Curious as to what is going on with mailed seeds

[pooklette]

This is the first year I've ever had germination issues. I do not have any saved seed of my own to compare with, but I can say that the seed I had left over from last year performed wonderfully. The seed I ordered this year from TGSC and Victory were all terribly slow to germinate. Since I have heard rave reviews of both places, I assumed the problem must be due to my own error somehow. Below is a list of the seeds that sprouted twenty days or more after the second sowing. None of these varieties sprouted on the first try.

Azoychka
Primrose Gage
White Wonder
Marianna's Peace
Prudens Purple
Caspian Pink
Kellogg's Breakfast
Yellow BW Platfoot
Black Krim
Black Cherry
Silvery Fir Tree
Siletz

Over 30% of my new seeds had to be begged and pleaded with to germinate. All of my seeds left over from last year came up within 7 days.

The new seeds were mailed in bubble mailers, and sealed in paper packets. The Victory seeds were in plastic baggies within paper packets even.

I know that there was no issue of my seeds getting wet or crushed because they all looked perfect when I opened the packets at planting time. One factor that is probably relevant here but might not be where the rest of you are...when my seeds shipped, we were in the middle of a vicious cold snap. We had two weeks of beautiful spring-esque warm weather and then all of a sudden, overnight, BAM. Below zero temps.

I'm not sure if this info fits in with the problems the rest of you have seen, but I thought I'd add it in anyway in case it turns out to be relevant.

[Emaewest]

I have had absolutely no germination issues with any of the seeds I have. I have seeds I saved myself, ones I traded for, ones that were gifts, purchased seed and seeds that are 4 or 5 years old, from across Canada and the US.

I've had no trouble receiving seeds from the US, but sending them is another issue altogether. Something fishy is going on.

[carolyn137]

This thread has gone on and on and speaking for myself, I am still utterly convinced that the major problem is individual methods and products used by most folks who sow tomato seed. I said most folks.

I post at several places. Person A will have seeds from company A bought this year and get lousy germination while person B has the exact same seeds and gets wonderful germination.

Person C will receive seeds X in trade and person D will get those same exact seeds and there will be huge differences in germination rates.

I can send seeds of variety A to persons E, F, G, H and they too will get varying germination rates for seeds that are fresh and I get 90-100% germination with.

And I've been sending out seeds to SSE members in the US and many other countries since about 1990 so this is nothing new at all.

Many times folks have no idea of seed age from traded seeds and that certainly can be an issue.

And commercial seeds with a packed by date mean just that, for it is not the date that the seeds were produced.

So I'll sit back and continue to read here, and yet cringe when I see some folks saying I got variety X from company W and germination was awful when another person gets perfectly great germination with the same seeds.

All I can say is that this thread has hopefully served as a catharsis for those who are having problems.

And trust me, I'm not a hard hearted person in what I've said b'c I've been in the same position re low germinating seeds, some of which were quite rare, but those are known OLD seeds from 10-15 years old and most of the time I can wake them up.

[michael johnson]

Has anyone thought of retreiving the non germinated seeds from out of the pot ( if the have not rotted already) and examining them under a microscope to see whats been happening to them, and scanning the surface of the seed for problems- biological or otherwise.

It seems to me from summing up the various things surrounding this mystery - that almost everyone is getting good germination from their own saved seeds in there own sowings- but as soon as they send them through the mail to anyone else the viability drops by as much as 95%, or nil, there must be a common denominator in their somewhere, but we are just not seeing it at the moment .

[tanagerzoo]

I started about 30 varieties--mixture of bought, SS, trades, and yearbook requests. Excellent germination on all but 3 (Prue, Earl's Faux, and Virginia Sweets which I got zero)

Some of my Earl's Faux (mailed to me in trade) I sent off to someone in England for a trade with him (well before I ever planted the seed). I planted about 15-20 seeds but only managed to get 2 seedlings. The guy in England got nearly 100%.

So I've determined it is ME! My methods can't be too horrible, because I sowed them exactly as I sowed the other 27 varieties that gave me nearly 100% germination.

