Seed Sowing

I have most of my seeds now. Mainly from Klaus down at GreenVegetableSeeds.com in County Leitrim.  I was thinking about how I have never really saved my own seeds from one year to the next and it suddenly hit me, I might have been heavily influenced by big companies and advertising.

 We’re told that F1 seeds will either be sterile or resort back to a weaker strain and also that the viability of any other seeds reduces after a few months, especially if they don’t come in hermetically sealed envelopes. It feels like I have been hoodwinked a bit, like being told that the best bread is from the shops because they have additives in them to preserve the loaf for longer, or that the only good product is the one with a big multinational brand name on it and some fancy packaging.

 It’s not in the big seed companies interests to hold seeds for longer than the growing season, in fact it’s said,  the large companies collect all of the unsold stock from around the country at the end of the year then burn them all. Of course I don’t know if that’s true but they do seem to disappear from the shelves every winter. 

Acclimatise

Seeds, and the plants that come from theses seeds could take years to acclimatise to an area and buying them from a central source away from your local area every year doesn’t give the plants time to adapt to local weather conditions. That’s why it’s been so refreshing to get the stock from Klaus this year. He has spent years acclimatising certain varieties of vegetables to the Irish climate.

In the coming year I will try to harvest at least some seeds from the plants I produce and experiment to see if they are as healthy as this year.  Klaus can rest assured that it won’t stop me from buying seeds from him next time though. The main reason for this is that I would need somewhere to store them over the winter and I have a bit of a reputation for putting things in safe places, never to find them again.

I was looking for a few of last year’s seeds in the garden to start sowing as an experiment but only found a few old bean pods that were left behind and not collected. The dogs have been chewing them so I don’t think they will be worth replanting. I have compiled a list of the common veggies that we plant and the amount of time they stay fresh enough to plant, keeping them in a place where it’s cool, dark and dry of course.

How long do seeds last?

·         Artichokes -5 years

·         Beans    -3 years

·         Beets    -4 years

·         Broccoli -3 years

·         Brussels Sprouts -4 years

·         Cabbage -4 years

·         Carrots                 -3 years

·         Cauliflower -4 years

·         Celery/Celeriac -5 years

·         Chard -4 years

·         Corn -2 years

·         Cress -5 years

·         Cucumbers -5 years

·         Fennel -4 years

·         Kale -4 years

·         Kohlrabi -4 years

·         Leeks -1 year

·         Lettuce -5 years

·         Melons -5 years

·         Mustard -4 years

·         Onions 1 year

·         Peas -3 years

·         Peppers -2 years

·         Pumpkins -4 years

·         Radish   -5 years

·         Spinach -2-3 years

·         Squash                 4 years

·         Tomatoes -4 years

·         Turnips                 5 years

It’s claimed that seeds lose their viability after a while so if you have older seeds put some out on a damp tissue to see if they germinate.  I was looking at flower seeds too and most of these have a 1-2 year life expectancy on the packets. There’s no easy answer, all seeds are different but it’s worthwhile collecting as many seeds as you can to germinate again next year.

What have we got to lose?