Extra seed containers

Blooma....Please, oh please, tell me where you find the iris seeds?I've never noticed any seed pods (Am I blind?) I break off spent blossoms. Is that where the seeds are and I'm throwing them away? Did you gather seeds one year, then plant and bloom the next year? Thanks. Elaine

EIB,
LOL, I come to your rescue!!
Don't feel bad! For years I never saw any pods either----until 2009. They are hard to miss when they are there.
When an iris flower is pollinated---bee or otherwise, a green lump will develop in a week just under the fading flower, see 4th photo.

All the pods shown I cross pollinated by hand. In general, it takes 2 to3 years for seeds to bloom. This year they bloomed at 14 months much to my surprise. 5th photo. Since I have seedlings that bloomed at age 3, the only explaination is all the rotted horse manure I hand dug in the fall prior to planting. Likewise, daylilies seedlings bloomed, which were growing alongside in the same seedling nursery.

This message was edited Nov 15, 2013 10:12 PM

Hi Lilly,

Elaine said that "I've never noticed any seed pods... I break off spent blossoms." Is it possible that she is removing the part of the iris bloom that develops into a seed pod? Great pictures, by the way.

ZM

Hi ZM,
Thank for the compliment.

That is possible. She will have to chime in on that question. Could be that she broke the dying bloom off as soon as it wilted. By that time it is too early to see if there are pods starting. It takes a week to show up. She will know by next summer.

Nice pods Blomma and really nice pics! BTW, what is that little beauty daylily cultivar on your avatar? She's such a clear pink!

Mipii, Thanks. The DL name is SOFT SUMER NIGHT (Stamile 1996) a Tet. It is a very pretty pink.

No please...thank-you! I'd like to say I don't fall in love easily but, when it comes to plants...not so much. Although, some strike me much harder than others...that one is a beaut. I've got to have it!

Hi, Bill - -

Like almost every DG member, I started out drying seeds and storing them in ziplock baggies. Several years later, I found out that was possibly the least good I could do.

Seeds are living things. Living things eventually suffocate in closed plastic bags or in tightly-covered plastic containers. Dried seeds will stay dry and yet breathe well enough if placed into either glassine (expensive & hard to find) envelopes or in "coin" envelopes that you can buy by the hundreds at office supply stores. I use N°3 coin envelopes mostly - - about the same size as a 2" x 3" zip-baggie. Unless you have a very humid environment in your home where the seeds are stored, either type of envelope will permit sufficient air to be available to your seeds while they are in their dormancy, waiting to be sown.

Coin envelopes are superior to plastic zipbags in other ways - - you can write on them with many different types of instruments, not just sharpie pens. The information is lots harder to be rubbed off if in pencil, ballpoint or gel pen ink.

Their major drawback is that they cost more than plastic baggies - - they do not come in the smaller quantities as some baggies are sold. They come in boxes of 250s and you will need to use scotch tape for closures if you do not seal their gummed flaps.

But any humidity left on the seeds will not fester and awaken possible fungi spores just waiting to kill off your seeds - - coin envelopes will help "breathe" away minute amounts of moisture still on your seeds at the time they are packed away. With sealed plastic, the moisture is trapped inside - - not only there for seeds to sprout prematurely but also for spores of fungi to be awakened. And the fungi don't care as much about the lack of air as your seeds will.

Are you afraid to sleep now? LOL. Many folks have great success using the zip bags because most of us are pretty careful to dry things out really well, even if chaff is included with seeds. And, if you are going to sow the seeds in the next season, there's a very good chance enough air was locked in the baggie. But if you are storing heirloom seeds, you may want to be keeping some of them packaged up for long periods and that is when you should give consideration to putting the seeds into paper envelopes, or coin envelopes.

Ever notice that most commercial seed packages are made of paper? The reason is mainly to keep their shelf life viable during transportation, storage, and display in the store, as well as wherever you might squirrel the packages away in your home. Notice I wrote most, not all.

Some commercial seeds come in outer envelopes made of paper and the seeds themselves are sealed inside a smaller inner envelope. I haven't got much info to lend to you, Bill, about why that is done. It's been my experience, though, that the seeds are generally quite small and perhaps the packaging is so none are lost when the outer paper is torn open.

OK - - now you have MTCW on this subject.

