Carolyn,
I have been waiting for your thread about germination on the seed you sent out in December to report. I don't usually look in this topic, but just happened to find this thread.
Out of the 5 seed packets you sent this year, I planted all of the seed.
Giannini had 0 germination
Ashleigh had 1 out of 5
Ceman had 1 out of 5
Orange Minsk had 1 out of 5
Indiana Red had 1 out of 5
All of my other varieties for this year were planted at the same time with no problems, except for 2 varieties which also came in the mail this year from a trade.
Since I have received seeds from you many times in the past with mostly 100% germination, I really do think something different is happening in the postal system.
I have a friend in a different city who also was in on your seed offer, so I called her to see if she was having any problems. She also reported that all her other seeds germinated as usual, but that she had the same problem with the ones from your seed offer... no germination or at most, 1 germinated out of 5.
By the way, all of my other seeds were from either saved seed or ones I had from more than a year ago.
Hope this helps to add to the detective work
Edited to add: Carolyn's packing method had already been explained. The other problem seeds were packed in a plastic baggie and I used up ALL the seeds over 3 attempts to germinate. My friend managed to get one to germinate out of 15