Does table salt harm seeds?

[Dave1337]

Hi,

All of my cucumber seeds from last year developed some kind of black powdery mold. A few months ago I bathed the seeds in a salt bath, dried them back out and stored them in a container with some table salt. That seems to have fixed the black mold problem.

Looking at them now... they appear extremely dried out and kinda like those baked sunflower seeds you buy at the gas station.

Did I ruin my batch of seeds? Does salt kill the seed?

Thanks.

[Worth1]

I bought a bag of shelled salted sunflower seeds at the airport.
They tasted rancid so when I got home I dumped them on the ground.
They sprouted.
Worth

[bower]

Dave, it sounds like the salt bath did harm your seeds. A salt bath is more dangerous than salt sprinkled on the outside as in Worth's sunflower seeds. If they sucked up the liquid, they are probably toast.
But you can always find out for sure by trying to germinate them.

[Dave1337]

Well,

Originally Posted by bower

But you can always find out for sure by trying to germinate them.

I saved about ten times more than I need so hopefully I can get 10% of them to germinate.

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by Dave1337

Well,



I saved about ten times more than I need so hopefully I can get 10% of them to germinate.

What I would do is to soak however many seeds you want to , at least 25, in distilled water,changing that water several times before you go to bed. And I do think it's entirely possible that you could get the salt out of most of those seeds and ramp up the germination percentage.

Based on my stupidity of hand fertilizing a few tomato plants,young ones,with a hand of triple phosphate,don't ask,the foliage had turned yellow, I yanked out those plants and put them in a pail of water,changed that water frequently, and what was initially yellow foliage, dropped off and new foliage was a lovely deep green.

Carolyn