So, <shrug>, I've now determined that Earl's Faux doesn't like Delaware--or maybe it is me he doesn't like--and would rather live in the UK!

Christine

[timcunningham]

Carolyn,

Do you ever feel like you are standing in the street yelling at traffic zooming by?

Tim

[carolyn137]

Do you ever feel like you are standing in the street yelling at traffic zooming by?


Now that you mention it Tim, __________.

[michael johnson]

I was very surprised to see on the other forum, that Earl had made a posting more or less appologising for some seeds he sent out that didnt perform well- he put it down to a mistake in fermentation of the seeds.

Now this might well be true- but with a man of Earls considerable experiance in this field I would have thought it highly unlikely that Earl had made a mistake in his fermentation method after years of experiance at it.

However- as I have said before there are a lot of mistakes made every year by the fermentation method and a lot os seeds ruined, therefore perhaps a booster in re-educating people how to do it properly is needed at this time, perhaps the most succesfull germinator in the business is Craig- from his photos of trays with masses of seeds sprouting- is inspiration enough for anyone.

Could Craig therefore take the time to elaborate his methods of seed saving to us, with special emphasis on the length of time in (Days or Hours ) the seeds have to stay in the water, as I think many of you go way over that mark, ( hence the bad seed ) then of course there is the drying and storage methods, it might help boost general germination for everybody once again.


Personaly I never use the fermentation method myself - simply because the method I use works best for me, and as far as I know any seeds of my own saving that I sent to the USA for these past few years have all performed well with good germination.

One problem still bothers me though- the Water!,not all water all over the USA is the same as it obviously comes from assorted treatment plants with variation between them- over here in the UK a recent study on our water proved beyond doubt that despite the water companies best efforts to filter out everything- they still found 350 different lethal chemicals in the water in minute proportions of parts per million etc, these included 159 pesticides and herbicides know to effect plants in any stage of growth from seed to adult plants, including traces of weed supressant inhibitor which prevents weed seeds from germinating, all filtered through from land drainage on agricultural land and got in to our water supply, on top of that there was Birth control pills residue,and that very nasty banned pesticide DDT which is supposed to have been banned worldwide- plus a whole batch of various fungicides.

My point is- to eliminate any possibility of this being the cause - use only bottled mountain spring water or distilled water just for the fermentation proccess and washing the seeds afterwards, because if seeds are stood soaking in standard tap water from some areas they may well be taking in seed inhibitor chemicals into their seed coating- plus other nasties.

Just as a final note- just to set your appetites on edge for today, they did some scientific research over here on Londons UK water supply and they calculated that the water had passed through nine different people before you got to drink it

[carolyn137]

perhaps the most succesfull germinator in the business is Craig- from his photos of trays with masses of seeds sprouting- is inspiration enough for anyone.

Michael,

I do think you've confused two different things here.

One is how most folks do fermentation and the other is how successful folks are in germinating seeds.

Yes, Craig showeed trays of seedlings, but your assumption is that he did the fermentations on all those seeds, which is not a correct assumption.

And yes, it's probably true that Craig and I have the most experience with both fermentation as well as germinating seeds of those who post here and elsewhere, as far as that goes.

And yes, it's true that even those who are very experienced with fermentation sometimes have a batch or two that don't turn out and there's no obvious explanation b'c they've been fermented the same as all others being done at the same time.

And I'd say such event are rare indeed.

Earl had a problem with the seeds he wrote about at GW and I think that's the first I've seen that for Earl.

I had a problem two years ago with Shuntukski Velikan, so much so that I dropped them from my listing in the SSE Yearbook. Do I know what might have gone wrong when all others fermented at the same time were fine?

No, I don't, any more than Earl or anyone else knows when this occasionally happens.

I understand that you don't ferment seeds and so have not much background in this area when asking the question.

And the question is legitimnate, but sometimes there just aren't any good answers.

And since most of us who do ferment have no problems at all, I think it's best to leave it at that.

It isn't a matter of one fermentation container in a group of maybe 20 being done at the same time being processed differently, it's simply a matter of sometimes "stuff" happens and there are no good explanations.

