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Post by diane on Mar 31, 2020 0:25:05 GMT -5
I have seen several lists of seed longevity. They vary, depending upon the % germination the author thinks is best, though the vegetables maintain their same relative positions.
I have not yet seen the ultimate list - the one that lets me know that I can get 2% of my 20 year old seeds to germinate so I can grow a few plants and harvest some fresh seeds.
Does anyone know of such a list?
Diane
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Post by xdrix on Mar 31, 2020 3:28:34 GMT -5
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Post by diane on Mar 31, 2020 11:12:04 GMT -5
I do soak my difficult or old seeds in cold tea. It works well, but I haven't done a comparison with plain water.
I've been using tea leaves, but I have some teabags, and the leaves inside have been finely chopped - or are the sweepings from the floor, which we used to say. So a used teabag could be slit and used like a wee growbag. I'll try that.
The French chart is easy to understand. It is funny to see that a lot of the long-lived seeds are from red vegetables - beet, eggplant, pepper, radish, tomato, watermelon.
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Post by diane on Mar 31, 2020 12:29:55 GMT -5
I just realized that another bottle of weed seeds buried by Dr Beal on the campus of the University of Michigan in 1879 will be unearthed this year to see which seeds are still viable of the 21 kinds he buried in each of 20 bottles. They were first opened every five years, then every ten, and now every twenty. Verbascum and Malva germinated in 2000.
These are what he buried, and since some of them are vegetables, I have been trying to find how long each continued to germinate, but I haven't found that information yet.
(Agrostemma githago, Amaranthus retroflexus, Ambrosia artemisiifolia, Anthemis cotula, Brassica nigra, Bromus secalinus, Capsella bursa-pastoris, Erechtites hieracifolia, Euphorbia maculata, Lepidum virginicum, Malva rotundifolia, Oenothera biennis, Plantago major, Polygonum hydropiper, Portulaca oleracea, Rumex crispus, Setaria glauca, Stellaria media, Trifolium repens, Verbascum thapsus, Verbascum blattaria)
I now have the length of time seeds of each plant continued to germinate.
The ones that have species or varieties used as vegetables are these, though there is no guarantee that, for instance, sorrel seeds, a different species of Rumex, will last as long as his seeds of Rumex crispus.
Amaranthus 40 years
Brassica nigra 50 years
Lepidium 40
Malva 120 years
Rumex 80 years
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Post by xdrix on Mar 31, 2020 16:45:35 GMT -5
When i see the leaf of mustarde (brasica negra) i think at the leaf of radish (raphanus sativus).The leaf has exactely the same taste.flower is yellow for mustarde and white for radish and the root are different.
The seed could be cery nearby for me.
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Post by reed on Apr 3, 2020 7:54:58 GMT -5
I bought a canning jar with the old glass lid at a flea market one time. Inside was some beans about 1/2 of which had been reduced to dust by some kind of bug it looked like. What ever the bugs were, they were then just part of the dust. The wire bail was rusted so badly I had to break it off, the rubber seal had completely turned to a granular substance but still some residue of it had held a seal, I had to pry the lid off with a butter knife.
Three out of about 100 of those beans sprouted but promptly died.
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Post by flowerbug on Apr 3, 2020 9:39:30 GMT -5
i've heard of embroyo rescue but never done it. for those three seeds that germinated it might have helped them survive. if they were a very rare bean it would have been sad to lose them. yet i think that we really have all of the "old bean" genetics available in various forms and if we want to regress we probably could with the right equipment and of course $$$...
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Post by reed on Apr 4, 2020 19:02:21 GMT -5
I'm guessing those beans were easily 50 years old. Couldn't believe any sprouted at all, was real disappointed when they died. Still it's an illustration of how tough seeds can be. I often plant seeds that are five or even more years old and they sprout just fine. Even sweet corn stays good longer than commonly believed I think and I don't freeze my seeds.
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