Common sense would dictate that new seeds will be fresher and have better germination rates over old seeds you may have stowed away in a drawer somewhere. Today, seeds are often sealed in special little envelopes within the seed packets which are also date stamped indicating their freshness. I have to admit, I get a bit excited each February/March when the stores bring out their seed displays. In the past this often resulted in me purchasing seed packets before determining what I had left over from the previous season. These types of purchases resulted in many open packets of seeds for almost every variety of vegetable.
I have always approached my vegetable gardening as an ongoing experiment using controls so I can compare different approaches under the same conditions. My experience with using left over seeds as old as 5 years has been met with great success.
Let’s take this year’s swish chard for example. Normally I only use a half a package (at most) of seeds per season. This year I used up a 3-year old, open package of standard swish chard seeds. In order to protect myself against failed germination I sowed two seeds per cell in the tray. Turns out I got 100% germination (not too shabby), so I will have to cut off the weakest of each pair soon.
I also used one to two year old seeds for my zucchini, cucumbers and regular beef steak tomatoes, all of which came up just fine.
If you do store your left over seeds, "they" say to store them in a sealed container in a cool, dry place like the refrigerator. Embarrassingly all I typically do is stick them with the rest of my propagation materials and equipment in the basement – definitely nothing special. I do plan to at least put them in a container this year.
I have no doubt that new seeds or properly-stored 'old' seeds can give you better germination rates, but why spend money when you don’t really have to – use up what you have. What do you have to lose?
Just my $0.02.
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