YORKTON - Gardeners are telling me that they are starting to purchase seeds, not to plant indoors in preparation for spring, but just for the joy of anticipating the new garden season! I know I can identify with that! At this time of year, Mom would bring out her big bag of seed packages, and I can see her sitting by the kitchen table, carefully sifting through handful after handful of seed packets. If she had been holding the gems of the world, she couldn’t have looked happier! How she loved this time of year! The planning was as exciting as the planting!
Those seed packages were an important archive of the past gardening year, because if something was a real knock-out, she’d mark the seed package. “Nice blooms.” “Produced well.” “Later tomato but good flavor.” And some packages had an “X” which meant not to bother with those seeds this year.
As we begin a new garden, this is an easy way to begin an archive. Even if the seed packages are empty, keep them and record with a brief note what’s happening at the end of the season.
Maybe we too will have seed packages that have an “X”, or some that say, “Plant these again next year!”
Mom seemed to know instinctively which seeds she could keep over, and which she couldn’t.
This brings to mind a good question: do seeds store indefinitely? If they are stored properly (at a cool temperature, and dry in an airtight container of some kind) many veggie seeds might keep for about two to five years.
We had a friend who used to plant old, old seeds and quite often wait for weeks to see if the seeds germinated, if at all. But time is valuable in the garden, and by using old seeds (whether on indoor plantings or out in the garden) you might be wasting time on seeds that will amount to nothing. On a bright spring morning, it seems like there is all the time in the world for our seeds, and we might be tempted to think, oh, I’ll just throw these seeds in and see what happens. And a few days go by, and a few more days, and maybe by then, if nothing comes up, we give up and plant new seeds.
But that wasted week won’t come back. Let’s imagine, now, that it is mid- August, and our delayed planting is nicely coming into it’s own; just a couple more weeks and things will be perfect ! But then… we all know that sinking feeling when we check the weather and it shows a low of zero or one…risk of frost. NO! We need a little more time! How we wish we had that week back from the spring!
So unless we plant those old seeds just for fun to see what happens, let’s not put all our “seeds in one basket”! Plant the old, for fun or an experiment…but plant the new to be sure of success in the garden. Better to start with new or fairly new seeds. Sometimes that extra week or two at the end of the season makes all the difference.
I know there are gardeners out there who are thinking that they always plant leftover seeds and have no issues. That’s great! But it’s not a sure-fire key to success, and like that old saying goes, “things are okay until they’re not.” Gardening is always risky, isn’t it!
Isn’t it great to see the days getting longer? Spring is coming! Visit the hort society at www.yorktonhort.ca and see ‘what’s coming up!’ Thank you to our friends at YTW for their great work. Gardeners, start perusing those seed catalogues, or stop by the seed displays that are in the stores already, and have a nice week!