Welcome to the addiction . . . and

A T B T Y !           ~           £az£o    ;--)

Oh Lazlo I'm freaking out now!
I hope you weren't pissed that I sent your seeds in little ziplocs! That must have been pretty annoying considering your above comment! So sorry! Honestly, both seeds were dried real well and are from this season, so I'm sure they're fine, but now I will be a busy bee finding the coin bags or glassine envelopes to repackage.
I have to admit, I've been looking for a good excuse to repackage the majority of my stash/hoard anyway, this time adding sticker labels with a picture and sowing directions. My stash spreadsheet is almost finished and once it is, the next step of making seed packet labels should be a piece of cake! I hope lots of DGers read this article and reconsider the way their seed is packaged and just as importantly, how it's stored!! I have received a few trades where upon closer look I see condensation inside the bag or even worse.. mold.. major bummer :(
Anywho, thanks for the info and hope you will consider trading with me again in the future.. I swear I'll ditch the plastic!

Becky - no problems, neighbour. Whenever I get seeds in, I try to make time to dust them with ground cinnamon and then repackage them in coin envelopes.

BTW - - what also works pretty well is taking plain, white business-size envelopes, cutting them in half and then taping the cut sides to get 2 seed storing envelopes. This works the very best with envelopes that have a more rectangular opening at the back rather than a deep triangular "V" opening . . . better protection from spillage. Mostly, I use this type to store multiple packets of the same seed. These reworked envelopes store pretty nicely in most shoe boxes, btw.

Another note about coin envelopes - - Using scotch tape (or whatever else you fancy in tapes), put a small section of tape (maybe 1 inch) face down onto the back of the envelope, from just beneath the flap and extending out further than the edge of the gummed flap. Then take a slightly longer piece (maybe 1.5 to 2 inches), fold a bit upon itself to make a non-sticking flap, then affix the second piece near the edge of the coin envelope flap so that most of this piece is positioned over the first piece of tape that is exposed from underneath the gummed flap. This makes a reusable and secure closure that you can open and close over and over again without losing the stickiness of the tape. This is also the way I make a reusable closure for the larger envelopes I make for storing several packets for trading, etc.

As far as what DOES make me concerned about seeds received in zip bags is when it is obvious the person who packed them has purposely gone to the trouble of forcing as much air out of their baggy as possible before sending them. This makes it much easier for USPS mail handling machinery to turn seeds into chaff and powder. Air in a plastic baggy not only helps seeds to breathe it also helps cushion some of the many blows the piece of mail is going to receive. That's why they put air into bubble envelopes! Sometimes seeds come in and their little bodies have left permanent indentations into the baggy - - evidence the trip was a rough one.

OK - now I am finished with adding MTCW.

As an experiment, I just now put a small amount of water in a Ziploc bag, sealed it thoroughly, and set it on a shelf in my room here by the computer. I will keep an eye on it from time to time to see how that water fares.

At one time Park Seeds was using seed packets made of a metal foil/plastic film construction, obviously meant to be waterproof.

Gaseous molecules have the ability to diffuse through various thin films, and the smaller molecules, like helium atoms, are good at diffusing. Which is why those helium-filled party "balloons" lose their buoyancy after a few days, despite a thin layer of aluminum foil in their bag.

Obviously water molecules are much bigger than helium atoms, so their diffusing capabilities will be much less. I will be watching the water in that Ziploc baggie. I don't expect the liquid water molecules to get through the plastic film, but the liquid water will be in equilibrium with gaseous water vapor in the bag in the small amount of air that is in the bag, and this experiment will look for the ability of gaseous water molecules to diffuse through the plastic film.

ZM

More great advice Lazlo :)
I'll be trying that tape trick if I decide to go the coin envie route. Would you use something else for tiny dust like seeds? I worry about them falling out.. I received some alpine strawberry seeds from burpee and within their standard seed envelope, was packed a smaller paper they folded over itself multiple times (think BC powder). The paper almost looks like what those glassine envelopes are made out of. Maybe I'll just make my own glassine envelopes if I can find the paper..

This article appeared in the current newsletter.

http://davesgarden.com/guides/articles/view/372/

ZM

I use glassine envelopes for tiny or dustlike seeds since they would stick to plastic by static electricity. The envelope is inserted in the craft zip lock bags found in Walmart. Then stored in the crisper drawer. I only saved perennial seeds so the chill of the fridge is good for them.

