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14 Comments

    1. Hey Animal House, there are only two main requisites for saving seed successfully. The most important is that they are completely dry before storing, the other is that they should be in pest-proof containers. Everything else is just a nicety. If you take a cob of corn and toss it in a paper lunch sack, that works. If you remove the seeds and pulp from a squash and just dry them out without further cleaning, then roll them up in newspaper, that works too.

      When our seed collection gets so large we have to store it in 55-gallon drums, then all the cleaning and chaff removal is nice so we can package them in neat envelopes to better organize them in our smaller, pest-proof containers. And when you open your seed store post-TEOTWAWKI, it gets pretty embarrassing when you are retrieving seeds from the 55-gallon drum and fall in with just your wiggling feet sticking out of the top. Customers find it entertaining but for your own sake, nicely labelled packets look more professional and you can get 50 rounds of .22 instead of just 25. Until then, whatever you do works as long as they are dry before storing in a pest-proof container. The important thing is to store seeds, which is sounds like you’re already doing. 🙂

  2. Animal House, When we save seeds we are considerably more picky than Mother Nature. She puts out a bazillion seeds and only expects a small percentage to actually survive. It’s kinda the same thing with everything that produces a lot of ‘young’. Why do chickens
    rabbits and sardines produce so many young ‘because everything wants to eat them’! Seeds are the extreme example of this, from living soil to human beings EVERYTHING eats seeds.

  3. SEEDS

    “For thousands of years storing seeds has been an essential part of the survival preparations made by millions of prudent people fearing attack. Seeds are hopes for future food and the defeat of famine, that lethal follower of disastrous wars.”

    Among the most impressive sounds I ever heard were faint, distant rattles of small stones, heard on a quiet, black, freezing night in 1944. An air raid was expected before dawn. I was standing on one of the bare hills outside Kunming, China, trying to pinpoint the sources of lights that Japanese agents had used just before previous air raids to guide attacking bombers to blacked-out Kunming. Puzzled by sounds of cautious digging starting at about 2:00AM, I asked my interpreter if he knew what was going on. He told me that farmers walked most of the night to make sure that no one was following them, and were burying sealed jars of seeds in secret places, far enough from homes so that probably no one would hear them digging.

    My interpreter did not need to tell me that if the advancing Japanese troops succeeded in taking Kunming they would ruthlessly strip the surrounding countryside of all food they could find. Then those prudent farmers would have seeds and hope in a starving land.”

    Nuclear War Survival Skills – by Cresson Kearny
    http://www.oism.org/nwss/s73p920.htm
    CH. 9, pgs 92-93

    1. Hey Anonymous,

      Thanks for the interesting story and the link.

      The entire book looks interesting and useful, “Nuclear War Survival Skills” and most of the info is not necessarily nuclear based, just good survival skills which preppers need.

      I just downloaded a copy, here’s the link:

      http://oism.org/nwss/nwss.pdf

      Seems like it would be a good item for the SB Stick if it isn’t already there.

    1. Hey Anonymous, as near as I can tell from the photos, it looks like that box doesn’t have a gasketed lid which, speaking from experience, is necessary to keep out weevils and meal moths among other things.

      There are many options but here’s what I use, $16 at Walmart though I actually got mine at Home Depot:

      https://www.walmart.com/ip/Ziploc-16-Quart-4-Gallon-WeatherShield-Storage-Box-Clear/38345581

      Notice the blue gasket that goes all around the entire lid. Many of these types of storage boxes only have the two end locks, these with the gasket have four of the blue locks.

      Amazon has better pricing but it looks like they only come in 4-packs. The 16 quart is 18 x 12 x 7″ but any other size would work just as well. I use these because they stack two high in the cupboard where I keep them.

      Other people probably have some ideas which would also work. In Part 3 tomorrow I go into a little more detail on this.

    2. I use that one and very happy with it! It’s not cheap, but very functional. As the author says (more or less), you have to store in a place without the potential for infestation. It’s very efficient for organizing your various seeds….!
      Hey, St. Funogas, great article!

