Survival Seed Kits are a popular prepper item. Theory of use is straightforward: You buy one kit of heirloom seeds and store it, either room temp or frozen, until needed. Then you whip it out, plant the seeds, and you’re set to self-feed! Lovely theory — but how well does it work?
The seed kit starts experiment
Back in January, we decided it was time to test a “Garden in a bag” we bought back in 2013. It was a High Protein Survival Seed kit from Quality Seeds Northwest. The full description can be found in my original post here. We thawed it out and let it sit several weeks (simulating a mid-winter emergency).
In February I pulled the starter pods and potting mix out of the stores and started the seeds from the kit that needed an indoor start: The broccoli varieties.
The Plain Old Seed starts experiments
At the same time, I started some other seeds I had stored in a variety of ways:
- Roma tomato seeds I’d collected from my crop two years earlier. (Romas are an heirloom variety; if you don’t know the significance of this you should check out this post.) You can find lots of detailed instructions online, but I didn’t follow them. I ate a roma and sucked some of the seeds to pull off most of their natural gel coat. I spit the cleaned seeds onto a saucer and let them sit out a couple of days to dry, dumped them in a ziplock bag, and tossed them into my big bag of “I bought too many seeds again.” The bag is kept in the dark in a fairly cool and low humidity space in a cabinet.
Suck the gel off an heirloom tomato’s seed, let it dry and stick in a ziplock for a year or three and you get…
- Three year old, foil-envelop packed tomato and pepper seeds. These were also kept in the seed bag.
- Melon and squash seeds, about five years old. These were in common garden-seed envelope packaging. I’d opened the envelopes years before but hadn’t needed all the seeds, so tossed the excess in the “too many seeds” bag. I had little confidence in these, but what the heck, I was experimenting.
The spring seed planting from the kit
Peas and beans are generally planted direct rather than started indoors, so that’s what I did with the rest of the High Protein kit. I started putting in a few at a time in early March for the White Dwarf Sugar peas. They’re a variety of snow peas, and snow peas traditionally go in very early. For reference, the last frost date in my region is, on average, mid April.
Early spring peas with edible pods don’t mind a touch of frost or cap of snow… or six years in the freezer
As we moved through March and April I put in more varieties. Since there were lots of seeds of each type, I started earlier than I expected to work and put in a few more every couple of weeks to see what worked best. We had our last snow this year late, at the third week of April. I just finished putting out the most heat-loving varieties at what should be their right time.
I thought they weren’t going to make it, but the Turkey Craw beans were apparently just waiting for winter to fully exit before emerging.
What sprouted?
A sprout doesn’t mean a crop, but no sprout absolutely means no crop. Here’s what I got:
- Broccoli from the high protein kit: Waltham variety sprouted like crazy. Calabrese didn’t sprout at all. I had multiple pots of each in different in different starter mixes, so I call that a fair test.
- Tomatoes and peppers, various ages and storage conditions: ALL the sprouting! Better than 75% success for every variety, every age.
- Melons and squashes old enough to apply for retirement: About 33% sprout rate. So much for my plan to limit the size of my “I bought too many seeds” bag; apparently those are worthwhile preps … if you plant several iffy seeds per pot and thin after sprouting.
- Outdoor plantings of peas and beans: Everything had decent success… eventually. The snow peas popped right up and laughed at wearing a snow cap once or twice. The later spring pea varieties (Green Arrow and Little Marvel) failed at earliest planting but did well at what should have been the right time (two weeks before historical last frost date). Beans failed in stupid-early plantings. Later plantings seemed to fail, but were just taking their sweet time. I’ve seen some them come out this week. Bean sprout rate so far is about 50%; peas were higher.
- Many of the traditional early crops — lettuces, spinach, radishes, carrots — also came from my bag and ranged from one to three years old. This was a consequence of limited shopping opportunities this spring, but I rolled with it. So did the seeds. Universally high success.
- Still to be determined: Purple Pod and Painted Pony bean varieties called for warmest soil according to their instructions, so they just got planted. Too early to judge them.
Indoor seed starts go outdoors
Once we got past our historical last frost, I planted out the indoor starts — again, a few at a time to see what worked best.
Folks, don’t plant out tomatoes and peppers before last frost. Our last snow was late this year, and although I did cover the earliest plant-outs of tomato and pepper, they died shivering and cursing my name.
Color me Unimpressed with the ‘seeds to broccoli’ plan. The Walthams sprouted great, but remained spindly in all soil mixes during the indoor period. One’s still alive in the garden, but it’s not thriving like the broccoli starts I bought from our local greenhouse.
Other starts have had about 50% success. Given the rough weather this spring, that’s about par for my course. I’ve learned to start many more than I want to grow to full size in the garden.
