Gary, the methods that I've used and still use one are for seeds that are older than about 10 years and so very dehydrated. And they've not been treated with anything at all, just stored as I store seeds.

And nothing from contaminated seed either.

I only have had to try to revive olf seed when I know there are no sources for that variety, which is seldom given the extensive number of specialized seed sources available today, including the SSE Yearbook listings for SSE members where there's about 4000 varieties listed.

So do you have seed over about 10 yo that you want to work with? And are those varieties rare and hard to get or not available at all.

Considering all that one has to go thru and the time involved I don't think it's even worth doing except for the two situations I mentioned above.

Carolyn

The common methods of reviving seed are:

1. Roll the seed in a damp paper towel and place in a ziploc bag with lots of air. Place in the refrigerator overnight. Remove from the ziploc bag and place in soil trays in an incubator at 85 degrees with LOTS of light. Note that this is warmer than most recommendations. Note also the requirement for light. The seed should be just lightly covered over with very fine seed start mix (less than 1/16 inch).

2. Soak the paper towel as above in a dilute fertilizer solution such as miracle grow 15-30-15. The intent is to pump some nitrogen into the seed so it has an incentive to grow. Dilute means 1/4 teaspoon in 1 gallon of water.

3. Do the overnight soak as above, then remove the ziploc from the fridge and fill it with oxygen. No oxygen? No problem, get a bottle of hydrogen peroxide and a package of dry yeast. Add 1/2 cup peroxide to a pint jar and stir in 1 tablespoon of yeast. Place the ziploc bag mouth over the jar. It will rapidly fill with nearly pure oxygen. Do NOT get the peroxide on the seed, they don't seem to like it. Leave the seed in a warm place at about 80 to 85 degrees for 3 days, then start checking the seed daily for germination. When you see a sprout, remove that seed and place it in seed start mix to grow.

4. Some have reported results with lightly microwaving seed for just a few seconds followed by germinating as above. I do NOT recommend this, just putting it in because you will probably find it online.

5. Soak the seed overnight in various tea mixtures. One that works fairly well is plain lipton tea at about 1/10th normal strength. This appears to work because the tannic acid in the tea stimulates growth. You can make a similar tea from crumbled oak leaves that is effective.

6. Be patient. Often old tomato seed take up to 6 weeks to germinate. Keep the soil mix moist but not soaked, give plenty of light, and wait.

DarJones

Here is a link to a faq on the pepper forum that is worth reading.
Byron's tea wake up recipe

Hi Gary,

Just wanted to tell you my waking-old-tomato-seed story, and at the same time give thanks to all you GardenWeb tomato gurus whose advice I have looked over and used to recover an heirloom tomato I call "Viola". Thank you for taking the time to answer questions because it is not just the questioner that you are helping. Us silent listeners /readers often benefit without your knowledge of our existence. Thanks!

My husband and I have often lamented that we did not keep planting a tomato (large red oblate beefsteak-like but is really an ox-heart) that Viola, a friend of my mother-in-law had given us back in 1994. Viola had called it "my Portuguese tomato". (They were Portuguese, from the Azores.) I saved seeds from that tomato, but not in the generally prescribed way since I did not know any better; I spread the seeds out on a paper plate to dry. When I told Viola that we loved her tomato and I saved some seeds on a paper-plate, she told me that next time, she would give me seeds. (Obviously, she knew that I did not know to ferment the seeds, but I had no idea then.)

I planted Viola's seeds next year and was surprised to see a droopy, wispy, but quite vigorous tomato plant that did not look like tomato plants that I was used to. Some fruit were oblate like the tomato that Viola gave us, but other fruit were heart-shaped; the larger fruit were 1 pound plus. I have since learned much more about tomatoes, and varieties, and realized that Viola's Portuguese tomato was an ox-heart!

