Germination of older tomato seeds

I'm writing to report that I have successfully germinated at least one "Sugar Lump" tomato seed from Northrup King Seeds. The seed packet is dated 1979. That's 33 years old! Pictures will be added as soon as the film gets developed.

Good for you !
You gave me some hopes because I have a lot of seeds and I hate to trow them away.

How did you do it?

Thanks for sharing such good news with us. That is amazing! Good luck on your Sugar Lump tomatoes!
Gary

Congrats! Be sure to SAVE some seeds from your plants, for the next 33 years!

mt ~ Did you do anything special to encourage the germination, or did you only follow standard procedure? (Inquiring minds want to know...LOL!!!) ^_^

Congrats, mtilton..

Just curious, what was the source of the seeds? (Which company name was on the packet?)

Shoe

Gosh---My father would be proud. He used to sell Northrup King seed for a short while at about that time. mtilton---You must have taken very good care of the seed.???

Seeds over about 12 to 15 years have to have special treatment, especially seeds of heart varieties which lose viability more quickly than others.

My best to date is waking up seeds of September Dawn that were 22 yo, but the documented record is viable seeds which were tested when the precursor to the USDA, the Cheyenne Station, were transferred to Ames, IA to the new USDA station there. Those seeds had just been stored in a file cabinet but while I once had that scientific paper I don't know what the folks in Ames did to try and wake them up.

I sent seeds of a special variety called Dourne D' Hiver to a professional breeder last Spring, they were from 1993, and he was able to wake some up and just recently sent seeds of Tadesse and Wuhib to four folks to try and wake up Tadesse b'c the places offering it do not have the correct variety.

And after 5 days one of those persons already has one seedling of Wuhib up and since both were in identical vials and stored the same and are of the same age, fingers crossed that one or more of them get up Tadesse.

They used the procedure I shared with them.

Soak the seeds o/n in a small dixie cup to which a pinch of MG or Peters has been added, or if organic a couple of drops of Fish or seaweed prep. the reason for that it that's it's known that the nitrate ion is important in seed germination and those additions are high in nitrate ion.

Sow the seed, water when neccessay with water to which one of the above products are named. it may take many weeks, up to two months before you might see germination, or not.

And before I settled on that method I tried saltpetre, microwave, cold tea, gibberellic acid, etc.

All seeds for the variety Magnus that are out there now came from one plant in my tomato field. My friend Craig LeHoullier had received the seeds from the USDA but couldn't germinate any of them, sent the seeds to me and I was able to get one plant up, and if you really want to know why my mother ate the first fruits, and I cried, I can continue the story. LOL

Carolyn

Yeah, Carolyn - go ahead...LOL!!!

If tomato seeds are appropriately fermented, dried, and stored, they can last up to 10 years with a germination rate of 50%. Here are some tips to help! http://www.tomatodirt.com/old-tomato-seeds.html

Hah, he quotes me, saying I'm an heirloom pioneer, well you get that way when you're as old as I am, and then goes on to describe the way I do it, just check in the post above about that, and all the other data he gives is stuff that I've posted online many times.

I wonder who he is but it's clear that he posts where I do or he wouldn't have used some of the exact words that I use. LOL

Carolyn, who should have looked around to see what else he picked up from me, but what the heck say I. LOL

He hasnt showed back up to explain his results. How can you post pictures from developed film?

Uh, the REST of the story, please....

Bee-Did you vanish in the mean time?