Lessons learned
On the garden kits: Species that are tough under normal gardening conditions (peas and beans) showed pretty reliable after six years in the freezer. Species that have a rep for being more finicky (broccolis) puked and died.
On stored seeds: If you lower your expectations for percentage sprouting somewhat, seeds do pretty well if kept under reasonable conditions.
Bonus pro tip
At the end of last season, I just left out my herbs (rosemary, sage, basil, mint, oregano, lemon balm, dill) and garlic. I let them go to seed and didn’t removed the ‘debris’ at end of season.
Everything’s back except the basil. (I’ve never managed to grow basil from seed; transplants do ok.) The sage re-greened some old stalks, so it’s probably important I didn’t clean up after it. The other herbs came back from their roots (oregano, rosemary, lemon balm, mint) or from their seeds (dill). Borage didn’t come back though.
My suggestion? Grow an herb garden and leave it be year to year. Perennial crops are a Great prep; low work and high reliability. (Search Perennial on this site for more. I’m a big believer.)
Since neither Momma or I have anything other than a Black Thumb this article was informative but I’ll not be using the info except to advise someone else.
We are the people with “Other Skill Sets”.
I read all of your posts.
If we were all alike, most of us would be spares. I will note, though, I used to consider myself of the Black Thumb club; and as you can read I still get plenty of failures. But it doesn’t take a great success percentage to get a lot of food, since seeds are so cheap.
For all of my early starts, I put the seeds between layers of damp paper towels and shove the towel into a zip lock bag. I check every day for sprouting, and as soon as a seed sprouts I transplant it into a peat pellet or peat pot. That way, I know I’ve put viable seed into each pot.
I have been throwing away leftover seeds in store bought seed packs. Thanks to your experiment, I’ll now be saving them. I really appreciate the time and effort that you put into this.
This was way more entertaining than it needed to be, enjoyed it immensely.
I’ve had luck saving squash and melon seeds from produce bought at the store. They’re not heirloom, so I don’t know what they’d look like in a couple generations, but the first generation from them does ok.
Interesting…if the first gen does ok, I suspect the others would too. That’s not experience talking though; just long-ago genetics courses. They *may* actually be heirlooms. Some heirloom varieties are good for commercial production so get used — including Roma tomatoes.
Good report on survival seeds, thanks. The comment about pre-spouting your suspect seeds is excellent, I wonder if he uses chopsticks or tweezers to transfer that fragile baby plant? Looking at your photo of your plantings I notice you have excellent looking soil, nice and dark AND you use straw as mulch for it’s many benefits. It has been said despite our going to the Moon and all that our civilization depends of about the top 6 inches of soil and that it rains.
Beware of the Scott’s yard type “Yard Care”. So treated Soil that will not grow dandelions will likely not allow anything but grasses to survive there for years to come. Beware of roundup contaminated straw mulches and animal manures as the pass through roundup will again stunt or kill your heirloom vegetables.
To convert a dandelion “Infested” (Actually healthy) area into a garden quickly DONOT rototill it. Use lasagna style gardening and cover the area with cardboard (please remove staples and tape first) or three layers of newspaper as to use the strong sun seeking of “weeds” to burn their growing energy up trying to grow past the darkness. Layer compost on top of the paper-cardboard. Wait a few weeks if you can OR simply make holes in the covering and plant your crops. Almost weed free gardening AND you use those weeds as compost 🙂 Feed the soil and it will feed you. Use your limited fertilizer resources wisely. A 5 gallon bucket filled with water and a shovel full of chicken poo stir well and use a watering can with out the “Rose” as it will clog up to apply to each plant fertilizer water. I’ve grown excellent corn (A Heavy Feeder crop) on nearly bare sand thusly to full production. If you have a swampy area nearby you can side dress crops with swamp muck and or even do the fertilizer water using small fish caught in 2 liter bottle fish traps. Just be aware of what flows into that swamp before you use it. Would you fish in a pond fed by a stock yard? Learn to compost everything you can get your hands on EXCEPT for “Scotts Yard” contaminated materials.
The best seeds means little if your planting on roundup contaminated soils.
Good to know; I’ve *read* about lasagna style but didn’t know anyone who’d tried it…and there’s so much junk on the Net; I don’t trust stuff that may have come from the “everybody repeats this so it must be true” bin. How much compost do you put on top? And how big of holes do you make for the plants through the cardboard? When I plant new ground, it’s the extensive root system of the grasses that were there that really hinder me; and they don’t seem to break down for years unless I strip the sod. (I knock as much of the topsoil off as possible, turn the sod bundles upside down so they can’t re-root, and use them as mulch. Very labor intensive though.)
Spice Good Morning! I like to read about things then do it to see if they actually work. Those that work I try with modifications. Same with my cooking experiments. Good results I keep. The FIRST YEAR Lasagna Gardening is pioneer work, the second year more like an established garden and third plus year you should have established some good soil IF you’ve been feeding the soil instead of Strip mining it like commercial roundup and fertilizer farmers do.
