Must-Do Before Planting Leftover Seeds!

In our part of the world, it’s time to start thinking about which seeds you want to sew this fall (last week’s Herb Talk was all about that!).

If you are like me, you probably have some leftover seeds from last season and are thinking, why not just sew these seeds? It’s a shame to waste them!

Before you start planting all of those leftover seeds, I have some advice - test them out first! There’s nothing more frustrating than to take the time to sew seeds, have all of your starter trays ready to go and then you wait, and wait, and wait - and nothing happens! At this point you realize that your seeds weren’t viable. 😩 What a waste of time and money!

Seeds can be expensive, I get it, plus, you would hate to throw away good seeds! There’s a way for you to find out if your seeds are viable or not, so you can toss the bad ones and keep the good ones.

Here’s what you do:

Take at least 10 seeds from the bunch you are testing (less than that and the test won’t be very accurate) and place them on a paper towel. Using a spray bottle, mist the seeds and paper towel around them until they are damp, but not soaked. Do not place the paper towel and seeds in water, you will drown them. Then, put the damp paper towel with seeds in a plastic bag and write the date on it. Do NOT seal the paper bag, or it will stay too damp.

Make sure the seeds don’t get too hot or too cold, keep them in an area with a temperature between 70-90 (80-85 is best) degrees F.

Check the seeds daily to make sure they don’t dry out. If the paper towel looks dry, spritz it again with water.

In around 5-7 days, you should start seeing sprouts. Some plants can take longer (like peppers) so you can give it up to two weeks. At that point, if you still don’t see anything, or very little, they are duds and you can throw them out.

This all being said, timing is important. You should plan to start testing your seeds 2-3 weeks before you want to start planting. In our zones (7-10), this means NOW is a perfect time to start testing your seeds!

So get out your leftover seeds and start testing them now!

Hey there, Heather here!

I just want to mention how much I LOVE my moisture meter! It takes the guesswork out of wondering if my plants need to be watered or not. Just this morning, my plants looked like they were wet because it rained, but when I put the moisture meter in, many of them were dry, dry. They looked wet because the top layer got sprinkled on, but deeper down was a different story.

Want to get one? Click here to get the one my mom and I are using!