How to grow Vegetable seeds

Are saved seeds OK to plant this year? Use this chart as a guide

This week, we made our list of seeds we wanted for the upcoming gardening season and placed our first seed order.#seeds

Before placing our order, we went through our stash of old seeds leftover from the past few years to see what we might be able to use this year. Theres no point in wasting them if theyre still good.

Despite all of the stories you hear of seeds lasting for decades or even centuries, typical garden seeds only last a few years at the most.

The size of the seeds are not an indicator of how long they will remain viable. For example, lets compare corn and cabbage seeds. Corn can be saved for only two years before losing viability. Cabbage seeds which are much smaller can be kept for up to five years.

I regularly refer to a chart that I put together several years ago that lists most of the common garden vegetable seeds along with the number of years they can be kept under normal household storage conditions. I've shared this with my blog readers before. I thought you'd like to see it again. Copy and paste it for future reference.

Five years

Watermelon#suntodayseeds

Vegetable seed viability chart@suntodayseeds

This chart assumes the seeds were in good shape going in to storage and that they were kept cool and dry in a dark location. A refrigerator fits the bill but a cupboard located in a dark corner of your house works almost as well.

I didnt put herbs in my chart but I can tell you most herb seeds are so fragile that they can only be kept for one year.

So what can you do with old seeds? Composting them is probably the best answer.

I usually toss them out to the chickens to give them something fun to do during the day. Scratching and pecking at seeds are their favorite pastime. The exception to that are bean seeds. Dry bean seeds contain toxic chemicals that will kill chickens. Old bean seeds go directly into the compost pile.

Any seeds that have been treated with chemicals go into the compost or should be thrown into the trash. Treated seeds are easily recognizable due to being dyed with bright pink or other bright warning color.

Planting time will be here sooner than you think. The average frost free date for the Detroit metro area is May 3. Meaning there is a 50 percent probability of the temperature dropping to 32F. Many gardeners consider the 50 percent date as when the planting season starts.

The count down is on to a happy New Year of gardening.

For more seeds pls check www.suntodayseeds.com