Compost on top depends on how much compost you have. I never seem to have enough. The initial layer of compost is Mainly to hold the cardboard-newsprint down as not to give those unwanted weeds light to grow AND to start the process of producing more decent soil for the next season. If I can get it deep enough for a full crop that’s a bonus. For salad type plants they grow very shallow and 3-4 inches seems to work well. For kale and corn you have to punch a hole to give those deeper root structures a path through the cardboard.
Thus the watering can fertilizer and side dressing of the working crops to provide them with THIS Years nutrition until the lasagna system builds up that weedy garden spot into a real nice soiled garden.
I do potatoes in potato towers as I like to protect them from voles with a bottom of hardware cloth, the ease of dumping the soil (usually on my garden beds) to get the undamaged potatoes AND that I can cover them easily from hail and frosts. Works for sweet potatoes also, only way I can grow them in NH.
Dumping the “used” potatoes soil on the pioneer lasagna garden beds needs to be planned as the plant viruses that harm Nightshades like potatoes, tomatoes and peppers needs at least a year better two years to die of before you plant Nightshades in that soil again.
When you punch a hole through to plant be aware a rogue weed WILL try to grow through it so a little light careful weeding here NOW helps a LOT later in the season when everything demands your attention and time. I find a sharp planting dibble a large enough hole for the newly planted seed. Poke, plant the seed, press the soil and move on. Transplants and lasagna gardening is often troublesome until next year as the much larger hole through the cardboard encourages weeds too much and transplants DON’T like weeding around them. I put transplants like my tomatoes and peppers into 5 gallon pots OR an established garden.
Speaking of roots and their removal are you aware that Permaculture Farmers actually PLANT Cover crops to Increase the amount of organic material in the soil AKA Roots? And they often use winterkill or cut and drop to also increase their humus and or mulch in their fields?
Spice the root system you work so hard to remove UNLESS from a nearby Uncovered by lasagna bush or tree as that tree WILL continue mining your soil for food is NOT a problem. If you stop that root system from getting sunlight it will turn into humus and thus improve the soil for next year. I am turning some mossy sandy waste land currently into future fertility planting field peas (a great Pioneer planting) this year. I am not even removing the moss, just chopping holes and planting the field peas. As a side benefit this year is a expected small crop of field peas seeds-food as well as some field peas hay for the chickens and rabbits. Next year the moss will be greatly reduced and that sandy soil will have more humus in it as to retain water and fertility. From my experience in the second year that sandy soil will be fairly decent and the third year really nice with ever increasing yields of field peas and hay.
Hope this explains a little better. I tried to edit my rambling pre-coffee thoughts a bit.
I appreciate it, Michael. I hadn’t thought of dumping the towers on the garden directly. But then I never got good yield from towers either. I suspect they needed more water than I gave them. I have used peas as a cover crop; just hoping to have the roots put some nitrogen in the soil for me rather than expecting a crop. A decent plan I think; but I often can’t squeeze it in as I leave the food-producing plants out as long as they’re giving me anything. I may try that Lasagna out at the place sometime. The prairie plant root systems coupled with very thin topsoil have made my other gardening attempts there a bit discouraging.
Spice at your place you mentioned that your pond will eventually fill in from plant growth and erosion. I am hopeful you’ll post a new report or update on the erosion control plantings. Meanwhile I am pretty sure you have lots of storm damaged trees? Ever hear of Hugelkuture? Between that and taking fertile mud-plant materials out of your pond you could build up a nice raised bed garden out at the place, as well as slow or prevent the loss of your pond. Worked for the Chinese for over 40 Centuries of Permaculture. As you well know very fertile soil with plenty of organic material in it to control water makes for a great basis for a garden. If your little cottage on the place has a metal roof some rainwater collection effort with a gutter and a IBC tote could help with garden H2O. At least that would be my plan as I understand your place. Those tiny fish and pond plants make awesome garden fertilizer water. My neighbor lets me harvest his swampy bit and now uses the fertilizer water idea himself.
Watering potato towers can be hard. A little hand watering LOOKS like a lot of water but it’s insufficient. I find using a couple of well washed vinegar bottles and putting a few 1/4 inch holes in it to create a slow leak allows me to fill them up and KNOW that tower really got a couple of gallons of water. Later in the season the plants will tell me if I need to do twice daily refills. I’ve given thought to a high tech drip watering season but between the cost, the need to clean the system from dirt clogging and winter freeze issues I find the Vinegar bottles worth while.
Can you tell I LIKE Potatoes and especially Sweet Potato’s? Do you know sweet potato leaves are excellent greens, great nutrition profile young small in salads, larger ones cooked like greens? I find you can take almost 10% of the leaves from each tower over the season with out affecting the sweet potato yield.