Just ordered my garlic and most of my seeds

[Ananke]

Got my garlic from The Really Garlicky Co, this will be my first time not using supermarket bulbs. I had a great crop last year and saved the best for this year and disaster struck when my back went and I couldn't get them planted until it was too late. The result was small uncloved bulbs that i'll use for making an aphid garlic spray.

I'm determined to get these ones in the ground in Oct and use them again year after year, well thats the theory anyway.

I got my seeds from The Real Seed Catalogue, I ordered extra bags as i'm also determined to seed save most if not all of these. What I was wondering though is, as there are so many seeds in a packet, is it possible to keep out what i'll need and freeze the rest?

[solway cropper]

If you keep them cool and dry most seeds are viable for quite a few years, usually longer than it says on the packet. How long do you want to keep them?

[Ananke]

If I can successfully save my own seed next year, i'd want to sow them the in the following years, so this year's excess would be like a wee seed bank for emergencies, so indefinately I suppose.

[taff]

keep them cool, dry and in the dark rather than freezing.
P.S. If they're bean seeds, don't bother, sow and grow, save and and keep from year to year. I found mine just rotted for 2 years in a row from the same batch of seeds.

[Ananke]

No beans, I've been saving them already, thats what gave me the saving bug

[rustylady]

So what types of seed are you hoping to save?

[Ananke]

Hi Rustylady

I'm hoping to save from beetroot, lettuces, onion, chilli, courgette, cucumber, melon, squash, swede, carrot and maybe the brassicas but if I remember rightly they are not so easy to do but i'll read up on it again.

I've already saved the easy ones like tomato and peppers and found that I saved more than I could use the following year, I gave as much as I could away and stored the rest in bags in a tin and forgot about them, when I sowed them a few years later the germination rate wasn't great and thats when I wondered if they would have done better in the freezer.