Survival seeds sold in packages for preppers… we’ve all seen them advertised, but how many of us have ever tried to use them?
This year, we’ve decided to give a package of seeds we bought 7 years ago a try. The seeds, sold under the name Quality Seeds Northwest: Survival Seed Kit, High Protein have been sitting in one of our freezers since 2013. They were collected in 2012, according to the label.
Salty bought them on Amazon. This seed kit is no longer available (at least as far as we can tell), but it should be similar to others that are still sold.
Inside the mylar outer package there are 13 bags of seeds, mostly beans and peas. This is just one of the seed storage kits that we have, and after talking about it we decided to find out how well 8-year-old seeds work coming out of the deep freeze.
Quality Seeds Northwest: Survival Seed Kit, High Protein, 100% Heirloom/non GMO
The vendor’s blurb from “back in the day” (2013).
- The 13 varieties of seeds (Beans, Peas, Broccoli, Echinacea, Borage, Fenugreek) are selected for high protein in a short growing season.
- 50g of daily protein requirements can come from eating 1.2 cups of black beans in a day or 70 carrots in a day! Most survival seed kits are very low in protein.
- Harvest your own seeds from year to year. All seeds are Heirloom varieties, open pollinated and non-GMO. Manufacturer has signed safe seed pledge.
- We purchase these seeds from established companies that professionally dry and test them to ensure 90%+ germination at the time of packaging.
- Packaging is in a heat sealed food grade 3.5mil compact 8″x12″ mylar bag designed to be stored in your refrigerator or freezer for 30 years or more. Additional 8×8 mylar zip seal bag is included inside for future seed storage.
The kit contains:
- 50 Royalty purple pod bean
- 50 turkey craw bean
- 50 painted pony bean
- 50 borage
- 50 fenugreek
- 50 echinacea
- 50 green arrow peas
- 50 little marvel peas
- 2000 calabrese broccoli
- 2000 waltham 29 broccoli
- 50 Cherokee trail of tears bean
- 50 Burpee’s stringless bean
- 50 bountiful bean
Know what you have and how to treat it
Some of these cultivars I was familiar with; some I was not. I looked up their characteristics in order to improve my chances of success. Isn’t this cheating, since in a real emergency that option wouldn’t be open? Heck no! You too can look up all your data now and store it along with the seeds. In fact, Please Do.
The ‘days’ is expected time from planting to harvest. ‘Snap’ beans are usually eaten in their pods, not dried — many call them ‘green beans’. ‘Dry’ beans are allowed to dry in their pods, then shucked. They store at room temperatures or colder for months or years. ‘Bush’ beans don’t need a trellis; ‘pole’ beans need a support to grow up; a fence, a tomato cage, a stalk of corn that was planted a week before the beans, Something.
Why post all this information for my particular collection? So you can see the kind of variety in conditions required and be convinced to think about that when planning the garden. If you need these seeds, you don’t want them to fail because you were careless. Beans and peas are generally started by planting directly. One can do that with the smaller-seeded broccoli and herbs, but they’re generally started under protection and transplanted.
- Royalty purple pod bean: Bush-style snap bean, 55 days to harvest, germinate well in cold wet soil.
- Turkey craw bean: Pole bean, snap or dry, 80-100 days.
- Painted pony: 60 days for snap, 80 days if dry, bush
- Cherokee Trail of Tears: pole, snap or dry, 85 days
- Burpee’s stringless: bush, plant when soil reaches 65 F, snap or dry
- Bountiful bean: 55 days, bush, snap or dry
- Borage: Some use this as a medicinal herb or eat the flowers. I usually just enjoy them — great bee attractor flowers. Supposed to be self-seeding, but that hasn’t been my experience.
- Fenugreek: Used as a medicinal or herb, especially in Indian cooking. Plant late spring; harvest in fall
- Echinacea: Mostly used as a medicinal and bee attractor. These grow wild at The Place and I have them in a prairie bed at home for bee happiness.
- Calabrese broccoli: 55- 90 days from transplant. Does that seem like a long range? It’s because you harvest the main head at about 55 days, then return about once a week thereafter and harvest little side florets until it freezes. But Goodness, they sent 2000 of these seeds? Probably just to make the buyer feel less cheated; broccoli seeds are really small. Hey, you can use any excess for sprouting.
- Green arrow peas: 62-70 days. Needs trellising
- Little Marvel peas: My go-to pea cultivar. Bush.
Why start the seed experiment in January?
We thawed these out in January for two reasons:
1) It would be surprising if some disaster that necessitated using such seeds Happened to occur just before planting time. We froze this selection soon after it arrived, and figured it was fair to make it sit out at room temperature for a month or two before planting.
2) In about three weeks (mid-February) it will be time to start some of our earliest indoor plantings. I wanted to know what of this selection would be taking up some of the limited tray space.
The seed experiment going forward
We plan to start broccoli first, with our other early starts. I’ll do a few fresh-bought seeds and some I saved myself too, for comparison. We’re set for supplies for this, as we stock up in the fall while gardening stuff is selling for a song. Are you set for supplies to start seeds indoors?
We’ll plant a few of each cultivar at different times, starting a little earlier than should be appropriate and ending a little later. Again, similar conventional plantings will accompany them as a control group.
We’ll write more when we have some results!
While I am looking forward to your results does anybody on this list have any real world experience with “Survival Seeds” packages in their gardens?
Specifically I’ve been looking at the Seeds for Security seed collections. Anybody have input as to this or other sealed seed kits?
Thanks Spice and Salty for your blog.
Michael,
I also am interested in the percentage of seeds that germinate in this trial. Personally I have had very disappointing results. The ultimate worst is the seeds that are sealed in aluminized mylar bags and are shipped in a metal can. Two years ago I planted 100 of these seeds and 11 sprouted. Last year I planted 50 and 5 sprouted. 10% is NOT a good thing. The best results I have obtained is going to a REAL farm store and purchasing Burpee or some heirloom seed packages then vacuum seal one of each type seed in one vacuum bag. That way if the varmits chew into one bag they don’t spoil them all. I have previously gotten close to 80% sprouting doing things this way. The grossly over-priced “save your butt when the SHTF” stuff is off my “buy list”.
OBTW…..if you do buy and want to vacuum seal a few packages, be sure to shake the seeds to the bottom of the package and cut into the package to vent it so that when you seal the bag the ‘air’ in the package/s is removed.
AND…….just for grins…….to see what you might expect in sprouting, do the wet paper thing: Get a plastic container, preferably rectangular, figure out how to fold a paper towel so that it fits in the bottom……please note: they don’t always fit really nice……dampen it, place 5 seeds of each type on the wet towel, cover with another towel, then put the lid on the container, but do not seal it.You want some air to circulate. Be sure to check it daily. The paper towel should be damp. If not, dribble some water on it. In a few weeks you should have little green things all over the place in the container. If not, that tells you the quality of the seeds.
And for S&S: How’s the van coming?