For the last 4 years, I save only daylily and iris seeds from my own hybridization. After drying, the cured seeds are stored in prescription containers with label of the cross, then placed in the fridge until either sold or sowed.

I'm glad I found this thread! I mostly agree with most of the points raised, but differ a little in my conclusions and practice.

I partly agree with LazLo, but only partly. I would agree even more if we were talking about 4 mil thick Ziplocs made from dense "freezer bag" plastic , with double "zippers" like they make for freezer bags. Or heat sealed Mylar bags, such as I have heard that some seed repositories use (I hope they include a desiccant inside the Mylar!!)

However, thin plastic does let some humidity and oxygen diffuse right through it.
https://secure.drierite.com/catalog3/page17b.cfm?p=20&img_scale=200
"While the plastic film will hold liquid water, water vapor may pass through it. For instance, 1-mil polyethylene will pass water vapor at the rate of 1.5 grams/sq. ft./ 24 hrs, while 4-mil polyethylene will only pass about 0.05 grams/sq. ft./24 hrs at 75° F and 100% RH. "

Then consider the Ziploc zipper. It's not a tight seal at all, as you can prove to yourself by trapping some air inside and then pressing firmly on the "bubble". You can squeeze air right through the closed zipper.

How fast does humidity escape?

Fast enough to keep up with really dry (15-30% RH), cool seeds that are hardly metabolizing at all? I think so, at least if they are surrounded by very dry air.

Fast enough to keep up with room-temp seeds at 50% RH or higher, that are metabolizing fairly fast? I don't know.

Either way, I like to store my seeds in thin, cheap Ziplocs, packed inside tightly sealed plastic jars or tubs, with some silica gel desiccant in the tubs. I figure that the very dry air around the Ziplocs helps humidity diffuse out of the Ziplocs.

YMMV, and paper pkts plus desiccant is probably a safer plan than what I do. But paper packets exposed to humidity that varies, sometimes above 50% RH, allows the paper to absorb humidity from the atmosphere and release it near the seeds even when room dries back out.

My theory is that people in humid climates who want longer-term storage for their seeds would do well to consider using a desiccant like silica gel, baked rice, oil-absorbent Bentonite clay containing Montmorillonite, Drierite (anhydrous Calcium Sulfate) or what-have you.

Note that paper absorbs and releases humidity. I always have a paper label inside my Ziploc. For small trade pkts, the paper may weigh as much as the small seeds. Once the inside of the Ziploc has reached equilibrium with 20% RH air in a drying jar, the paper is also at 20% eRH. Now, when I remove the Ziploc and mail it to someone, that crackling-dry paper will absorb some of the humidity that diffuses into the Ziploc.

But I may be wrong. LazLo may be right that under many circumstances, even cheap plastic Ziplocs tend to keep in too much humidity near seeds for extra long-term storage.

After all, what is "too much humidity "? You could say "any humidity" and I would be hard-pressed to answer.

And if you are storing seeds that are already at 60%-75% RH, sucking up oxygen and spewing out humidity like a jogger after the second lap, sticking them inside a plastic bag will make that work even worse!

If you go back some decades, there seemed to be some disagreement over "how dry was dry enough" to store seeds. But I think there is a consensus now: except for unusual seeds that need to be stored moist, and have short shelf lives anyway, seeds last much longer at 20% RH than 50%. And humidity matters even more than temperature.

"An Editorial Perspective on Seed Conservation"
http://www.kew.org/ucm/groups/public/documents/document/ppcont_013821.pdf
"Optimum longevity appears to coincide with the lowest level of volatile gas emission at c. 20% RH. Very low RH treatments (i.e., ultra-dry) can be damaging to some seedlots. Others appear to tolerate well very dry (and cold) storage."

I think that their oxygen needs are met by trapped air plus diffusion.

Franchi ("Seeds of Italy") and many commercial seed suppliers seal their seeds 100% tightly in foil. I'm sure they dry them well first.

On the other hand, maybe they WANT the seeds to go bad within a few years of your buying them!

Kew Royal Botanic Gardens said:

>> "A “safe” moisture level for collections in the field is around 50% equilibrium relative humidity (eRH)."

>> "Seed life span approximately doubles for every 10% reduction in seed eRH."

>> "Once transferred to the seed bank, collections can then be dried
to around 15% eRH (4-7% mc depending on seed oil content), the
recommended moisture level for long-term conservation of orthodox seeds.
• Never freeze collections until the seeds are fully dry.

http://www.kew.org/ucm/groups/public/documents/document/ppcont_014345.pdf

Anything below 85% RH will protect against likelihood of mold.