Sad to say, I did not save subsequent seeds back then. At that time, I was working, and did not have much spare time for gardening. Recently, I've been taking advantage of being between jobs! Back in 2008, I cleaned a room and found Viola's and my saved tomato seeds. One envelope was marked "For 1995" and had tan seeds. The other envelope had my red-tinged unfermented seeds. I tried to germinate 16 seeds (8 each) and gave up after 2 months.

In 2009, I did some internet research on starting old tomato seeds and discovered GardenWeb. I also did end up with "Viola" tomato plants after gathering up advice and made my plan of attack.

I soaked 16 seeds (8 each) overnight in water with a pinch of Peter's fertilizer. 8 seeds (4 each) were planted in Miracle Gro Seed Starting mix and 8 were planted in Miracle Gro Cactus and Citrus Mix. Other variety fresh tomato seeds were also planted in the same tray in different cells. The whole seed starting domed plastic cell tray was set on a heating pad set to low. During the day, I would turn the heating pad back on whenever I noticed it off. After a while, other variety seeds have sprouted, so I took the entire tray outside (for lighting to keep the sprouted seedlings from getting leggy) during the day, and put it back on the heating pad at night.

75% of my seeds sprouted! But, only 50% of the seeds germinated to usable seedlings. One seedling had lost a cotyledon when it was stuck in the seed hull as the other cotyledon popped it off. Another seedling never grew any true leaves. Another seedling has remained tiny with only one true leaf. Yet another seedling grew 2 true leaves, but no showed no signs of additional leaves. All seedlings were much less vigorous than other varieties of tomato seedlings (from fresh seeds) which germinated ~10 days earlier.

I eventually planted the 4 most vigorous seedlings and tossed the deformed ones. And I did end up with many, many pounds of fruit! (Have separate notes, but have not entered into any online file.) All 4 plants produced 1 lb plus fruit.

Seed Starting Summary:

Viola '94 (Red seeds from Big Tomato) in Miracle Gro Citrus/Cactus Mix
Started: 3/10/2009
Sprouted: 3/18/2009 3/25/2009 3/28/2009
In Ground: 4/20/2009

Viola '94 (Red seeds from Big Tomato) in Miracle Gro Seedling Mix
Started: 3/10/2009
Sprouted: 3/22/2009 3/26/2009 3/26/2009
In Ground: 4/20/2009

Viola '95 (Saved seeds from Viola) in Miracle Gro Citrus/Cactus Mix
Started: 3/10/2009
Sprouted: 3/19/2009 3/20/2009 3/22/2009
In Ground:

Viola '95 (Saved seeds from Viola) in Miracle Gro Seedling Mix
Started: 3/10/2009
Sprouted: 3/19/2009 3/20/2009 3/21/2009 4/5/2009
In Ground: 4/20/2009

It did not make any difference which seed starting medium I used.

6/3/2009: All 4 plants are ~4 feet tall. One plant has one leaf branch that is yellowed (variegated-looking); this is the only plant that has set fruit. All others do have flowers, but have not set fruit.

6/10/2009: Removed yellowed leaves from bottom. All plants have fruit set. Amongst the tallest tomato plants (along with Peacevine and Black Cherry) but not as wide.

6/25/2009: All plants over 5 feet tall. Plant in middle front has more yellowing leaves than others. Plant on left front seems to have the least yellowing. The caged plant in the second row also has minimum yellowing. All plants have a lot of fruit set. Some fruit getting large!

Sorry I don't have the harvesting notes around. I am fortunate to be in zone 9 in sunny California.

For the growing season of 2010, I used some of my collected seeds from these 4 plants. They worked just fine with no special starting tweaks. So now, I have resurrected this particular variety and have also given some plants to Viola's daughter (who is in her 70's).

Thanks again for all the tomato advice floating in the GardenWeb cyber space!

I read soaking seeds in a potassium nitrate solution makes them sprout better. I did that last year for many of my seeds, but forgot to do it this year for the 70 tomato seeds I just planted. I didn't do controlled experiments so don't know if it really helped. Someone on the pepper forum tried all sorts of solutions and his results were that plain water gave the best results.

