Treat your garden seeds with care

Garden seeds, if you think about it are pretty amazing. Just a few seeds can grow enough veggies for many summer salads, baskets of flowers, and enough seasoning for all your dishes year round. However, while seeds do have seemingly magical qualities they’re also fragile if not treated right. You need to care for your seeds carefully, not only to preserve the chance to grow a lovely garden but to save money and time as well. It’s much nicer not to have to buy new seeds each year.

How to care for your seeds…

• Until you’re ready to plant or soak seeds for planting, always keep seeds perfectly dry. Moisture is the death of seeds, at least until they’re in the soil.
• If you collect and save your own seeds allow them to sit at room temp until perfectly dry. After that store in a small container or envelope in a cool place away from moisture and bugs. Some people won’t save seeds in common everyday envelopes, thinking they do need a fancy seed saving kit, but I’ve always stored saved seeds in plain old envelopes with zero trouble.
• Long term seed storage may require more than a simple envelope though. My local extension offers a good way to save seeds for the long-term; “place seed packets or seed envelopes in a jar, seal the jar tightly and place it in a refrigerator or freezer. To help avoid too much moisture, place a small, cloth bag filled with dry, powdered milk beneath the seed packets in the bottom of the jar. Use about 1/2 cup of dry milk from a recently opened package.“
• Label! When it comes to seed saving or if you accidentally rip a package, label and date the new envelope. I’ve forgotten to label before and it’s such a waste if you forget to label a hard to recognize seed.
• Unless you’re dealing with hard seeds, for example lupine or morning glory, handle seed packets carefully. If you rub the outside of the packet to see if you can tell how many seeds are in there or try to open a packet while wearing garden gloves (tough) you can break the protective seed coating which reduces germination odds.
• In order to avoid waste and to avoid harming fragile seeds sow tiny carefully. Snip the smallest bit of corner off your seed packet and carefully tap the packet gently allowing some seeds to escape to the soil.

[image via stock.xchng]