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Old 03-07-2012, 12:46 AM posted to rec.gardens
Brooklyn1 Brooklyn1 is offline
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First recorded activity by GardenBanter: Sep 2010
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Default "Filing' winter seeds

Higgs Boson wrote:

Finally neatening up my messy seeds. How to save the "winter" seeds
for next year? Radish, bokchoy, spinach, lettuce, sugar peas, carrots, etc.


In my experinece it's a false economy to save vegetable seeds; buy
only as much as you can use (share with a fellow gardener if you can).
There is no economy in planting old seeds that don't germinate. By
the time you realize they are useless you've lost the growing season.
Many years ago (~1970) I worked for a company that produced a product
called "Grow Sticks", wooden sticks similar to a tongue depressor with
a hole at the pointed end that contained a few veggie seeds held in
with water soluable wax. There were single pant kits, multiple plant
kits, and large kits that contained a variety of Grow Sticks with a
bag of fertilized planting medium. The darn things actually worked. I
was the one who built and maintained the automated machinary that put
the seeds and wax into the sticks. The company kept the seeds in a
large walk-in climate controlled humidor, but at the end of the
production cycle they discarded all unused seeds, because if they sold
seeds that didn't germinate they'd very quickly be out of business. I
worked there about six months building and grooming the machinery and
moved on to other projects but the company was in business for about
ten years and made a lot of money selling Grow Sticks at all the
retail stores across the US and probably elsewhere. I have a fairly
large garden (50'X50') but I don't save vegetable seeds... I've
suffered too many disappointments, vegetable seeds are cheap. In fact
I planted some left over mammoth sunflower seeds I had saved from last
year and after two weeks none germinated. I rushed out and bought a
new packet, a big $1.49, and after six days they began to stick their
heads up, I'm hoping that there are enough days left this season for
them to mature even though they are only used to feed birds. Don't be
a cheapo *******, buy new seeds each year.