[SOS-PCA] Silica gel and indicator strips for seed storage, could double or triple seed longevity

[craig at astreet.com]

Dear Scott and All,

I have been using the cobalt blue silica gel beads in bulk for years that
I buy by the pound.

 I buy a box of 28 weight #6 coin envelopes for the larger bags or #4 coin
envelopes for the medium sized bags and #1 or #3 coins for the very small
bags. Stationary stores usually sell these coin envelopes in bundles of
25, so you can get a few sizes and see which works best.

Fill the manilla coin envelopes 3/4 full and paper clip the ends with
paper clips, DO NOT SEAL.  Then when you put them in the oven, you unclip
the paper clips and open the ends, and put them all on a cookie tray at
250 deg. until the beads turn deep blue again, which takes 2-3 hours, and
keep the room ventilated because of the cobalt.

The EU is suggesting not using the cobalt blue any more, and are subing a
new orange indicator, which I have not used yet, but you can see at
http://www.amazon.com/Gallon-Orange-Indicating-Desiccant-Replacement/dp/B00BXJ52GO.

Also on that Amazon page at the bottom are some muslin bags for sale,
which would work well for the gel, but might be much more expensive than
the manilla coin envelopes.

Do not forget to get one Uline moisture strip for each stored package,
because they immediately tell you when you gel is saturated and needs
drying again.   I call the moisture strips and the indicator silica gel
Seed-Viability Insurance--if you are going to take the time to harvest and
store seeds, these two items insure that they will remain viable for a
while and protect your investment.

If the SOS project is not using the strips plus the indicator silica gel
already, an investment in those two items could double or triple your seed
longevity with very little cost.

Sincerely,  Craig Dremann (650) 325-7333



> Craig, what size silica packs do you recommend? I use several different
> sizes of plastic bags ranging from 4x6 to 8x10 to 14x20. I'd prefer to
> stock a single size and add multiple packs in the larger bags.
>
> Scott
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: SOS [mailto:sos-bounces at lists.plantconservation.org] On Behalf Of
> craig at astreet.com
> Sent: Thursday, May 21, 2015 9:23 AM
> To: Belt, Shawn - NRCS, Beltsville, MD
> Cc: sos at lists.plantconservation.org
> Subject: Re: [SOS-PCA] Any suggestions for seed storage freezer?
>
> 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.
>
>
>
>
>
>
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