Below 50% RH, the seeds' metabolism has slowed down enough that they would not use up "too much" of their stored food in several months or maybe up to a few years depending on seed type.

Drying seeds to 50% RH slows them down so they last "a while", but drying them down to equilibrium with air at 15-30% RH really puts them into "deep sleep" or "hibernation" - meaning their metabolism slows WAY down. They don't need anywhere near as much oxygen, and they don't release near as much humidity.

"Seed life span approximately doubles for every 10% reduction in seed eRH."


Based on that rule of thumb from some Kew Gardens data sheets (and I've seen it used elsewhere), seeds at 20% eRH should last 8 times longer than seeds at 50%eRH.

I agree with Lazo that THOROUGH drying before storing in plastic is critical. If you DON'T get them dryer than 30-40% RH, they will keep metabolizing oxygen into water and CO2, and the humidity may accumulate faster than it migrates through the plastic and through the zipper. The humidity will increase until the seeds are aging excessively (using up their stored food reserves). And if humidity gets over 85% RH, mold is a risk.


Post-harvest handling of seed collections
http://www.kew.org/ucm/groups/public/documents/document/ppcont_014345.pdf

Kew Royal Botanic Gardens Technical Information Sheets:
http://www.kew.org/science-research-data/kew-in-depth/msbp/publications-data-resources/technical-resources/technical-information-sheets/index.htm

"Giving Seeds What They Need In Storage":
http://www.hillgardens.com/storeseeds.htm
http://permaculture.org.au/2012/07/07/share-the-love-seed-saving/
http://www.cog.ca/documents/SeedsofDiversitySU06.pdf
http://www.seedsave.org/issi/904/beginner.html

http://www.seedcontainers.net/the_risk_of_inadequate_containers.html

Kew: theory of desiccants and RH
http://www.kew.org/ucm/groups/public/documents/document/ppcont_014349.pdf

Lots more Kew technical links:
http://www.kew.org/science-research-data/kew-in-depth/msbp/publications-data-resources/technical-resources/seed-conservation-science-practice/index.htm

Theoretical discussion of long-term storage strategies:
http://www.kew.org/ucm/groups/public/documents/document/ppcont_013800.pdf

"An Editorial Perspective on Seed Conservation"
http://www.kew.org/ucm/groups/public/documents/document/ppcont_013821.pdf
"Optimum longevity appears to coincide with the lowest level of volatile gas emission at c. 20% RH. Very low RH treatments (i.e., ultra-dry) can be damaging to some seedlots. Others appear to tolerate well very dry (and cold) storage."





This message was edited Mar 6, 2014 4:18 PM

Rickcorey

thanks for all the links, I'm going to take some time to read up.

This is a great thread and love the input from all, even if it differs, we can't learn anything unless we are willing to listen with open ears.

Jan

Rick, here is some FALSE information from one of your links. The author got it backwards.

Quote:
"Open pollinated varieties of plants (also referred to as heritage or heirloom varieties) will grow ‘true to type’ when seed is saved. This means you get the characteristics you want and expect from the plant — especially important in food plants. Hybrid plants (as varieties sold in nurseries or grown from the seed of supermarket vegetables usually are) tend to produce seed that is unreliable — it will produce throw-backs to varieties that the hybrid was artificially bred from."

Open pollinated plants DO NOT produce true to type. I know that from my own experience, and most gardeners know it also. Nor are they heritage or heirloom varieties. Whether pollinated by man or insects, they are hybrids and not true to type. That is how new varieties of iris, and daylilies, etc. are produced.

You can't believe everything on the web. And I wanted to put my 2 cents worth for new gardeners that may not know any better.

The link was the second under the heading of Giving Seeds What They Need In Storage":

With all that technical information stated above, it is a wonder that we have any plants at all. I guess Mother Nature never read the same information and just went about her business sprouting seeds when conditions are right to assure their survival.

