Walter (1544, STEP 535) - Breeder and vendor: University of Florida. Characteristics: fresh market, determinate, midseason, fruit are medium-slightly large, flat-round, symmetrical. Resistance: fusarium wilt races 1 and 2, gray leaf spot. Adaptation: Florida, southeastern United States. Fla. Agric. Expt. Sta. Circ. S-202. 1969.
If the seed are dead, no amount of trying will get them to germinate.
You can dig around on a few of the tomato forums and find where posts were made about getting very old seed to germinate. Here are the steps that I have used successfully.
1. The most important and essential item needed is water. The next most important is oxygen. Third most important is nitrate.
2. Prepare a seed start tray with good quality moistened seed start mix such as promix bx.
3. Get some miracle grow or peters or whatever variety available of water soluble fertilizer with a high nitrate content. Mix 1 level teaspoon fertilizer with a quart of water.
4. Saturate a paper towel with the fertilizer water and then let just enough drip out to be thoroughly wet.
5. Loosely wrap a large quantity of seed in the paper towel so that the seed are not clumped up.
6. Place the paper towel in a ziploc bag and drop it in the refrigerator for 16 to 20 hours. The bag MUST contain air, the seed need oxygen!
7. Remove the seed from the paper towel and carefully sow them on top of the seed start mix.
8. Do NOT cover the seed, gather a small amount of the seed start mix and dust it over the seed so that they can still receive light but have a light dusting on top. The seed must be spread out so they are not touching each other, otherwise mold will be a problem.
9. Place the seed start tray in an incubator at 85 degrees for up to 20 days. A chicken egg incubator works fine for this purpose.
10. check daily to see if any green shows and if so, put them in very bright light immediately.
One additional step that can help is to increase the oxygen content in the ziploc bag. I have done this by putting a cup of hydrogen peroxide in a pint jar and then adding a package of yeast. This releases a huge amount of oxygen which you can capture by holding the ziploc bag over the top of the jar.
DarJones
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