old grass seed

greenspun.com : LUSENET : Countryside : One Thread

Can someone tell me what the shelf life is for grass seed? I bought it about 4 years ago and it's been stored in a plastic garbage can w/lid and was wondering if it'll grow. Thanks, Don

-- Don W. (rwrong@yahoo.com), October 07, 2001

Answers

When I was a kid and my father planted oats each year, he would test the germination of the stored oats from the year before to calibrate the seeder. He would check the germination by taking a newspaper and a dinner plate and tracing the edge of the dinner plate with a pencil and cutting all of the layers of newspaper out with scissors, then soaking the newspaper and assemble a "sandwich" of a bottom plate, a 6-8 page layer of soaked newspaper sprinkled with 100 oats, then a second layer of soaked newpaper circles topped with a second plate. We children had the fun of checking the oats each night to see how many had sprouted each day, and to add water as the newpaper dried out. This gave an accurate percentage germination. You can do the same with grass seed, but I don't know if I'd bother counting 100 seeds or not if you aren't using a seeder that needs calibrating. A good sprikle of seeds would show you if you had a nice amount germinating or not.

-- Jennifer L. (Northern NYS) (jlance@nospammail.com), October 07, 2001.

If it is just for the yard, fling it out there, water, and pray. Heck, it sure won't harm anything. I certainly would not throw it away.

We planted Argentine Bahia in a pasture once, and it took 18 months for the darn stuff to show up.

-- Finnabair Pendragon (finnabair@ykc.com), October 08, 2001.


Moderation questions? read the FAQ