True that! Lots of good ideas all around.. common sense, scientific, some things I never knew and other things I never even considered! I do know it's best to gather all possible info before starting something and this thread has a lot of good tools for my upcoming seed starting EXTRAVAGANZA!!
I would like to see a poll, you know, like the one on DG homepage, asking 'what type of storage do you pack your seeds in?' Most I've seen use ziplocs, me included (although I would like to start using the glassine envelopes :)
I always dry thoroughly in paper bags that are suspended from those hangers that have the little clips on them. After they're dry, then cleaned and bagged, I keep the lot in one box which is separated into 5 or 6 smaller more manageable bagged groups. One bag for flowers, another for shrubs, another for vegetables, etc. and yes I have a pouch of desiccant in each!
I think I do a good job of keeping them in the best conditions I can offer, but now I know what I can do to further protect them.. Thanks a lot to all contributors :D

The water amount in the Ziploc bag experiment is about the same.

I saw somewhere that oxygen gas readily diffuses through polyethylene film, although I don't know the identity of the plastic used in Ziploc bags.

I am continuing to store seeds in Ziploc bags, although many of them are in a secondary container. To me, it's not a given that seeds will suffocate in a Ziploc bag, even though they are "living things". Many plastic bags have warnings about suffocating a child, but I don't think those warnings apply to seed storage, or to Ziploc bags.

I do intend to improve my seed storage techniques in the next year.

I do appreciate all the links given by Rick Corey.

ZM

Zen-man said:
>> I saw somewhere that oxygen gas readily diffuses through polyethylene film

It certainly makes sense that the very non-polar O2 molecule would diffuse through non-polar polyethylene faster than the very polar H2O molecule (despite O2 being almost twice as big as H2O).

And hydrogen-bonded water is more like H6O3 - no reason for any of those to break free from the pack, breaking hydrogen binds, just to diffuse into plastic!

So I don't think oxygen is as big an issue as humidity ... 60-70% RH wakes the seeds up enough that they start consuming their stored food. And 85% humidity encourages mold!

>> Many plastic bags have warnings about suffocating a child, but I don't think those warnings apply to seed storage, or to Ziploc bags.

But it does make the point clearly that this is all about RATE. A tick or a sand flea might be able to get enough O2 through a big thin plastic bag, but not a baby or a puppy. They require more O2 than can diffuse that fast. And you see how fast a plastic bag fogs up if you seal it around your neck ... don't DO this, it's just a THOUGHT experiment! :-)

It sounds like most of us agree that seeds need to be stored "dry enough".

I would agree that plastic Ziplocs (even cheap thin ones) must slow down humidity diffusion[u] somewhat[/u]. In a real dry climate, maybe paper is better than plastic-with-no-desiccant. For seeds that are only dry to 50% RH to start with, maybe plastic makes a marginal situation into a bad situation.

It matters a lot whether your goal is 2-4 years of storage, or 10-20 years! I think millions of people do well enough with room-air-dry to get several years of viable storage out of common seeds, at least big seeds.

In my climate, I am guessing that protecting the seeds from the humidity in my house is more important than protecting them from their own metabloic humidity (at least, if they are dried down to "deep sleep" levels like 15-25% RH) before Zipping them up.

blomma,

>> With all that technical information stated above,

Mostly I quote sources when there is a lot of disagreement. I like to know "why" something is thought to be a good or bad practice, because situations matter, and what was unimportant in a dry climate may be important in a wet climate (and vice-verse). If we just repeat what we hear without knowing and testing the "why" we'll still be repeating the same wrong answers 100 years from now.

I figure that my long, verbose posts are bad enough. Better to give a link to my sources and then you know as much as I do, and you don't need to pay ANY attention to my opinions.

And it makes it easier for most people: they only have to hit "Page Down" three times to skip my posts, instead of six times.

I think a very great many people are turned off by the "trappings" of science, and I agree that it can be like a club where the little boys made up their own secret language to make it as hard as possible for outsiders to join the club. I think of that as "bad science" or "ego based pseudo-science".

In my opinion, "good science" is just people humbly asking Nature "why" and respecting the answers.

Just like human relationships, you can't get along with Nature unless you understand what she needs and why.

In my opinion, "good science" is listening to Nature, like a good human relationship involves listening to your partner
- and asking relevant questions
- and paying attention to the answers
- and reading between the lines
- and giving what the partner needs (like compost and less intensive cropping and some fallow time)
instead of what's easy for you to give (like 20-10-15 chemical fertilizer and pesticides and herbicides).

I wish I knew some of the sources where someone said they saw that emergent science showed that storing in plastic was very bad for seeds. if there is some issue [u]in addition to humidity management[/u], I would love to learn about that.

