Just a quick note to say that most of my test germinations have proved to be fully viable. It took just a few days sitting in a warmish spot in the kitchen, to produce quite a forest of sprouting.
Failures have been, quite predictably Parsnips, which are well know for having a short shelf life, some ancient seeds I've had lurking in the bottom of the box for simply aeons, and rather more suprisingly some chillies and aubergines.
I think these latter two may be looking for warmer temperatures/ longer germination period, so I will give them a bit longer before consigning to the bin. Just goes to show though, most seeds are viable for far longer than one season, these ornamental gourd seeds for example are dated best before 2008 and still have at least 50% viability !
So whilst I wouldn't advise keeping them longer than two or three seasons, it's always worth checking before binning.
