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I used to be a serious gardener, I maintained over a thousand square foot of garden space, developed my own varieties of vegetables and gave hundreds of pounds of produce away to neighbors on fixed incomes while producing a significant amount of our own food. Then our circumstances changed and we moved to the city for a decade and I had to be content with a few terra cotta pots on a small balcony.

Two years ago we moved back to the country. I had other priorities so I started a small garden and because I'm frugal and curious, I tested a number of old seeds left over from my heady days as a committed gardener when I bought seeds by the pound not by the packet.

I specifically planted them two times too thick, figuring I would have a poor germination rate and hoping the end result would be evenly spaced. Almost every seed germinated and I had too many seedlings too close together. No problem, it is easy to thin them and some of them make nice baby salad greens. Some plants were more vigorous than others, but in the end we had a nice small garden and a decent harvest considering.

After a year off, we started another garden this summer and we decided to use up the rest of the old seeds. Again I planted them slightly heavy because the seeds are old, but this time I had less than 20% germination rate. For some reason 10 year old seeds were fine but 12 year old seeds were not fine.

Oh well. I've got nicely tilled and weeded beds, I'll put in a fall crop of something.

TLDR: planted 10 year old seeds two years ago and they grew great. Same seeds two years later hardly grew at all.



June 27, 2022 at 08:57AM

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