Macmex is an active seed saver. You might check out Green Country Seedsavers for some good info. I set out with the aim of saving my own seeds. I want my seeds to be true and uncrossed. I have never mastered bagging of things like tomatoes. I have saved tomato seeds, but I wouldn't share them because I can't guarantee they weren't crossed. I could save okra seed, because I am only growing one variety (and I might). I could save my pole beans (if I EVER get any) because I'm not growing any other beans. I have saved collard and radish seeds. Technically, to get good genetic diversity you should save seed from like a dozen brassica plants. So if I grow these collards (from one plant) and save seeds again from just one plant, I risk loosing the good genetic traits and possibly perpetuating bad traits. Lots of people have saved seed that way, however. I've saved flower seeds. Heaven knows I have a million marigold seeds.

My seeds are stored in a plastic 3 drawer cart on wheels. The seeds are either in the original seed packet or plastic bags. Yes, there can be heated debates on the best way to store them. The thing is, most of our houses are pretty climate controlled, so humidity shouldn't be a big factor. A cool dry room in a storage recepticle safe from rodents (that's where sturdier storage might be important, like glass jars.)

George's instructions on storing beans includes drying till they are hard enough to shatter if struck by a hammer, then a few days in the deepfreeze to kill any bugs that might be in them.

If I buy seeds for perennials I will likely winter sow in milk jugs. I think perennials have done better for me winter sown and sometimes they are hard to germinate.

There really is no issue storing seeds over winter except possibly not getting a good germination. Some seeds don't keep as well as others. But lettuce is one that is short lived, and I had a pack I used for 3 years. Onions I have also had good germination more than one year out. Look at High Mowing Seeds Viability chart and don't buy large quantities of seeds with short lives. Not listed here, parsnips and salsify are one year only seeds.

As an ignorant person right now on this...what does "Winter sow in milk jugs" mean?

Here is the Winter Sown website. There is a Winter Sown forum here on Garden Web and a facebook page. In short, a milk jug (you can use other containers) cut about 1/3 the height from the bottom, filled with potting soil and seeded. It is taped back together and put outside in the cold. The top is removed. Rain can get in. You could sow direct in fall and hope the seeds don't wash away before they sprout. This way the seeds are protected, you have a mini greenhouse when they sprout and they come up when conditions are right for them to grow.

I store seeds long-term inside the house in a big plastic storage tote with a lid. At times, I have stored some seeds in the freezer, but don't find it really necessary. Most seeds germinate well enough even after 5-10 years of storage at standard room temperature. There are exceptions---lettuce seed, for example, is only viable for a handful of years and then germination really drops. I get good to great bean germination on seeds that I've had up to 5 years. After 5 years, the germination rates for beans drop but slowly each year. It isn't like they germinate well in year 4 or 5 but stop germinating after year 6---the percentage that germinates just drops and they also germinate more slowly. With purchased seed, with most companies, the seeds have either a "Packed For: (year)" date or a "Sell By: (date)" on them. All that tells us is that the seeds either were Packed For 2016 retails sales or should be Sold By 12-2016" for example. What it doesn't tell us is which year the seeds were grown and harvested. A lot of people assume seeds packed for 2016 were grown in 2015, and maybe they were, but more realistically they probably were just as likely to have been grown in 2014 or even earlier. I prefer to buy from companies that generally offer fresher seed, and that's something you learn from experience in growing seeds from different retailers.

There have been years I've saved a lot of seeds and years I've saved none. Much depends on whether I bagged blossoms (I usually don't have time) or whether I have something rare I want to hang on to. Right now the only seeds I've saved this year have been from Crane melon and Desert King watermelon. With most flowers and herbs, if I just leave them alone and let them go to seed in the fall, they will self-sow and I'll have all of them I want (and more) sprout in the spring. When that happens, I weed out the excess and feed them to the compost pile and sometimes pot up a few to take to the Spring Fling if the volunteers are something that I think someone else would like to have. I haven't had to sow seeds of common flowers like zinnias, marigolds, daturas, nicotiana, moss rose, verbena bonariensis, hollyhocks, French hollyhocks (Malva sylvestris 'Zebrina'), morning glories, purple coneflowers, salvia farinacea, or Laura Bush petunias in years and years unless I have wanted to add one of the above in a color different from what we already have. The same is true with a lot of common herbs like comfrey, basil, lemon balm, chamomile, dill, fennel, catnip, tansy, and silver tansy. They pop up all over the place every year and I just keep what I want and weed out the rest. The longer you garden, the less you have to grow from seed because you will find that lots of plants perpetuate themselves if you give them half a chance.

Winter sowing is good for some things and not so much for others in our climate. You'll learn from experience what works. It is most helpful for perennials that have a need for cold stratification since they will naturally get cold-stratified after they are sown in the winter (most winters, I am not sure if the winter of 2015-16 was cold enough for some things). Because our weather can vary wildly from year to year, some years even seeds that need a long, cold period will germinate well from being winter-sown but other years they may not get enough cold.

When you winter sow be sure to put your milk jugs or whatever other container you use in a place where wildlife cannot get into them or knock them over or pour them out, and have them in a sheltered spot where winds 50 mph or stronger won't carry them away.

I sowed seeds this year that I had bought in 2012 and just got around to using this year and they germinated just fine, by the way, so don't fret overly much about the age of seeds. Most germinate well even after they no longer are in the prime years of their youth.

I keep my seeds in a zip lock freezer bag in the back of the refrigerator freezer. The reason for this is a few years ago there was an article in the National Geographic Magazine about Seed Savers. It told about how they had circled the world searching for all kinds of open pollinated and heirloom seed, (because the world over is turning to hybrid seed and loosing the gene pool), to store in an under ground vault some where up at the North Pole where the seed are kept frozen to maintain the germination incase they are needed. Macmex may know more about this than I do. But I thought this might be the best way to store seeds and keep them viable. Some of my seed are reaching 6/8 years old but the ones that I have planted have so far have sprouted. I had squash, okra, sweet corn, peppers & onion seed that I was concerned about being to old this last spring and planted them a little to thick but was surprised to find that every seed sprouted. This may not be the best way to store your seeds but it has worked for me. Plus my house is not temperature controlled.

auther, I think you're referring to the seed storage vault in Svalbard, Norway. Back when I saved more seeds, I did store them in my deep freeze, but I store so much of the harvest in there that the seeds kept getting buried under everything else, so I just keep them at room temperature now and that works fine too. Keeping the seeds in airtight containers in below-freezing temperatures is the best way to store them, by far, in terms of maintaining their viability for the longest possible time, but for the average home gardener, it is not absolutely necessary.

For someone like George who saves and shares many varieties over many decades, cold storage is wonderful as it maintains higher viability for a longer time frame. I think George once revived a bean variety believed lost by removing the bean seeds from a lamp base (one of those empty glass lamp bases you can fill with the decorative item of your choice) where they had been for many years. So, sometimes, even without cold storage, a properly-dried seed can maintain viability for a very long time. To me, that is part of the miracle of seeds.

Dawn

Like so many other things I don't remember where the underground vault is located just that the seed are kept frozen and that they have collected open pollinated seeds from around the world. What really caught my attention was that if an open pollinated plant is grown in a certain locality it's genes will allow it to adapt to the soil & weather conditions in that particular area, where as a hybrid doesn't have a wide enough gene pool to change. More people should plant beans - Hooray for Beans!