When to replenish seed stock

[carolyn137]

Since for many years I was SSE listing many hundreds of varieties I had to do new seed production for many of them about every 5 years, which is what most SSE listed members still do.

I've never thrown out one saved seed since about 1990 so I have seeds galore in that back room, some in vials in 100 place scintillation boxes that I liberated from work, and then just in regular envelopes filed by year alphabetically.

They were and are stored at ambient temps, not cool and not in the dark, ambient temps back there no lower than about 65 F in the winter and much higher, of course, in the summer with added high humidity from time to time.

IMO, saving good seed starts with using a good way of doing that and for me that was fermentation and doing it well by monitoring the gas bubbles that appear along the inside of the containers, I used one pint clear plastic ones, then seeing the seeds drop to the bottom of the then completed fermentation.

Wet seeds then spread around on paper, not plastic plates, with my finger, picking out any maggots and drying those seeds slowly and not in the sun.

Someone above said what I did with older seeds. Up to 5 years I just sowed seed straight out, from about 5 to 10 years or so, I'd double sow, and from about 12 years and up, I'd treat the seeds as I'e described here many times.

My best save was waking up 22yo seed of September Dawn and the world record is still waking up 50 yo seed that was stored just in filing cabinets in the precursor to the first USDA site, and the 50 yo ones were at Cheyenne, WY and when transferred to the new USDA site in Ames, IA, where they were tested.

And yes, I'm one of many who has found that the seed viabiity of most heart varieties is less than others.

Ah, memories.

Carolyn

[tam91]

Thanks - I knew they lasted a long time, but wondered when germination started going downhill. So maybe time to replenish some of my favorites.