I have saved seed and have it backto 1991 and I never have thrown out one seed and good for that b'c this past season someone wanted to try and get the real Tadesse variety since there's no place that has true Tadesse.

Since I was the first one to introduce it in the SSE Yearbook I dug out some 1994 seeds and there was a team of 4 folks who worked with those seeds, all of them got germination, so now we have the real Tadesse back and I SSE listed it for 2013, will be offering it in a seed offer elsewhere and sending seeds for trial to those seed sites that I normally do.

And it's good that I have saved all those seeds b'c with time some varieties go south, if you know what I mean and I've been able to go back and find some of those varieties that some folks have asked me to look for.

I don't trade seedss, for several reasons, with the exception that if someone sends me a brand new variety, not yet known and distributed then I offer some varieties as thanks.

Every single seed pack I put up I write the date on the pack that the seed was produced, which I can do b'c I know the age of the seed as opposed to many commercial packs that write the packed by date, which is just that, when the seeds were packed and not when they were produced.

If I missed something in my answer please let me know.

Carolyn

When trading do you tell what year they were harvested? Definitely.

Is it OK to trade 3 year old seeds & not tell the age? No, mark with the year. 3 year old seeds are fine. I have seeds that are more than 10 years old I'm still using.

Do you plant new different varieties each year? If so how many of each? Yes, usually 2 new ones.

do you just give away or destroy the "never plant again"ones? Give away with info on why I don't like them.

Dave

Destroy? Why? What you have may actually be just the variety that someone else is searching for. (You know that old adage about one person's trash ... !) I agree with Dave about offering them with the disclaimer.

Edie

I trade the never grow again along with the ones I like. I don't explain why I won't grow them again because my reasons are usually related to issues that other people don't mind. I do think the year is important to include. I am like you with limited space, so I have a core of tomatoes that I grow each year and try a few new each year. At first, I grew only one or two plants of about 25 types to identify the ones I like. I never destroy seeds.

This post was edited by Kevinitis on Sat, Jan 5, 13 at 12:59

I think one must ask why they trade seeds in the first place. Personally, I want to get at least one plant that produces fruit and then I'll save all the seeds that I want. Should I expect every seed I get to germinate??? Absolutely not. That would be totally unrealistic.

And, I agree with Carolyn. Don't throw them away unless you know they are defective or not true to type or something catastrophic like that.

In trades, I like to swap about a dozen seeds. That gives me two or three plantings to make sure I get at least one viable plant. That's all I expect, no more, no less. As my seeds put on some age, I'll send more of them in a trade to try and ensure the recipient can get a couple of plants. You see, I don't think of it as trading "Seeds", I think of it as trading "Varieties".

Ted