  6. Nice article on seed saving. Garden seeds have the potential to become a type of “currency” all by themselves. They will no doubt be bartered for other items of use by some sheeple waking up at the last minute. Additionally, garden produce will also become a trade item.

  7. St. Funogas, Thanks for this article, lots of good information.
    2 questions sir, if you will. 1. I have a tomato plant that grew from last years plants. The tomato’s were green until we had a frost. Can the seeds be saved? 2. I cut open a tomato from a different plant this morning, it was full of sprouts. Any suggestions on keeping the sprouts alive?

    1. Hey SH, the seeds from the green tomatoes are almost certainly non-viable. You can roll some up in damp paper towels, not too wet, then put that in a plastic bag and see if they germinate. If they do, then save the rest.

      On your sprouted seeds, it’s probably best to save some of the non-sprouted ones if there are any. As far as the sprouted ones go, if you have the room on a south-facing window you can do a fun experiment. If you grow the plants now they will be very tall and spindly by spring. You could let them get tall and spindly and then take cuttings to restart them whenever they need it, then have some plants to take cuttings from in the spring to plant in the garden. Tomatoes grow very easily from 3″-4″ cuttings and are easy to root in water. The main thing to remember when taking cuttings is to do it just below leaves are coming out, less than ¼” below. Then break the bottom leaf off and put the stem in water until the roots form. The only thing you have to watch out for are mites. Scientists say there’s no such thing as spontaneous generation but they’ve obviously never battled mites on tomatoes. They come from out of nowhere.

      1. Thank you Sir for the reply. The sprouted tomato was put in a South facing window yesterday. Today it looks like a chia pet, so we plan to play with this one. Hopefully, It’s not from the Little Shop of Horrors, we will see.

        The Green Tomatoes turned brown last night. They will go into the compost.

  8. Old seeds will sprout and grow. I took a Botany course in college, where one of the lab projects was to sprout old seeds.
    ……. The college had old seeds stored in 5 gallon glass containers in a dark closet. The instructor gave every student 10 bean seeds for each year. This Botany ‘course’ has been taught since the Wagon Trains rolled West.
    ……. The oldest seeds in my time period were about 50 or 30 years old. The teacher ‘jumped’ the years in 5 year increments. Everyone had to sprout the seeds in paper towels. The seeds were locked in a student desk drawer.

    It was a learning process. The oldest seeds (from long-ago) had been used up over the years. Still, we had relatively old seeds and new seeds. … Yes, the seeds ~sprouted. The newer seeds had a better success rate.
    …….. Over the years of teaching, the college knew the expected success rate for expected sprouting. The kids were told how to take care of the seeds, to obtain good sprouting results.
    …….. Screwballs or people born with a deadly thumb didn’t pass that section of the course. [A deadly thumb is opposed to a ‘green’ thumb. Some people are just more attentive to plants, and can get the results.]

    Everything in St. Funogas great article can be taught in College Course.
    *************
    *************
    +Anyone, that’s had a garden or lawn to take care of; knows ~unwanted seeds can lie dormant for years, and then sprout (when you want them to still sleep in the soil).
    In the desert country, seeds lie in the soil for years waiting for rain. The seeds sprout and grow spectacularly with sufficient rain. Of course, God is the Master Gardner.

    Hybrid seeds have their problems with harvesting the seeds, and using the seeds to grow crops. …. Farmers buy ~new hybrid seeds to help ensure growing and producing success. … Real money is on the line in farming; the bills, taxes, and the bank need to be paid.
    [Money farmers don’t want to waste their time planting any old bag of seeds. Farmers buy new seeds. … Farmer seeds are treated with chemicals. Commercial farmers are farming ~money results.]

    Harvested hybrid plant seeds to use next year can give screwball growth;+ it can be a big waste of time. … Old granny ladies keep ~’store bought packages’ of seeds partially used or unopened. … The seeds will still work. The crop or flowering plants might NOT be as fruitful. … But, it’s a waste to throw away, any store bought seed package with seeds still in it. [Hybrid or not]
    ***
    ***
    Harvesting your own seeds to preserve requires information. = Stick with, SurvivalBlog and St. Funogas.

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