That's gardening; always a challenge and not always 100% predictable.

[michael johnson]

I did actualy take the time to have a look at Craigs excellent website, and scroll down to the part regarding fermentation and seed saving- which in itself seems pretty straight forword- so it seems that one has to allow about three days for this proccess to take place- presumably this is done in a warmish room temp and not in a cold place.

I often wonder- ( but havnt tried as yet ) if in the final rinse of the seeds one used a weak solution of seaweed extract- which usualy turns the seed coating a brownish colour, if this would eventualy show any improvement in germination after you had dried and stored the seeds- then got them out and sowed them again, ???.

Another very bad point to watch in successfull germination and growing on afterwards is the compost used , many garden centres and compost suppliers often have last years stock left over from the previous year, dont be in too much of a hurry to buy in your stocks of compost after christmas or very early in the new year- rather wait until about a week or less before you actualy need it and try to select freshly delivered stock, I have been caught out badly once or twice myself by this problem- as the old stock from the previous year usualy has depleted nitrogen content plus a lot of other elements tend to leech out and disperse, leaving pretty lifeless compost to deal with.

I tried an experiment once- using just plain vermiculite and nothing else, the seeds germinated ok just laid onto the surface of the vermiculite- which was quite damp, but the only problem was the seed leaves came a very pale green- probably through lack of nitrogen, but the moment I lifted them off cleanly with clean roots mostly intact and carefully put them in some soiless seed mix- they turned the proper shade of green again.

Because of the severe problem over here in the Uk with the water table being contaminated by hundreds of chemicals leeching into it from off agricultural land drainage - everyone has now gone organic grown mad- and everything is now 85% organic reared, meat,eggs, poultry, and all vegetables, using only organic fertilisers and organic feeding methods- if its not too late already as we slowly realised we were poisoning ourselves to death, and they cannot remove certain chemicals out of the water despite constant water treatment and organic filter beds, the worst is agricultural Fungicides, and weed seed inhibitors, pesticides and herbicides.

Which brings me to a very funny story- talking of sewage treatment filter beds, during the time many years ago when Presdant Amin kicked out all the asian people from his area of Africa, thousands of them fled to the Uk as refugees and were mostly placed in temporary living quarters at dissused RAF and Army camps until they sorted their lives out.

One particular RAF camp had a large sewage treatment plant of its own capable of dealing with sewage from 2,000 people approx, with perfect established organic filter beds that relied on biological reaction to clean the water so they were full of natural bacteria.

Well as you all know- Asian people eat mostly lots of Curry dishes as their staple diet, and after a few weeks with all that curry waste flowing into the filter beds, the water suddenly became very turbid and undrinkable, panic stations set in and there was a big hoo-ha inquiry and it was discovered that the curry flow had totaly killed all the bacteria in the filter beds stone dead, and therefore no filteration was then taking place.

years of work- all down the drain in an instant, and we had raw sewage flowing into our river system wich eventualy killed off a lot of fish and aquatic plants.

Which just goes to show the delicate balance of nature is to be embraced as much as possible for our future generations to come- ( if any ! ) if we are not all sterile by then and all our plants are sterile too.

[carolyn137]

so it seems that one has to allow about three days for this proccess to take place- presumably this is done in a warmish room temp and not in a cold place. )


Never but never do fermentation inside b'c the fermentation stinks.

And three days is sufficient for some folks and not for others.

How long one lets stuff ferment depends on how thick or thin the container contents are, sometimes some varieties take longer than others, it also very much depends on the ambient temperature.

I have never had a fermentation be complete in three days. Ever. And in the Fall of the year when I do most of my fermentations I've often had to wait up to 10 days b'c the ambient temperature was so low that the fermentation was drastically slowed down. Enzymes aren't happy at low temperatures.

It usually takes 5-7 days for me, depending on all the variables I've mentioned.

I always use clear containers, usually one pint deli containers, so I can see the bubbles that appear due to the active fermentation and I can also see the enzymatic action that tears apart the solids and also see how quickly seeds are dropping to the bottom. Lots of seeds will still be caught up in the debris, so effective multiple vigorous rinses are necessary.

