A friend of mine gave me some old seeds when she found out I wanted to find out if I could grow things to eat. I gleefully accepted the "expired" seeds she offered me, and I thought there's no harm in dumping some water on them to see if they'll grow. Yep, throwing them in the dirt & dumping water on them - real technical lingo in my thought process.
During the months of spring and summer I was still being in the super non-technical naive mindset and I didn't see any harm in buying "expired" seeds from the market either. What's the worst that can happen? They won't grow? No big loss.
Some seed packets were dated with sell-by years, shipped for 2011 season (with 50% off marked price) or 2012 which were marked 25% off for sales. All these seeds, glorious seeds, that I collected this year with plans of planting crops upon crops in my tiny garden.
After the spring and early summer sowing, I still had a lot of seeds left. Now that it's the season for planting fall crops, there are still an awful lot of seeds left in dozens of packets.
I started to feel sad thinking it's wasteful to have such a collection of seeds that probably won't sprout next spring (or during the winter if I try to plant them indoors). Then I started searching, and found this information (and more on the Clemson University Home & Garden Information Center website:
"Long-lived seeds include beets; all cabbage relatives such as broccoli, cauliflower, collards, and kale; cucumber; lettuce; melons; peppers; sunflower; tomato; and turnip. If you keep them cool and dry, these seeds should maintain good viability for five years or more."
"Medium-lived seeds include beans, carrot, chard, eggplant, parsley, peas, pumpkin and squash. These, properly stored, should last at least three years."
"Short-lived seeds can only be depended on to last to the next growing season. This list includes corn, leek, onion and spinach seed."
Great news I think! This should mean that the only wasted seeds are things like corn, leak, and onions. All the other seeds should be fine for next year :)