Flower Seed Expiration Dates?

tabby · Post by **tabby** » Thu Apr 25, 2013 7:03 am

It's amazing what you find when you poke around in the back of kitchen drawers! In the "miscellaneous junk" drawer, I found 5 packets of flower seeds. It seemed a fortuitous find until I glanced at the dates on the packets ... 3 of them are from 2000 and 2 of them are from 2001! Are they still good? I notice the wording is actually that they were packaged for 2000 or 2001 as opposed to they absolutely won't sprout at all. They were probably optimum for planting 13 years ago but it's worth a try.

If Russian scientists can take a wildflower found in the permafrost of Siberia and extinct for hundreds of thousands of years and somehow create an environment where they not only are resuscitated but flourish and bloom, then surely my little 13 year old Burpee snapdragons will come to life. The experiment begins!

The seed packets are for:

Zinnia (Liliput, Mixed Colors)

Snapdragon (First Ladies, Mixed Colors)

Sweet Pea (Jet Set, Mixed Colors, Knee High)

Moonflower (Giant White)

Dianthus (Cheddar Pink)

valerie · Post by **valerie** » Thu Apr 25, 2013 7:43 am

You might get SOME germination, but it would likely be disappointing.

Storage conditions aren't the greatest with open packets and

kitchen drawers!

BUT (always one of those, isn't there?) I have known some seeds to

do some pretty amazing things... I had some beans that I had

harvested about 8 years before that had near 100% germination.

And I sort of over planted thinking I would get maybe 20%. So they

were stuffed in a half barrel planter. But fun!

Post by **Oscar Namechange** » Thu Apr 25, 2013 9:17 am

Years ago I bought some seeds for wild flowers. In among them was a beautiful white flower ( sorry jut can't remember what they were ) I collected all the flower heads when they went to seed to regerminate the net year, I stored them In my husbands. shed but what I didn't know was that Moths lay their eggs In the large seed heads.... until we opened the shed the next year...whoops.

Harry12 · Post by **Harry12** » Mon Mar 24, 2014 9:17 am

I would suggest that something that is already a decade past itâ€™s prime is not going to get you the best possible results. Having said that, if you have the space and you have the seeds, why not see what comes out? I think that you are not going to see the most vibrant growth ever, but you might still get something.

Post by **LarsMac** » Mon Mar 24, 2014 2:23 pm

We had some hollyhock seeds, and Columbine seeds that had been in an envelope in my desk drawer since we left Colorado in 98. We planted them here last Spring. We got about a 60% germination out of them. Waiting to see what that patch does this year.