The first thing one looks for is the development of a fungal mat that covers the surface of the container contents, so that's why I use only clear containers, so I can see beneath that mat to follow what's happening.

And no, I can't see that adding seaweed would help seed subsequent germination b'c the endosperm of the seed has all the nutrients necessary to allow for germination and up to the point when the cotyledons and then first true leaves form when photosynthesis then takes over as the major source of energy production for the seedlings.

In addition, any such coating on the seeds would cause them to clump when exposed to humidity or similar. I want my seeds dry and fluffy and to stay that way in storage.

[Delora]

Originally Posted by michael johnson

Because of the severe problem over here in the Uk with the water table being contaminated by hundreds of chemicals leeching into it from off agricultural land drainage - everyone has now gone organic grown mad- and everything is now 85% organic reared, meat,eggs, poultry, and all vegetables, using only organic fertilisers and organic feeding methods- if its not too late already as we slowly realised we were poisoning ourselves to death, and they cannot remove certain chemicals out of the water despite constant water treatment and organic filter beds, the worst is agricultural Fungicides, and weed seed inhibitors, pesticides and herbicides.


Which just goes to show the delicate balance of nature is to be embraced as much as possible for our future generations to come- ( if any ! ) if we are not all sterile by then and all our plants are sterile too.

I would hate for the US to get to a state that would cause such a drastic shift in public perception and necessitate the need to change the standard procedures. However, I do feel the shift needs to take place, and such a scare may be the inducement needed. There is now more pollution and runoff in our waterways from homeowners than from agriculture.

In my neighborhood, all of the storm drains feed into a lake that's a few hundred meters from my house, and the lake in turn feeds into a watershed that eventually dumps into the Chesapeake Bay. Every spring and fall, most of the residents dump bags and bags and preemergents, weed killers, insecticides, and synthetic fertilizers onto their lawns, and consequently it all drains directly into the lake. Over the past 2 years (I've lived here for 6), the lake has started to develop serious algae growth. I cringe every time I see one of the commercial lawn chemical trucks sitting in front of someone's house (who generally come out 4-6 times a year). I've tried talking to a few select neighbors that we're friendly with about the problem, but they hold the same collective mentality that it's just easier to use the chemicals and that they need to get rid of the weeds. It almost takes on the tone of a personal vendetta: them against nature. They just don't care about the bigger picture.


-Delora

[coronabarb]

I live in California and haven't had a problem with seeds sent to me by others. And I haven't heard from anyone to whom I've sent seeds, either as a listed SSE member or from offers I've made. I sent out a LOT of seeds last year.

[michael johnson]

Coronabarb- now thats an odd thing !!, since several others in the california area have been having trouble- mainly with sending out seeds rather than recieving them.

Perhaps the problems are more localised to a certain area than previously thought.

Delora- you have my sympathy in worrying about poisons build up in the water in your area, we over here in the UK didnt even know we had it for a start- as the water treatment companies never bothered to actualy look for these poisons in the water and relied on their filtration methods to clean the water to new european standards, but then there was a very big problem that happened in a localised area of england with fungicides that had been used on the land crops, several children were born blind, and a number of cancer cases developed in all ages groups in pockets close to that area, it was then and only then did they start to sit up and take notice and some bright scientist decided to check the water for chemicals using very modern equipment to do so, and lo and behold what did they find- hundreds of potential nasties in the water, upon further lengthy checking they even found that it had got into the water table bedrock deep in the ground. sudden panic set in right accross the country and it was decided to actualy do something about it, farmers were asked to stop intensive farming methods and go back to organic production using no chemicals whatsoever, the gradual changover took about five years- now everything sold that is organicaly produced has to carry a government certified 100% organic farming certificate, everybody buys organic these days and the land is gradualy becoming sweeter and cleaner.