Californian, what's apparently important with the K nitrate is the nitrate b'c it's known to be important in seed germination. I've contacted a couple of seed physiologists and they can't tell me at what step it does so or how.

And yes, years ago I used to soak the old seeds in K nitrate, the recommended concentration is 0.2% which works out to about one tsp/gal, but doing controls without K nitrate didn't show a great deal of difference. And at that time I'd also water the seeds in the seed mix with the same concentration.

Soaking in just plain water with added blue stuff like MG or Peters or adding a few drops of liquid seaweed or fish, does supply that needed nitrate.

In the other thread that's been referred to here I described a number of different ways that both Craig LeHoullier and I have used in the past to try and wake up old seeds but with my increasing age, ahem, I'm convinced that old seed dehybdration is the major problem.

When it was still possible to get seeds out of the USDA many varieties that were sent had no viability or less than 5% so there were lots of seeds to practice with, and as I've said here several times in the past it really is critical to use controls so that you know if what's you're doing significantly increases the germination percentage.

Again I see no sense in using some of these methods unless the variety you're working with is RARE or almost impossible to find.

My current record is waking up seeds of September Dawn that were 22 yo and the current DOCUMENTED record is waking up 50 yo seed that had been stored in a file cabinet at a precursor of the USDA station at Cheyenne WY, when everything there was transferred to Ames, IA.

The age of the other seeds I was able to wake up were those that Joe Bratka found in a tool shed from varieties his father had bred, in glass jars with the names already on them; Joe couldn't germinate any of them so sent them to me and I was able to germinate:

Box Car Willie
Mule Team
Great Divide
Pasture
Red Barn
...... and it's my feeling that REd Barn is one of the best but is seldom grown. There were three that I couldn't germinate and I aways wondered what they might have been.

Finally, all current seed for the variety Magnus, a PL pink that was on the cover of the 1900 Livingston catalog came from ONE plant of that variety, seeds received from the USDA many years ago.

You have no idea how I coveted that one plant, that seed took almost two months to germinate and some day I can tell you the story of what happened to the first fruits that started to ripen up. LOL

Carolyn

Carolyn,

I know this thread is about waking up seeds, but what is the best way to put them to bed? I have wondered about using a Food Saver, sucking the air out and vacuum-sealing them and then freezing them.

I received a few seeds from Larry W of Idaho Hillbilly and was able to get 70 seeds last year. I would like to preserve the rest of the seeds he gave me just in case mine are crossed in the future.

How does one go about this?

mile high,

There are many threads already here at GW that deal with how to store saved seeds, or even new commercial packs.

So I'd first try the search feature to find those threads and if you can't find them then start a new thread so we don't stray away from the title of this thread.

Carolyn, who spent many years in Denver teaching at the med center at 8th and Colorado, lived at 1629 Locust, two blocks over from Monaco Parkway.

It has just occurred to me that the way the "Viola" seeds reacted, as far as lack of vigor and deformation, is exactly the way some of the "fresh" seeds I received from a supplier last year reacted. The ones that were the biggest disappointment were Chinese Paste and Marianna's Peace. I never did get a decent plant from the dozen I tried. I'm just so new to this that it never dawned on me what the problem could be.

So, if I decide to try these seeds again this year I know I have nothing really to loose. If I soak them overnight with MG and them put them in containers of starting mix at 77 degrees F, would this be the best? How important is the light? I have found an egg incubator to be really reliable when the seeds are started in sterilized soil. I check them twice a day. Will light help germination considerably? I did use the incubator last year and it worked well, I just didn't soak the seeds in diluted fertilizer.

Carolyn, I just ordered Box Car Willie and Red Barn! Where would the tomato world be without your knowledge and determination? Thank you!!!!!

BTW, what did you teach here in Denver?

I was a faculty member at the Med School and taught medical students all aspects of infectious diseases viz bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites and the immune responses to same and also did research/

Carolyn