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How Long Can You Keep Seed?

F

fregienewbee

Member
I know weed and wildflower seeds remain viable for years in the soil, but how long will crop seeds remain viable? Often it's cheaper to buy a whole bag of seed for food plots when you only need a few pounds.

Larry in MIchigan
 
A seed man told me grass seed would not last as long as clover or hard seed. Properly stored seed should last two or threeyrs. PS He said Cocleburr could wait over 20 yrs. and still make a good stand, I believe that!
 
i had some tomato seeds from 3 years ago and about 1/3 of them actually came up and produced well. don't know about other veggie seeds.
 
Just recently I saw a report where seeds were propagated which were found in a tomb [in China]. adjudged to be 2000 years old, so it may depend on the circumstances etc. I fare better in a conducive atmosphere.
 
When I was in high school, I worked at a feed store that sold garden seed. Early in the spring we would "test" any seed that was left over from the previous year. We would count out 100 seeds and space them out on a damp towell, cover them and put them in a warm well lit spot. After a couple of days we would see how many sprouted. Not exactly scientific but it worked. Some of the seed would hold up fairly well even after 4-5 years. Incidently the seed with the worst germination was Johnson grass.:>0
 
It"s hard to believe that johnson grass has the worse germination rate. I think it has a 99.9% germination rate around here.
 
Beans fade away fast, maybe ok for one year extra. But likely see less vigor.

Corn can last several years. No prob keeping an extra year, 3 might work just fine.

Storage - no sun, stable cool temp, and keeping the little fuzzy critters out is the hard part.

--->Paul
 
After you have finished planting, put your left over seed in the freezer in an air-tight zipper seal bag. It will add a couple years to the life of most seed versus leaving it exposed.
 
If you"re not dealing with a large amount (200 -300 lbs) bay leaves (found with the spices at the grocery store) will keep the weavils out. Take 4 or five and crumble in your hand, then mix with the seed.

If you store in a plastic bag, be sure to use the heavy, freezer weight bags. The bugs will chew right through the lighter weight bags. You can also double bag. That"s pretty effective in keeping the nasty rascals out.
 
Sold 300 bu. of winter wheat seed to a neighbor last fall, had been in the bin for 5 or 6 years, came up pretty well-enough that he had a pretty fair crop.
 
I've read that Sudangrass which is a close relative of Johnsongrass will lose half of it's germination rate if held over for only one year. So I believe it.
 
Store in a cool, dry, dark place. Whenever you decide to use it just do a germination check on it. Wheat seed stored in Egyptian tombs for thousands of years has been grown successfully, mostly for research.
 
Field corn will last at least 10 years with no special care. we had had left over stubs of bags just set in a big wood box in an outbuilding for years ading a bag or two each year, finally decided I was going to use it up, mixed all bags of a size together. Different sizes in different rows with new seed in one row and in the end could not tell what was the old seed. Had timothy that was at least 15 years that still grew, the landlord that had it hadn't farmed for at least that long and how long he had the seed before no way to know.
 
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