They even found pesticides and herbicides in cows milk -would you believe, and lots of mothers got a terrible scare as they had been feeding it to babies, they also got even scared a lot more when they decided to test mothers breast milk too, and found lots of chemicals in that too from the meat, water,dairy produce, vegetables etc they had consumed.

Fortunatly now everything is back on track again and anti-polution teams are sweeping accross the land -cleaning rivers, waterways, etc, wild salmon are actualy starting to come back into the rivers , birds and butterflies are establishing themselves again in the countryside- but they still havent yet found a way of removing the chemicals out of the water thats in the bedrock watertable.

I myself am fortunate in the fact that all our drinking water comes from a fresh water spring in the mountains in big five gallon containers which I buy in from time to time, we only use the mains tap water for washing and cleaning with.

Everything I grow for our own use is organicaly grown, all vegetables ,all our tomatoes, are organicaly fed, my wife wont even let me use a can of fly spray in the house or garden anymore.

One thing that did astound me though- is that it was recently discovered that anyone living in a contaminated water area with herbicedes and fungicides etc, absorbed almost ten times as much of it than normal if they stood in the shower a lot- rather than a bath, apparently the human skin is constantly bombarded with the shower jets and it goes in like a high pressure injection,- who would have thought that!.

[Tomaddict]

I've come into this exchange a bit late, thanks to Craig alerting me to the issue, as I'm not a regular reader of this forum. Variability of seed germination is a subject that we've discussed in the past. I have noticed that sometimes seed from an acquired source can germinate poorly, while I consistently get good germination rates from the seed that I've saved, even if it is 10+ years old. (The secret is in proper seed handling and storage.) I have data from the last few years to back up what I'm stating here, as I've been measuring and recording my germination rates for the past few years. Unfortunately, it is mostly on relatively small samples (50 or less seeds, usually, of a given variety).

I've grown enough from seed over my decades of experience to know that if you have good germination results with some seed, poor results with seed from another source, and are using more or less the same conditions for all, chances are the problem is with your seed source, not your technique, unless you've done something quite unusual to screw things up. (It is a possibility, to which I can attest from experience, but you usually know or suspect something went wrong when it happens.)

The speculation in this thread on the possible causes are interesting, but only that - speculation. I am doubtful that the dosage of X-rays or other radiation that may be used to examine packaging is strong enough to cause much problem, or there would be some significant operator exposure issues for the people that are using these procedures. Like Carolyn, I tend to discount the potential for water quality to be the problem, or the person would be having difficulty germinating seeds from all sources including self-saved seed, not just trouble with some acquired seed.

It's usually the simplest explanation that turns out to be the correct one (isn't that Occam's razor?). Here, my suspicion is that the culprit is most likely HEAT. I don't know just how sensitive seed may be to what we consider relatively minor changes in temperature, but it does make sense that they are relatively sensitive - seeds do consist of living (if dormant) tissue. And the possibility of exposure to elevated temperatures during shipping is very real, and could be highly variable depending on local conditions - for example, the interior of a truck can get pretty warm on a sunny day, even when it is relatively cool outside.

So while the idea of sending dosimeters brought a smile to my face (I like how you think!), it would be more affordable - and probably more teling - to send around some of those temperature indicators, which will register the max temp exposure. I think they're relatively inexpensive, and should be fairly readily available, although I'd have to do some digging to find where to get them.

If anyone is serious about doing some experiments, I have a large quantity of tomato seed that I could donate to the cause - certainly enough to provide several varieties of a thousand or more seeds. But before I make it available, we will have to have a coherent (and detailed) plan, one with mailing costs borne by participants (unless we have a generous benefactor in our midst).

Perhaps mailing seed with temperature indicators, and conducting germination trials at several locations, would be a way to start with such an experiment.

FYI, mailing of seeds requires some padding to avoid having them crushed, but that is easily achieved. I just tape seed packet(s) to a piece of bubble wrap (the stuff with small bubbles), and have never had a problem or complaint with this, and I send out a lot of seeds every year thru the SSE network. It works well, and is a lot cheaper than buying padded envelopes. I do reuse the padded envelopes I receive for mailing samples of larger seeds, such as beans and peas.

jeff