They have found viable seeds that are hundreds of years old. The key is dark, dry and cool. A quick test. Wet a paper towel and ring it out so it is damp. Put 10 seeds on it, fold it in half, and put in in a ziplock baggie. Put the baggie on the counter and check it daily. I assume your "deep shade" mix is mostly fine and creeping fescue. If so, you should see some germination in a week or so. Let it go a few days after the first seed germinates. Could the number that germinated out of 10 and you will get an estimate of how viable the seed is.

I was looking into using a neighbors clippings to add to leaves in the fall for compost and was wondering if it would be ok. The information may be helpful. Some herbicides breakdown quickly, other's don't. One thing I read said you shouldn't use grass clippings treated with herbicide in compost or garden mulch all season long. This one indicates you have to wait at least 3 mowings another indicates that dicamba (Banvel is very slow to break down and that if grass clippings that were treated with dicamba are used in a compost pile, that compost should only be used on the lawn. Not trying to scare you, but it's important to know what was used before deciding how long to wait. In most states, you have to be licensed and take regular tests to apply these treatments so whoever applied it should be very familiar with it. I recommend you give them a call, ask what was used, how much was applied, tell them you are planning to hand pull the veronica and ask them how long you should wait. I thought most places required applicators to give you an instruction sheet after an application that would also indicated what was used. At least tell you when to take the little flags out :) I guess not every place is the same.

Nope, Carolyn didn't keep her tomato seeds in film cannisters under her bed for 6 Years. LOL Rather, she initially kept her saved seeds in plastic screw cap vials in 100 place boxes with no special storage at all, just ambient temps. When she'd filled 5 of those boxes in the mid-90's she started saving her seeds just in regular so called invitation envelopes and still does. Switching to first person now. I find that with the ambient temps and humidity where I grow my tomatoes does not require special storage conditions. With seeds 5 yo I expect at least 50% germination and often much more. For seeds about 5-10 yo I'd double sow. For over about 10 yo there are a few tricks to use to try to wake them up. My best effort to date has been waking up 22 yo seed but the documented record is waking up 50 yo seed. Being an SSE member I never bought much seed and have built up a huge seed collection without doing that. But the question is about purchased seed in packets. Just seal them tightly when you're through sowing your seed, put the sealed packets in a sealed container in the fridge and that will be fine. For longer term storage you can freeze the seeds but before you do that you need to get the moisture level of the seeds down to about 5-8 % and you can do that with silica gel. Carolyn, who has never thrown out ONE saved seed since 1989 and darn good thing b'c some varieties disappear and some varieties due to improper seed saving morph into something that doesn't represent the variety as the original one. To date I've grown about 2500 different varieties but didn't save seed from all of them, but still, I've got one heck of a lot of saved seed out there in the back room. LOL

There should be an expiration date on it somewhere, right? On another canning forum someone posted this response to the same question. It's from Kraft Foods who makes Certo: "We recommend that you use the pectin in your recipe by the "Best When Used By" date. We cannot guarantee the same quality or rate of recipe success if used after that date." They go on to talk about how it should not be frozen and that fridge storage won't extent its life. In my personal experience - which is limited with the liquid pectins - it is not worth keeping any of them past their exp. date. Dave