How to Store Your Seeds For the Long-Term… in the Freezer?

Posted on Aug 4 2014 - 11:37am by UOG

Screen Shot 2014-08-04 at 11.42.21 AMThe strangest posts wind up causing some controversy.

It doesn’t make sense to me.

When I wrote about why having an emergency seed bank is important, I didn’t quite get the reaction that I’d expect.

I received emails, Facebook comments and Tweets saying that I couldn’t be more wrong about storing the seeds and that freezing them was a horrible idea.

I’ll admit that I have never frozen seeds before and then used them. It is a recommendation that I’ve seen countless time before.

So I did a bit of research and here’s some excerpts from sites:

Last year we planted a variety of different seeds that we had put in the freezer over 10 years ago and forgotten about and they came up just fine. They were just in ziplock bags. — via Survivalist Boards

Seeds dried to a low moisture content with silica gel and then stored in a freezer can usually retain viability for many years. — via HowToSaveSeeds.com

Freezing seeds will put the embryo into suspended animation reducing its need to consume the sugars that are encased in the seed. This increases it’s storage life immensely… — via Ready Nutrition

Takeaways for Storing Your Seeds in the Freezer

The main takeaways that I got in my research were the following:

  • Make sure the seeds are dry when placed in the freezer. Using a silica gel pack can help with this.
  • Put the seeds in an airtight container. This can be a mason jar or even a ziplock bag. Vacuum sealing works well too.
  • Allow the seeds to thaw before planting. These are for long-term storage, but good to keep this tip in mind.

How do you store your seeds for the short or long-term?

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1 Comment so far. Feel free to join this conversation.

  1. One Dog August 16, 2014 at 9:56 am -

    There are probably some seeds that will die when frozen.

    If you have one container with many different seeds in it that you remove from and put back in the freezer repeatedly, you will likely get some condensation on the seeds, which will shorten their life.

    Otherwise, I think freezing them is a good idea.

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