I just got some seeds from Italy in a heat-sealed plastic pouch inside a heat-sealed metal-foil pouch. Of course, that pouch usually only stays closed for 2-6 months, and those seeds probably came out of the seed bin at 15-20% RH.

A lot of the older scientific articles talk about seed banks using glass or triple-foil sealed seed storage. i wonder how long they considered "long"?

Blomma,

The acronym "OP" is used in two very different ways by different people. I guess that you use it to mean "pollinated by wind and insects without a lot of fussing around by humans and no isolation from cross-pollinating varieties".

If that's the way you use it, then I would agree with most of what you said.

I like to call that "openLY pollinatED", meaning that this batch of seeds came from plants that were pollinated (and cross-pollinated) by an unknown mixture of pollen donors.

It would be nice if people used "PP" instead of "OP" to prevent confusion with the other meaning of "OP". Joseph coined the term "PP" for "Promiscuously Pollinated".
http://allthingsplants.com/ideas/view/joseph/1157/The-Complete-Guide-to-Seed-Saving-An-Article-Containing-Every-Bit-of-Information-That-Could-Possibly-Be-Useful/

- - - - - -

However, seed catalogs and many other people use "OP" to mean an inbred, stable VARIETY like an heirloom strain that was preserved for 75 or 200 years without much genetic drift. Those "OP Varieties" are the opposite of F1 hybrids. They are traditional strains like 'Mortgage Lifter' tomatoes or 'Blue Lake' beans.

Those "OP Varieties" will grow ‘true to type’ when seed is saved IF the grower observes pollen isolation distances or plays around with tents or bagging blooms.

This might be the same link I posted before, but it is the long version of my opinion about this double use of one term to mean very different things..

http://allthingsplants.com/ideas/view/RickCorey/1279/OP-vs-OP/

Thanks Rick, especially regarding unifying the meaning of; and a more precise understanding and usage of those terms like 'OP'.

>> That's the most common way I have seen OP used

For years, I THOUGHT that was the only way I had seen it used!

Imagine my surprise when I saw a pkt of seeds of a well-know F1 hybrid strain also labelled "OP". The seed trader explained that "OP means pollinated freely by wind and insects without human intervention".

I thought, "why would anyone label a pkt with something that did not mean EITHER 'known pollen source' OR 'cross pollinated'?"

When you say "pollinated freely ..." you aren't saying that there ARE cross pollinators nearby, and you aren't saying there aren't.

I objected to the usage that I thought damaged the "usual" usage by making it ambiguous. They pointed out that many people, including the Seed Savers exchange, used it in the ambiguous way.

So now I question every seed pkt anyone sent me, labelled "OP". Maybe that was their non-committal way of saying it might be totally cross-pollinated, or not.

(Another way to make that ambiguous statement is to mark the pkt "ex." Like:
"ex. Salvia splendens var 'Yvonne's Giant'"

That means explicitly "I collected this seed from a 'Yvonne's Giant' cultivar of the S. splendens species, but I won't make any claims either way about how cross-pollinated it might be, or with what". And anyone can look up that cultivar and find out it is a well-know OP variety (inbred enough that it is is table when pollinated by other plants of that cultivar".

The advantage of "ex." is that it doesn't make "OP" a meaningless abbreviation by using the same acronym for very different purposes.

If we collect our seeds from an open-pollinated plant, what guarantee is there that it has not crossed with another plant we or a neighbor might have?

Even if we collect seeds from what was a hybrid plant, it still may cross with another, unless its seed is sterile.

And then, of course, we may not know what we are getting....

>> If we collect our seeds from an open-pollinated plant, what guarantee is there that it has not crossed with another plant we or a neighbor might have?

Isolation distances, plants flowering at different times, and accepting that 95% or 90% is pure enough for most hobby purposes.

If we want guarantees, we do have to bag a bloom or use a floating row cover that seals to the ground well enough to keep pollinating insects out.

Organza bags probably count as "not open-pollinated" because you would either have to pollinate those blooms by hand, or play the game where you only uncover them briefly in the early morning and try to catch a bee on his first round of the day.

Wind-pollinated plants are tougher.

I also save my prescription bottles. And I use little plastic ziploc bags, which you can find in large lots if you google it. I keep mine refrigerated too. You could enclose seeds in with your Christmas cards when you send them out. Family Dollar sells bags of little plastic xcrew top bottles & don't forget those yard sales in the summer & rummage sales. All sorts of containers there.

