Germinating old lettuce seed

[trixtrax]

This thread about old corn seed: alanbishop.proboards.com/thread/7480/25-year-old-corn-seed?page=1&scrollTo=93114

got me thinking about old lettuce seed. I grow out a few every year, but I am wanting to have a last chance effort at rescuing some older seed varieties I was given. They are mostly from 2001 to 2005.

Does anyone have any advice specifically for germinating old lettuce seed?

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Nov 3, 2013 14:00:20 GMT -5 trixtrax said:

Does anyone have any advice specifically for germinating old lettuce seed?

Lettuce seed germinates best at low temperatures, so don't overheat it during germination. I'd guess that 60 F is about right.

[trixtrax]

Absolutely assuming germination is attempted within the ideal range, I was wondering about any "secret sauces" to soak the seeds first in.

I wonder about Vit C or B vitamins.

Found this article about Nitric oxide for stimulating lettuce seeds to germinate: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10664127

Any thoughts?

[templeton]

No secret sauce, but I put mine on damp paper towel in a ziplok bag in the fridge for a few days before sowing in punnets.
T

[raymondo]

I did the same with some old seeds but left them in the fridge until germination. As each seed pushed out a root, I potted it up. Took over a week, once begun, for five seeds to germinate. The rest did nothing and eventually rotted.