? They are all ones I’ve saved this year, answers at bottom of article.

Properly stored most seeds will keep and germinate well for several years, some - like tomatoes - can remain usable for a decade or more.

Storing seeds wisely enables you to save money and compare different varieties. I almost always grow more than one variety of each vegetable and there are often surprisingly large differences in how they perform and taste. This would be too expensive to do if I had to buy fresh seed for each variety every year so I take care of my seeds and add new varieties every year to sow alongside good performers from previous years.

Cool, dry and dark is how you should store your seeds.

The temperature in your fridge is about perfect for storing seeds - a near constant 5 C to 10 C (40 F to 50 F) is fine. To keep moisture out a well sealing glass jar is best, plastic containers don’t usually seal that well and plastic bags do let some moisture through. When you take your glass jar out from the fridge let it return to near room temperature before opening it to avoid condensation inside the jar (and hence near the seeds).

If you have seed that you will not use for near a year or more then storing in a freezer is excellent. Do take the above precautions to keep dry. I would take them out and put in fridge for a month before wanting to sow else they may be slow waking up.

I realize there is likely to be competition for your refridgeration space! Please don’t annoy your seed by taking it out for a few weeks and leave it in a warm room while the fridge is full with festive food, negotiate your space reasonably at the start then stick to your guns. Frequent spells of warming and cooling are a good way to prematurely age your seeds which is not what you want.

If, as likely, you have insufficient refrigerated space for all your seeds find the best cool and dark place with the most constant temperature that you can, and remember to keep the moisture out. Devise some perverse way of deciding which seeds get the best space ;)

Different seeds store well for different lengths of time. Most easily last 3 or 4 years stored in a fridge. Parsnips are one exception, germination in their first year is often little better than 50% and seems to halve in second year. Onion family tail off quite sharply after 2 or 3 years but that seems to be a bit dependent on variety.

Some links about seed storage and viability:
http://hillgardens.com/storeseeds.htm
http://www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/garden/07221.html
http://hillgardens.com/seed_longevity.htm
http://www.ipm.iastate.edu/ipm/hortnews/1995/3-3-1995/seedv.html
http://www.montana.edu/wwwpb/pubs/mt9905.html

I would say the above tend to be pessimistic, I have got 90% germination from own saved tomato seed (var. Red Alert) that was stored at cool room temperature in a paper envelope for 12 years. Even I was surprised!

I prefer to buy seeds online for many reasons. Seed merchants usually store their seeds in more ideal (cool and dry) situations than are typical in a retail outlet, if you do buy seeds in shops it’s worth prefering those with an inner sealed foil packet since these are protected from moisture at least. The choice online is vastly larger than shops can provide and you can compare what is available at your leisure. You’ll find many more unusual varieties, too, for example I’ve been very happy with italian sources for my courgette (zuccini) seed in recent years. Unless I’m desperate to get seeds for specific varieties that might be in short supply I usually wait till mid January to order most seeds.

Then there’s price, seeds are often much cheaper direct from less well known seed merchants than they are from the well known suppliers in pretty packets at retail outlets. I reckon I save well over 50% compared to retail prices. That can be a considerable saving, in 2007 we spent about �120 on seeds for TUE (The Utopia Experiment) despite me already having about two-thirds of our needs.

Another way of minimising seed costs is to save your own. I do this whenever I can and will tell you lots more about it another time. BUT you will need to use open pollinated varieties, not hybrid varieties (like F1 and F2 hybrids) which do not breed true. For some vegetables it’s quite hard to find good non-hybrid varieties but they are available if you look.

Working out what seed you have and need to buy can be quite a task. Last year when starting TUE I did a detailed inventory of what seeds I already had and we might wish to buy. You can see the info here:
http://utopiaexperiment.pbwiki.com/Seed+Stocks

We’ve been doing an inventory of our current seed stocks for Phoenix and hope to post it online soon, you’ll be able to watch our seed puchase planning unfold.

My next couple of articles here will be on suggested seed suppliers. I have plenty of info on UK seed merchants but not so much on US and other countries so if you have any you’d like to recommend please let me know with a comment.

Pictured seeds from top, clockwise: borlotto bean ‘Ligua di Fuoco’, carrot ‘Yellowstone’, runner (pole) bean ‘Polestar’, spring cabbage ‘Offenham 2′, beetroot ‘Choggia’.