Starting Seeds

I have been starting seeds for years with much sucess. This spring I bought a number of seeds off of EBay from the Pacific Northwest. Seattle area and British Couumbia.
I had very poor sucess with these seeds. I'm thinking they were probably stored inside and never went through a cold period.
Do any of you have any thoughts on this subject

Paul

I store my seeds in the fridge, and I sow seeds requiring stratification outside in the autumn. I don't think storing seeds in cold conditions is the same as the cold period needed for germination, as the stratification is carried out in moist conditions so that the seed can absorb moisture and start to grow, and storage is in a dry state.

According to Norman Deno, storage changes the conditions needed to germinate some seeds, but this is not the same as starting them to germinate.

If the seeds you bought need to be stratified before they germinate, you would either have to sow them in moist compost or paper towels in the fridge, or wait until the autumn to sow them outside.

What type of seeds were they? Some seeds take several years to germinate.

Paul, here's a link to one of my favorite gardening resources:
http://home.online.no/~asles/methods.htm

When you click on this link, you'll see the Germination Methods List. Print it out.

Then click on the link to "Back to Seed Database". This table contains hundreds of plants arranged alphabetically. Next to each plant, you'll see a method number - refer to your printed list to see the explanation for how to germinate that particular plant.

Hope this helps! (If you have seeds that aren't on this list, please post them here, and we'll try to locate specific germination instructions for them.)

My computer says 'not found on this server'...what do I do now! I really am interested in trying to find a good 'seed sowing' advice site. Thanks.

I use this one all the time. I saved it to my desktop I was using it so much!
http://www.backyardgardener.com/tm.html

butrbean, I must be the kiss of death for seed starting databases. First the English version of Asle Serigstad's site went offline, so unless you speak Swedish (I think that's right) you're out of luck for now.

When that happened, I started referring people to Tom Clothier's site, but the last few times I've tried to hit it, it's down. But here's a new link to Tom's site: http://users.anet.com/~manytimes/

I just don't think I should recommend any more seed starting sites to folks, LOL!

Paulgrow,
What kind of seeds were they?
Michele

GV - I am a Tom Clothier Fan too. He emailed me last week or the week before to give new address. He was pretty upset because the people doing his website or url or whatever the heck you call all that stuff is not automatically sending users to the new one. I'm so glad you shared his new address. If I knew how to hyperlink I might have done it myself. :-) vic