FYI - Sending seeds through the mail

I have read a lot of posts on here lately about the "horrible seed eating postal machines"

My husband is a postal worker & not just any postal worker. He's a postal worker who's only job it is to keep the machines working. While you guys are all cursing the equipment that ate your seeds, he's cursing the person who's seeds exploded all over his machine. :)

So some tips from the MPE - he says if your not going to use a box to use a padded envelope. He said they make a small padded envelope for cd's that we could use for seeds. He says they will still go through the flat sorter, I think that's the one for larger stuff like magazines - but they won't go through the machines that push envelopes through rollers. Anything that is bumpy, going through that machine in a thin envelope is going to get eaten. Also the larger the seed the higher chance of it getting eaten, but even fine seeds if there are enough of them and they pile up on one end - will get shredded.

Thank you for the information. I will remember that next time I send seeds. I'm quilty of sending seeds in regular envies with a note written across the bottom that says hand stamp only - seeds, but guess that doen't work. Will stock up on small bubble envies for all future seed mailing

dCart - guilty here as well but only for the smaller seed
like moss rose anything larger gets a bubble. But I won't
jam your hubbys machine in the future :)

Thanks for passing this info along. I believed like many
others that the "Hand Cancel" would be sufficient.

Nice to have someone who works with mail, let us know about how to mail things.

It doesn't work to write on a business or letter type envelope because people don't read them anymore. Think of how much mail a post office has to process - they can't read every piece of mail by hand. The letter style envelopes go through a machine that reads it and sorts it. On that machine the letters go through rollers like a pasta press that's what eats your seeds.

The flat sorter is also reads the mail and sorts it. However nothing is pinched tight, the machine goes in a straight line. This is what sorts things like magazines and the thicker bubble wrap envelopes.

So when you write "hand sort only" the only thing reading that is the machine you don't want it in. LOL