[SOS-PCA] Any suggestions for seed storage freezer?

[craig at astreet.com]

Dear All,

For native seed storage, I would suggest a REFRIGERATOR instead of any
kind of freezer, and ALWAYS add indicator silica gel to each batch of
stored seeds, plus a moisture indicator strip.  You can get the moisture
strips n small quantities from eBay ie
http://www.ebay.com/itm/like/291119506265?lpid=82&chn=ps or directly from
Uline the manufacturer.

My experiments with storage of two native grass seeds over 20 years at
room temp., refrigerated, and frozen, plus with and without indicator
silica gel, points out that the SILICA GEL packets added to seeds when
frozen or refrigerated is much more important than being frozen or
refrigerated alone, that you can read at
http://www.ecoseeds.com/storage.html and I also published an article in
the Native Plants Journal in 2003 at
http://npj.uwpress.org/content/4/1/61.full.pdf+html

I hope that there may be another paper on native seed longevity under the
three storage conditions, and with and without indicator silica gel to
confirm my results, but mine may be the only long term study out there so
far?  So save your money on freezers, and invest it in refrigerators plus
indicator silica gel plus Uline moisture strips, and that will be a much,
much better investment.

By having the moisture strips in with the seeds, you want to keep the
seeds at 30% moisture or less, and if you start going above 30% then you
pull out the silica gel, redry it, and get you seed moisture back down to
30% or less.

Before you open any stored chilled seeds, either refrigerated or frozen,
DO NOT open the package until the seeds have been taken out at room temp.
for a few hours, so they are at room temp. when you open the package.

I learned about the moisture strips and silica gel from the owner of a
tree seed company that had been in business since the 1880s, Mr. Versepuy
from France, and my 20 year experiment confirmed what the Versepuys had
been doing for 100 years to store their seeds, refrigerated with slica gel
and moisture indicator strips.

Whenever the government has a question that the professionals could
answer, why not contact us, to see what we might have done for a hundred
years or more?  There seems to be a big gap in the transfer of knowledge,
and the government seems to want to thrash around and reinvent the wheel
instead of hire the professionals to get some consultation on their new
projects?

Hope this information is helpful.  On another topic, once you harvest
and/or store these native seeds, what then about SOWING THOSE SEEDS back
onto the public lands?

Check out my 100% native grassland project in Palo Alto, California,
starting with 100% weed cover a few years ago, at
http://www.ecoseeds.com/arastradero.html.  Once we have the native seeds
collected and/or stored, how do we get them to work, especially in the
face of all of the weeds?

What my company's business is, inventing the best methods to get native
seeds replanted in the wild, especially the grasses and forbs in arid
lands.  Considering the total costs of collecting native seeds,
reproducing and/or storing the native seeds, if you multiply those costs
by at least 10,000 then you can start paying for someone to start the
experiments needed to invent the best methods to ultimately replant those
seeds in the wildlands.

The main gap in knowledge that is how to use native seeds in the arid
West, especially on BLM lands---how much of what fertilizers do you need
to achieve native seedling survival when sowing back in a wildlands
situation?  Other than myself, I do not believe than there has been any
research in that very important topic.  And for the native grasses and
forbs in the arid West, fertilizer is ALWAYS needed, because of the
soil-nutrient-mining that the sheep and cattle have been doing over the
decades to our public lands.

And there are two levels of fertilizer that the native grasses and forbs
need: 1.) Native seedling survival for the first six months, and 2.)
Native seed production levels.  You can have enough for a seedling to
survive, but once it tries to produce seed, there might not be enough in
the soil for that process.

For example, my Palo Alto test plot that is 40 by 100 feet has cost so far
$100,000 and for the whole 70 acres once seeds are hand harvested,
reproduced commercially, weeds managed, fertilized for native seedling
survival and seed reproduction levels, I am anticipating it will cost
between $4-5 million, because none of the local ecotypes are commercially
available, so I must start from scratch for each species I want to plant.

Everyone on this list collecting and/or storing native seeds, should also
have a significant annual budget, to be able to invent the successful
methods you will need to get those native seeds replanted in the wildlands
in the future, especially in the arid West.

Sincerely,  Craig Dremann (650) 325-7333
The Reveg Edge, Redwood City, California
Inventing licensed technologies for native
grassland restoration since 1972.