Seed Saving

[Katrina]

Hi all. This is my first post, so let me introduce myself. My name is Katie and I've planted gardens most of my life, though I have never saved seeds until now. I live in North Alabama with my husband who is currently working in the Bay Area of California, and right now I am out here with him though I will be returning to Alabama in a few months. Our four kids are grown and off on their own so it's just us now. Right now we live in small community on 1 and 1/3 acres, but we plan to buy a small farm (we both come from farming families) when we retire. That being said, my question is as follows.

Last year I bought seed from my local farmer's coop for long term storage as I am prepping for hard times if they come and also for when my husband comes home in 2017. I packed them in mason jars with an oxygen absorber, vacuum sealed them, and put them in the freezer, thinking that was the way to go. Mind you I've never done this before and a friend told me to keep seed in the freezer. Well, I recently learned that was not the way to go. I would, of course, test them were I at home, but I am not. So my question is did I kill them?

 

[Becky]

Welcome to the forum @Katrina! Great to have you here

I can't see anything wrong with what you have done, it sounds perfectly fine to me. Where did you hear otherwise? Ultimately it depends on the type of seed - there are some which can die if they are allowed to dry out, but the large majority of seeds are fine.

After all, if this method is good enough for the Global Seed Vault in Svalbard it should be good enough for anyone!

 

[Chuck]

http://www.all-things-emergency-prepared.com/storing-survival-garden-seeds.html

 

[Katrina]

Chuck, Becky, thanks so much for the replies. When I told my husband how I had stored the seeds he said he wasn't sure if I had done it correctly and to check just to be sure. I checked on YouTube and the videos I found there said that seed need to breathe so to vacuum pack them or to use oxygen absorbers would kill them, but that didn't seem right to me, so I found this site and thought I'd ask people whom I was pretty confident would know for sure.

Chuck the link you provided is very informative. I plan to bookmark it to come back to it from time to time. Becky, you've got a point. If the big seed vaults store seeds that way, then I am not off the mark. Thanks again.

Katie