"My understanding is if you grow a large field of seedless watermelons you will end up with three types of melons. The normal fruit of the diploid pollinator, the seedless fruit, and a small number of fruit that is different than the other two. This melon contains the seeds for next years seedless planting." Unfortunately, not true. You have to use the breeding lines to create new seeds each year. That is the same with regular hybrids, except that extra steps must be taken to set up the breeding lines.

Ann, Of course, the best practice is to sow them immediately. I always plant seeds the day the pod opens. That's the best way to assure the best viability. It goes downhill from there. I was just sharing my recent experiment, since I had seeds from nearly 50 crosses just sitting around. Before tossing them out, I thought I should see if they were still good. I took several (no Johnsonii crosses) and floated them. Within 10 days, there were signs of sprouting. You weren't contradicting me Ann...you may not agree with how I did something, but we all have value to share. It just was to show that you might be lucky and even if you haven't provided any special care to the seeds, they want to survive. The house was kept at 68-78 all year, with relatively high humidity (this is Houston after all). So, maybe the humidity helped. Don't know.... Similarly, I have pollen from the past 2 years in pill bottles sitting on the counter, and I have had some luck with it this year. Have only tried a couple of crosses, but 1 did take. Kristi

Tracey, I sprout most of my seed in damp paper towel. Take a piece of paper towel wet it thoroughly, squeeze out as much water as you can, fold it twice, put your seed on half of the double layer, fold the other half over the seed, put it in something like a soft margarine container, snap the lid on, put in a warm spot, I put mine on top of our aquarium light fixture. Check every couple of days, I had some seeds start to sprout in just 3 or 4 days, a week or 10 days for some. I think the bottom heat speeds things up a bit. When the seed has sprouted I prick them off the paper towel with a wooden skewer as gently as possible they are very fragile ( take a bit of the towel with it rather than damaging it). Then plant them up starting with 2" or 3" inch pots or in flats, potting on as needed until they go out. Others may do it differently, this is the way I do it. Hope this helps. Annette

Many seed companies just recycle last years seeds. The garden centers ship them back to the distibutor and they test to see of the seeds are still germinating. If they get good germination rates, ( not sure what the percentage is), they just repackage them for the next year with a new date on the package... so your seeds may actually be older than the package states. It kinda defeats any knowledge of how long seeds actually last, but also encourages me to keep seeds a long time. If the seed companies are recyling seeds each year, I can too. On a side note, I am growing peppers from seeds I bought last year and from seeds I saved from a pepper last year, and the ones from the pepper are growing WAY better. Maybe because they are fresher, or it could be the variety. Just food for thought.