The documented record as to waking up old seeds was 50 year old seeds that were stored inside in a file cabinet at the Cheyenne, WY, precursor to a USDA station and when the tomato seeds from there were moved to Ames, IA, to the new station germination was done.

I've worked with old seeds but not that old and my best is waking up 22 yo seeds of the tomato variety September Dawn.

You've got one heck of a lot of seeds there at 2 oz, so lots of seeds to work with, BUT, being stored like that who knows.

First, you don't say where you are in a geographic sense and that refers to whether or not the seeds have been frozen in the garage.

If it were me I'd start with a couple of hundred seeds and soak them in water to which you've added some blue stuff, aka Peters or Miracle Grow, or several drops of undiluted fish or seaweed stuff if you are organic in what you do.

Stir the seeds from time to time to get them to sink since old seeds are very dehydrated. The added blue stuff or fish, etc, is b/c they have a high concentration of nitrate ion and that's known to play a part in seed germination although my contacting a couple of tomato seed physiologists brought no answers where the nitrate ion acted although they agreed that it's known to help.

After a couple of days in the soak sow the seeds in a good soilless mix, loosely cover the seed pan with a baggie or similar, but don't use any domes, and when they need to be watered use water to which blue stuff or the fish, etc. has been added.

And then wait. It may take several months so I don't know if that matters in terms of getting anything to plant out this summer and getting maturation b'c again, I don't know where you live.

In the past I've used giberellic acid and potassium nitrate in various concentrations, microwave, cold tea and warm tea, green or black on the tea, as well as a peroxide ( H2O2 treatment, and the best I've found in my experience is what I mentioned above.

Back when it was still possible for non-researchers to request seeds from the USDA Craig LeHoullier and I got lots of seed sent that was low to no germinating so we had lots of seed to play with.

One I remember well was the variety Magnus, which was on the cover of the 1900 Livingston catalog, Craig couldn't get anything up and I got one plant and all seeds out there now for this variety came from that one plant, but not before an amusing story about trying to get fruits from it.

So why not try to wake them up, knowing that the documented record is 50 yo seed and also if you're able to plant anything out for THIS season and get lucky and get something.

Other than that I'd play with the seeds starting in maybe Nov or Dec, again, depending on where you live and grow tomatoes.

Carolyn

Hey hey, sorry for the delayed response - finals week. :)

I'm in Redding, CA. Stupidly hot summers, more mild winters. My family's in the estate liquidations business (and the flea market, antique show, etc., trade that comes to entail), so I've honestly got no idea where these seeds have been, other than the last 4 or 5 years. Most likely, they were grown and stored somewhere between the San Francisco area, and Redding.

I'm using Peters Hydrosol (5-11-26) for some hydroponic lettuce cultivation, all NO3 - How much should I add to the water? EC/pH?

Several months? hah, this should be fun. So, I should cover them, but not use humidity domes? What kind of humidity level should I be aiming for?

Wow, that's one hell of a story. That must have been an awesome experience, rejuvenating a set of long lost genetics, releasing it back into the world.

Thanks a bunch for the reply, hopefully something'll pop up. :) Maybe getting some seedlings popping up in August or September wouldn't be such a bad thing, I've wanted to try to grow a tom hydroponically for a while.