I'm new to vegetable gardening and appreciate all the advice I can get. My question is (please don't laugh too hard) can unused tomato and sweet pepper seeds be stored and grown at a later date? If they can.... what is the proper storage method?

Thanks,
Linda

I store mine in zip lock baggies and store the baggies in plastic tubs in my spare room. Some people store seeds in the refrigerator, but a cool dark place will work. If I stored my seeds in the fridge we would not have room for food Both tomato and pepper seeds store very well.

Patti1957,
Thank you.....thank you......thank you!!!!
Linda

Your welcome Linda!

Linda....many seeds will be viable for years. Just be sure to keep them dry, and not in an overly-warm environment. Ziplock bags, rubbermaid/tupperware containers are all good for storage.

If you ever want to check germination before planting, just put a few seeds into a moist paper towel, then stick the whole thing into a ziplock bag to keep it moist. Keep it somewhere fairly warm, and you'll be able to see if you seeds sprout in the paper towel. If they do, your seeds are good to plant!

I've had good luck and excellent germination by storing my seed stash in the freezer.

Thanks everyone for the great info. You guys really make everything much easier to understand.

Linda

Welcome to the site, Linda...

And I agree, store seeds in an airtight container (storage/freezer bags; tight-sealing jars, etc) and keep from being exposed to excessive heat. I store mine in bags and/or jars and keep in the fridge or freezer for longest term storage. (I had sweet corn from 1994 that had near 100% germination two years ago that had been frozen.)

Have fun gardening!
Shoe

I don't have any evidence that keeping them extra dry makes them last any longer, but I bought a pound of silica gel (for drying flowers). I keep a litle paper packet of silica gel as a dessicant inside the plastic peanut-butter jar where I store pepper and tomato seeds ... in the fridge.

Necessary? Probably not, since so many people have good success just drying them first, and then storing them sealed. But it reassures me.

And the humidity indicator cards show that the silica gel IS keeping the humidity lower than it would be otherwise. It shows the RH as around 10-15% when I've changed the desicant bag recently, and it takes an hour or two to reduce it from around 30% when the jar has been open a while.

One bag lasts 4-8 minths, depending on how often I open the jar. And you can regenerate the silica gel by baking for a while, at 260 F.

Some people use dry rice, baked extra-dry, as a gentle dessicant. Bake it not-quite-brown-yet.

Everyone else was giving good, simple, practical advice, so I had to contribute some unecessary complexity! The only practical aspect is: get them GOOD and dry before sealing them up or freezing them.

When I asked a local Master Gardener about dessicating seed for storage, she hadn't heard of the idea. When she consulted with her buddies, their consensus was that, if seed was dry enough to snap or crunch when you bent or crushed it, it was "dry enough".

If you ever manage to get a seeds internal humidity down to zero, you would kill it.

P.S. Another way to tell how dry your jar of seed is, is to store a piece of newsprint inside. After a few weeks, if it feels limp, it may not be dry enough. If it is crisp or brittle, it is plenty dry.

RickCorey - Thanks for the info re: drying the seeds. I'm such a "newby" that I didn't even realize the seeds needed to be dried prior to storage. Do I just spread them out on a paper towel and let them air dry for a period of time? My inquiring mind wants to know.
Thanks,
Linda

You'd be better off drying seeds on wax paper or waxed paper plates. Fresh seed tends to stick to paper towels and you'll spend forever and a day pulling each one off so you can bag them. Ugh.

Your first post asked about "unused" seed. I take that to mean you have some purchased seed packs and wanted to save the seeds you didn't sow, right? If that is what you are saving those are fine to save as is..unless they got wet or were stored in a high humidity environment I'm sure you can just leave them in their packs, put the packs in a jar and then fridge.

Shoe

Shoe - Yes the seeds I have are all in packets. I am far...far...far from saving seeds from plants I've grown. Your info makes everything "easy peasy". Hooray!!!!
Thanks,
Linda

Great to hear.

Now you can feel like you have this years garden already started, you have the seeds! Ta-dahh!

Happy Day to ya!
Shoe

Shoe is right, but I've had good luck with seeds on coffee filters. I do move them around as they dry, so they don;t stick. Also, my saved seeds are usually wet with rain, not plant juices, and that may make them less sticky. But I never tried paper towels.

And seriously: very few people bother with any dessicant inside the jars.

Another quirk I picked up from reading: try to avoid setting a packet of seeds down on wet surfaces or muddy soil. It will absorb water, bugs may crawl in, and mud may contain mold or spores. If you're going to put an envelope back into a jar with your entire stash of saved seeds, it must be dry, and probably should be pretty clean, so it doesn't encourage mold.

Probably few people worry about that either, but I usually decide how much I want to sow before going outside, and put that much into a Ziplock or envelope that I don't mind getting wet and dirty.

I also usually make a plastic marker for each variety I'm going to sow, before going outdoors, because I KNOW I will forget which is where within minutes.

What happens if you leave a fruit outside of the fridge for 7 weeks?

My wife and I went off for our honeymoon, and after doing the dishes, taking our the trash and even throwing away almost anything from the fridge, we realized we forgot one fruit on the table.
This is some sort of pear in the shape of apple. Was already in the fridge for a few weeks before forgetting it there- but wasn't rotten or anything yet.
The outside temperature should be 10-30 Celsius (50-86 Farenheit), but the inner temperature in the house probably no more than 80 F.

We won't be back in 7 weeks, and the only person who has a key to the apartment is our landlord, meaning we'll need to request someone to make some efforts to deal with it.

Should I be worried? Am I expected to find worms, flies, etc when I get back? Or should 7 weeks be ok?

* The fruit was inside a nylon sandwich bag, but it was probably open and not sealed.

Thanks so much.

This thread is about preserving seeds, and this is a gardening forum.
When you return, it'll probably just be dried up. If it came from the supermarket, unlikely that they'll be any pests inside of it.

A lot of good information on this old thread.