Did I kill all of my seeds?

Hi everyone,

I'm a new gardener, and I made the mistake of leaving my box of seed packets outside one day. The next morning when I woke up, it was raining. 90%+ of my seed packets were quite wet. I took some of the dryer seeds out of their packets and put them between paper towels, and the rest I just left alone. Did I kill all of my seeds? I didn't throw them away yet, with hopes that they'd come to life regardless of my mistake. Can I do a germination test (and if so, how?), or some kind of float/sink test (again, how?) to see if they're dead or alive?

Thanks!

Just getting wet won't kill them (after all, you have to get them wet when you're planting them and trying to get them to germinate!) But if you let them stay wet then they could rot, or if the moisture doesn't make them rot, it could trigger germination while they're still in the packet and by the time you pull them out in the spring they'll be dead. So for the ones that you weren't able to dry out, you really ought to sow them now, either that or pitch them because they won't stay good after they've been wet for a period of time. But if you sow them now, they'll likely germinate, and then you just have to find a place to keep them over the winter since they'll probably be too tender to plant out before winter hits. For the ones that you are trying to dry out, I'm honestly not sure what'll happen--again you could sow them now and they'd probably germinate fine, what happens to them if you wait until later I'm not sure. Some seeds you have to soak overnight to trigger germination, so if they were wet most of the night my guess is they're going to be in the mood to germinate now, and I don't know if you can dry them out, put them away, and then pull them out in several months and expect them to germinate or not.

Doing a germination test now right now won't tell you much, all your seeds should still be viable right now but depending on what the moisture did to them, they might not be viable a few months down the road. If you can't plant them now and have to wait until winter/spring to sow them, that's the time to do the germination test and see if they're still viable or not.

All that being said, I'm not an expert on seed starting, so let's see what other people have to say.

ecrane, you said it all!

Whoops, I guess I forgot to mention one little thing . . . I left my seeds out about 2 months ago or so, not recently! Sorry ecrane, I could have saved you a lot of typing! Anyway, they got wet a while back, and I planted what I could that day, put a few more in paper towels, and just left the rest as they were. So now it's "the rest", aka all the ones that were wet but that I just left as they were, that I'm wondering about. I can surely do some kind of seed germination test now, right? Or maybe I shouldn't bother until closer to the next planting season? Obviously I don't know! :o)

Well, I'm sure you're not going to be the last person who leaves seed packets out in the rain, so hopefully my answer will help someone else!

You could do a germination test now if you want, that way you'll have a better idea of what you'll need to replace. But there are still things that could happen between now and when you'd be planting them that could hurt their ability to germinate, so you'd probably want to check them again then anyway. I guess the advantage of checking them now is that you have plenty of time to replace them if they're totally dead. At the very least you might open up the seed packets and take a look at what the seeds look like--if there's mold, or if it looks like they tried to germinate already from the moisture then I would just throw the packet out and not even bother testing them.