Will my seeds still be good?

I have a rather large collection of vegetable seeds that were either given to me by generous davegarden members as well as store bought seeds, the dates range from 2005-2006. We have recently moved from Pensacola Fl to Mobile Al but in between our move we were sent to Spain for 3 months. Unfortunately I could not take the seeds with me so I had no choice but to leave them in a trailer for 4 months, and I know it got really hot and humid during these past months in that trailer. I really want to start a nice vegetable garden in my new house but I am affraid that the seeds might now be good anymore. What would you do, in my position?

Thanks

Carmen

I'd give them a try, you really have nothing to lose except a bit of time. The best place to store seeds is somewhere cool, dark, and dry so if it got too hot & humid in the trailer then there's a good chance you won't get much germination, but if you get lucky and some things come up then it saves you from having to go out and buy a bunch of new seeds. So you might as well give it a try.

I decided to plant them out yesterday, I have placed them in the top of my refrigerator. Tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers etc... I have some peas and beans as well but I wanted to plant them outside as soon as I get the raise beds going. How long should I wait to see if they germinate before I try new seeds?

We planted 2 packages of seed that expired in 2002, and both of them had some plants that came up. Cucumbers and beets.
Willing to bet they will grow :)

I'm not too worried about the age--many seeds stay good for quite a while. The concern here is the temperatures they were exposed to being in a hot trailer for a few months--if the temperatures were too high that could definitely ruin the seeds.

I think most of those seeds should germinate fairly quickly so if you don't see anything at all in a few weeks then it may be time to try some new ones.

I would tend to think that cold temps would be worse then hot temps. I could be wrong though. I had some seeds stored in our garage over the winter one year. I didn't know they were in there. Some of them did grow.
Go for it, I love planting seeds and watching them grow. If I can keep them away from my cat who thinks they are grass.
The process of germination in a bean is rather quick. After the bean has been planted in the soil and is watered, it takes only a week for it to germinate.
Let me google about the heat and get back to you :)

Hot and cold can both be bad--as far as which one's worse it all depends on exactly how hot or exactly how cold it got. The more extreme you are in either direction the more the chance that the seeds will be damaged.

Interesting googling I did.....Hmmmm

Even at air temperatures around 85F, dark colored seeds can sometimes become hot enough to sustain damage.

I am one who would go ahead and try them though.
Beans, one week
Snap Peas, 12 days
Cucumbers, about 4 to 7 days
Tomatoes, may take a few weeks to get to several inches tall
peppers, can take up to 21 days.

Thank you for all your replies. I planted them a little over a week ago, I actually planted about four seeds in each hole just to make sure that I was going to give my seeds a fair chance and some of them already came out. My cucumbers and melons where the first ones to come out and then my matters and just yesterday I saw peppers as well. Out of all the seeds that I planted I would think I had about 50% germination which is still pretty good considering the fact that not only my seeds were old but also that they all had that extreme heat in that trailor. Big red game me some really nice Lumpy Red tomato seeds back in 2005 and I really want to plant them out in his honor and thank God out of the 4 or 5 seeds I planted 2 little plants came out :). I decided to plant all the Lumpy Red matter seeds that were left in two other containers, I think that I placed about 4-5 seeds in each of the other containers, I did this about 4 days ago, so far I see nothing coming out but I guess it is to early to tell I guess.
On another note and this is not related to seeds, I am planing to have my DH build me some raise beds to plant all my veggies once established, my lot is not flat, actually the back is raised and then it slopes down towards the house. The other day we had lots of rain almost torrential and once the rain was gone I decided to step in my back yard and saw that in parts of my back yard the water does not penetrate the soil it just sits there in a puddle, and I mean a big one. I guess my question is, will my raise beds be O.K if I was to build a couple where it puddles or should I only look for high ground were it does not puddle?

I am betting if your soil in your beds is deep enough it won't be a problem.

Thank you! I am thinking of making it deep expecially because I want to grow carrots, beets etc...

Glad to hear they are coming up :)
50% isn't a bad average, since we are only getting 50% coming up with some of our new seeds this year. sigh :(

Sorry to hear that Kassy. Where did you buy those seeds? I've go pretty good results with the ones I bought this year, some are from Parks ( they had a big sale on seeds so I decided to go for it) and some that I bought from Lowes. My Jalapeno peppers are finnaly comming out, it really was taking them forever but this morning I spotted two little plants so I placed them under my growlights. All is looking good so far, I will probably end up with a lot more plants than I need but oh well maybe I'll give the left over to friends and neighbors. I also planted some purple basil and some genovese basil, they were all planted in the same container but I decided to separate the little seedling and place them in their own containers, I've heard that they grow taller and better this way.
Hope this year is a good one, I can't wait to start planting them out, it is still pretty hot though.

My boyfriend got them, and he probably got them from feed mill. He should have knowen that was a big mistake, as they couldn't get the order for baby chicks right, so why would things change? LOL
We do have some young tomatoes that seeded and grew in the garden. :)
And last year our garden got hit by a big hall storm, and when I say big, I mean the hail was. After that, it seemed like everything in the garden stopped growning.
A couple of pictures of the hail damage.
The holes it left in the ground.

An egg in one of the holes to show the size.

damage to the tomatoes.
Garden just seemed to say it was done growing then.

Wow Kassy, That's pretty bad hail there, sorry this happened. I still remember a couple of years ago we had a pretty bad hail storm in Pensacola, I had some windows outside since I was going to replace my old one and I remember my husband running towards the new windows trying to cover them up so they would not break, the hail was the size of golf balls, thank God he did not get hurt. I guess Mother Nature is not so kind sometimes. Since I live in the Gulf, I always have to be prepared for Hurricains. I really hope this year is different and you have a plentiful harvest. Don't give up :)

I wouldn't want the hurricanes carminator. My daugher-in-laws mother lives in Florida. She has tried to talk me into moving there a number of times to get out of the snow, but I told her the snow doesn't blow our house away :)
Her house got hit by 3 hurricanes in one year. Too much for me.
If there had been windows on the north side of the house, the side that the hail was coming from, they probably would have been broken.
He had roof damage to both the house and the garage, and siding damage to the garage.
Why are there no widows on the north side of the house? It was an old one room school house at one time. They never had windows on the north side, because back them, most of the storms came from the north.
I also grew up in what had been a one room school house at one time. When my Dad bought it, there were no windows on the north side.
OOPS, back to seeds :)