I think that storing seeds consistently dry is more important than refrigerating, for long storage. Both help.

One problem with desiccants is that every time you open the jar, you let in more humidity, which quickly exhausts the desiccant.

Then you need humidi5ty cards or a hygrometer to tell whether the jar is still dry or not (below 30% RH, as low as 10% RH).

To make sure my seeds are very dry I use my food dehydrator set on about 90 degrees and let them stay in there for about 3-4 days prior to putting into the little craft zip plastic bags that are about 1 1/2 X 2". Then they are stored in either the freezer or refrigerator depending on what kind of seed they are. Not all seeds appreciate being put into the freezer. I have bean seeds that are 10 years old and still have no problem with them germinating. Everything is filed according to catagory such as flowers, tomatoes, beans, herbs, root vegetables, etc. and kept in a tupperware bread box.

I read somewhere that you can store seeds in tightly closed tins.Have anyone tried this? I do store a lot of my seeds in the Crisper.

I store mine in the large celery keeper made by Tupperware. You can often find them at garage and yard sales for very cheap prices. I don't think they make these anymore. The lids fit tight and even burp to get out excess air. Then I store that container in our garage fridge. Seeds keep a long time...years, in fact.
I have never heard of drying seeds in a food dryer, but seems like a very good idea.

>> do store a lot of my seeds in the Crisper.

The vegetable drawer is the most humid part of the fridge - it is built that way to keep veggies crisp by staying hydrated instead of drying out and going limp.

>> To make sure my seeds are very dry I use my food dehydrator set on about 90 degrees

Thanks for mentioning that! I would have thought there was danger of over-heating and reducing seed viability. But if it works for you, it works. I guess vegetable seeds NEED to survive temperatures that they encounter in the field, so 90 or even 100 ought to be OK.

>> I read somewhere that you can store seeds in tightly closed tins

These sources suggest keeping a desiccant inside the tin, and also checking the humidity periodically if you have high-value seeds held for a long time. Have to guard against leaks and also against the seeds releasing humidity as they metabolize slowly.

===================================
These are mostly PDFs that you can download a copy of and print.

Many Kew Royal Botanic GardensTechnical Information Sheets about collecting and storing seeds, written by Millennium Seed Bank staff:
http://www.kew.org/science-conservation/research-data/resources/millennium-seed-bank-resources

post-harvest handling for seed collection:
http://www.kew.org/sites/default/files/04-Post%20harvest%20handling%20web_0.pdf
"Seed life span approximately doubles for every 10% reduction in seed eRH."
("eRH" is equilibrium Relative Humidity.)

" Once transferred to the seed bank, collections can then be dried to around 15% eRH (4-7% mc depending on seed oil content), the recommended moisture level for long-term conservation of orthodox seeds.
("mc" is moisture content , % water by weight.)


collecting seed in the field:
http://www.kew.org/sites/default/files/03-Collecting%20techniques%20web.pdf

I called GeoSeed during a week when most of the folks were working out of state and the owner answered the phone. She was very kind and answered all my questions. At the end of the conversation I asked her about germination and she said the best way to maintain germination over time is to store seed in a dry container in the refrigerator.

The seed we grow and clean are in paper coin envelopes (to stay dry) and those envelopes are in an open (to allow oxygen in) zip lock bag, in the fridge.

If anyone has used this method and has had problems with it, please let us know.

Wow what a lot of stuff. I should take a photo of the top shelf of my refrigerator. All seeds that were purchased are usually still in their original packaging, then I have the mailer envelopes that I put "spring veggies and grains", "fall veggies and grains", "spring flowers and herbs", "fall flowers and herbs" envelopes in. Then I have the giant jar of broccoli seed from the year my bees had their way with the broccoli I forgot to harvest, big junk mail envelopes full of echinachea seed, buttercup squash seed, jars of galliardia and wild poppy seed.. In other words there is a shelf holding this stuff up, but I haven't seen it lately. But I do refrigerate all seeds. I have no problem getting 10 year old seed to germinate if it has been kept in my nice cool, dry refrigerator. I was using a crisper drawer until I outgrew it. Hoping to get a better organizational system or just use up some of these seeds. The $30 bag of Texas Wildflower seeds I bought in January 2006 when I buried my old dog is still good, and more will be planted in a week or 2. Only bag they had it was intended for a full acre...