Seed Storage: Dedicated Fridge?

[budman678]

Need your help, I need to store my seeds properly but the family fridge isn’t gonna cut it. I was lookin at cheap “college fridges” and curious if anyone else was using something similar.

I have my packs in large quart jars with desiccant packs but know that I need cooler temps. A small dedicated fridge seems logical but will that do the trick?

How and where do you store your seeds?

 

[dramamine]

That's what I use too. Jars with rice or desicccant, full of seed packs, kept in the bottom of the fridge. I've been popping some 12-13 year old packs kept that way with almost no DOA's.

 

[Hammerhead]

I use a mini fridge for all my seeds and pollen. It will work fine.

 

[budman678]

Do you guys leave the seeds in the breeder
Packs?

 

[Hammerhead]

Yes, I use baseball card boxes for the seed packs.

 

[goingrey]

Can you put bags of grass seed in the freezer to prevent decay (or whatever makes seeds go bad) so they will be "fresh" upon thawing? Grass seed is such a sketchy, fleeting industry (for non-commercial consumers), and I'm concerned the seed I want will not be available in the future and/or the sometimes-only one or two internet sellers of any given product will be out of business and the seed will be un-buyable later on. So, can you freeze grass seed?

Yes. Freezing is the best option for long term storage. Some people say you should avoid self-defrosting freezers as multiple freeze-thaw cycles are bad though.

 

[aliceklar]

I've frozen seed before and seen some reduction in viability on defrosting. But I think its the defrosting that does the damage - so long as you dont repeatedly freeze, defrost and freeze again, you're good. One problem I had was that I put large jars of seeds in the freezer without cataloguing them or labelling the outside of the jars - so it was difficult or impossible to find and remove just the single or few packs of seeds I was looking for without also defrosting all the others. Multiple small containers, clearly labelled on the outside, is better.