Today I took all my garden seeds out for a good look through.  Oh my.  Here I’ve been thinking these last few months that I really needed to do some serious seed shopping.

Um.  I don’t think so.   There are a few things I would like to amend with, but for the most part, I think I need very little as far as new seed goes.

I have 32 varieties of tomato seed, and as of right now, I am planning on just 16 tomato plants for my garden.  However, I could be persuaded to bump that up to 24, but I’d like to try and keep it around 16.  Some of my seeds need to be eliminated as contenders, and then there’s the ones I would like from the Minnesota garden.  Sigh…

I need to get some more varieties of lettuce- and a mesclun mix of some type.  I also am thinking that I need to get some new hot peppers this year, as my seed is several years old, and pepper seed is reliable for about two years.

And that’s where the germination test comes in.  As I was going through the seeds I found several different varieties of onion, leek and scallion seed.  Allium seed is notorious for only being good for a year or so- and some of this seed is 3 years old.  I have new seed already for this year, since I was convinced to try onions again, but what about all these old seeds?

Well, rather than try and sow them and see what happens, I am performing a germination test on the five varieties of old onion seed.   It’s really very easy, the tough part is waiting a week for the results.  Basically, I took some paper napkins (paper towel is recommended, but it turns out I’m all out) and got them nice and damp.   Then on each one, I laid out exactly 10 of my seeds.

That napkin got folded up and placed in a plastic zipper bag.  The bag was labeled, and when all was said and done, I placed my stack of baggies in a nice warm spot.

In a week I will check to see how many of my seeds have sprouted.  Using exactly ten seeds will give me an accurate percentage to go by for planting consideration.  If seven sprout, I have 70% germination, and I’ll know to sow fairly thickly.  If less than five sprout, I will either have to sow thickly or just discard the seeds.  I will likely just discard in those cases.

In other news, I did receive my first seed order of the season, compliments of the Minnesota Garden Team. 🙂 I received a Johnny’s gift card for Christmas, and was delighted to find all kinds of goodies on sale on their website.  I placed my order, and using the gift card, I was only charged 30 cents for my order.

Well, when the order came in, I saw to my delight that Johnny’s had not charged me that 30 cents after all.  I imagine that small amount is a waste of time for them to run through a credit card machine, and would likely cost them more than it’s worth.  But it was still a sign of a nice company that they discounted my order that simple 30 cents.

In this order are my new onion seeds, some cucumbers for both pickling and slicing, an artichoke, (which I am very eager to try growing here) as well as a few lettuces and a few varieties of squash.  I did well on this order, considering I hadn’t checked my seed stash first, nothing was duplicated, and I did indeed need these seeds.

Very soon, I am going to share some thoughts on winter harvest.  Thoughts I never really considered before, but let me just say, my eyes are being opened to a whole new way to garden.