[becky]

Hello all. Today was full of revelations.
On Sunday I planted some seeds, (they were previously my grandads, and I found them hidden away in his old shed), anyway they have begun to germinate. Guess what date was on the packet?
The oldest packet was 1986! The majority were dated 1991, still impressive though.
The moral of this tale is: Take a chance! And don't believe everything that the seed companies say, they'll tell you anything to make more money.

[Jake]

yes it is amazing. there was a seed found in an Egiptian cask in the 1980's I think, it was planted by the archeologists and it grew!

I think it was a magnolia but i might be wrong, speaking from (faulty) memory.

Interestingly the flower had 5 petals and nowadays has only 4. Nobody knew whether the long space of time that it was dormant, like thousands of years, had caused the seed to mutate or if it was something that happened with all the other seeds and not the dormant one, and the same plant just happened to have 5 petals back then and had evolved to have only 4.

Anyway thats not very "grow your own" type of subject I suppose but I have grown seed myself that was at least 3 years old. Not as good as your 1986 ones but we're competeing against 2000BC.

Edit: edited for spelling. J

[GrannieAnnie]

In May when I was down in Kent, my friend Jacqui gave me the remains of her Dad's seeds that was in his shed.  They were only about 4 years old, but only one seed germinated, and that is a dianthus!!!!!!  That was out of about 7 packets of bought and self saved seed!!!!!