Using Old Vegetable Seeds

This is just what frugal gardeners do, right? We try to use up all of the seeds in a packet, even if that packet is 3, 4, or 5 years old. It just feels wrong to us to throw them away without at least giving them a shot.

Like all gardeners, I have several of those old packets of seeds. I have 4 options with those seeds. 1) I could just toss them and start fresh with new seeds. 2) I could gamble on them sprouting in my garden and plant those seeds directly into the garden soil. 3) I could trial some of the seeds in a damp paper towel inside of a ziploc bag and placed in a warm spot in the kitchen, to see what percentage will sprout. Or 4) I could plant the seeds indoors in small-celled flats, keep warm and under lights, then transplant any tiny seedlings from the batch out into the garden once their big enough to move.

We already established that I'm not about to throw away seeds that could still have life in them.

My garden space is limited, so I don't want to just seed my garden with questionable seeds. If I were to devote a 4-foot square block to beet seeds and only a quarter of the seeds sprouted, I would have wasted all of the little pockets of bare soil in between the tiny seedlings from seeds that did sprout.

While option number 3 is very scientific (telling me exactly what proportion of seeds would sprout, if directly seeded in the garden, and then adjusting the quantity of seeds per planting hole accordingly), it sounds like a lot of extra work, when my aim is just to get some veggies to grow for our table.

Option number 4 is what I went for. I started seeds, old and new, in small-celled containers indoors.

I discovered that some seeds just don't last that long. For example, my yellow crookneck squash did not sprout at all. I planted 8 seeds in 4 cells and zero sprouted. These seeds were 6 years old. I still had about 6 seeds leftover in the packet, so I went ahead and plugged those seeds into the soil that didn't produce any sprouts. If they sprout, then good, I'll have some crookneck squash. But if they don't, I'm not out anything extra at this point. I did have success with my zucchini seeds, which is another type of summer squash, so we'll be fine in that department, at least.

I also discovered that 5 year old beet seeds do have quit a bit of viability. I started the beet seeds about 8 days ago and I have sprouts in a little over half of the cells, starting 1 to 2 seeds per cell (I aimed for 1 seed per cell but sometimes an extra would fall from my fingers). I'll wait another week and then carefully transplant all of the sprouted beet seeds/tiny seedlings to the garden. (You usually don't start root vegetables in containers, as these plants need lots of root space and soil nutrients to grow the vegetable. For that reason, I'll plant these out much sooner than I would plants like tomato or zucchini when started in a flat indoors.)

In all honesty, I think that option 3 is really the "smart" option, starting 10 seeds in a damp paper towel. The humidity is more controlled in a ziploc bag than in an open flat. If zero seeds sprouted, I could conclude that 6-year old seeds of a particular type are likely worth planting in the garden. But, hey, I don't always do the smartest thing. 


I read something interesting in the news the other day. In addition to everything else that screams self-sufficiency, garden centers and seed catalogs are rapidly selling out of seeds far earlier this year compared to other years. It seems that not only are we all baking bread and coloring our hair at home (yes, Walmart suggested that hair color is on the panic-buy list, too), but we are also all growing our own produce this summer. 

Of all of the hoarding or buying certain items when you've never done so before, I think starting a vegetable garden is one of the most helpful for all of us, as home gardens can help take the pressure off of tight food supply situations by creating more supply, even if that supply is private. This means that people who don't have the option to have a garden will have more to choose from in the stores and hopefully won't have to pay crazy high prices for a head of lettuce or fresh tomatoes this summer.

In my opinion, the home garden is so satisfying. Not only does it provide lots of fresh and delicious food for my family, but watching it all grow is exciting, too. Doing this frugally, by trying to use all of the viability in my aging vegetable seeds, was extremely satisfying for this tightwad gardener.