On the 8th of March I placed some swede seeds I had onto wet tissue paper and placed them inside the house, which is a constant 20 – 21 degrees centigrade. This was to check if the seeds would germinate when they were sown into the soil in a months time.
I have been checking the seeds every day ensuring the paper didn’t dry out. Today is the 20th of March so they have been sitting for 12 days, which is more than long enough for them to sprout.
From looking at the tray I can see very few of the seeds have germinated, which tells me not to sow these seeds.
The sealing date on the bag was February 2022, so that means the seed is more than 2 years old. Roughly speaking there are 120 seeds on the tray and about 6 have sprouted which is a 3% germination rate – that is much lower than the guideline rate of 90%
I have new seeds ordered, but I wanted to check how good or bad these seeds were – I used them last year to sow the swede field, which is probably one reason why the crop was so poor.
