Tips On Starting a Seed Stockpile

Local farm supply stores are getting their summer seed shipments in. If any survivalist are looking to start a seed stockpile, or add to their current stockpile, now is the time.

The key is to buy your seeds early. If you wait too long, certain types of see will be sold out. Take corn for example. It is not uncommon for farming supply stores to sell out of their corn seed pretty quick.

There are also issues with seed shortages. This does not happen all the time, but it does happen from time to time. There may be issues with suppliers having shortages of certain types of seeds.

For example, several years ago there was a shortage in pickling cucumber seeds. The shortage did not affect me as I had a lot of them in my stockpile.

How would a survivalist go about starting a seed stockpile?

Buying Seeds

Figure out of large of a garden you want to plant. Let’s say you want to plant 10 squash plants, so you may want to buy 15 seeds. Rather than buying 15 seeds, buy 50 seeds.

Once you have some kind of idea how large of a garden you want to plant, go down to a locally owned farm supply store. Farm supply stores are an excellent resource for survivalist. Tell one of the employees how many seeds you want. The seeds are measured, sometimes by weight, sometimes by volume, then put in a paper bag.

Stuff like squash, okra, cucumber, melons, spinach… etc are priced by volume. These are measured out by a small measuring cup. For example, 25 cents of squash seed may be a one ounce measurement. Buy more seed than you need, then put the rest in the freezer.

Corn, peas, beans… etc, are priced by weight. Typically, the seeds people buy a great number of are sold by weight. So the seed will be priced by the pound. An employee will put a paper bag on s scale and fill it with however much seed you want. I usually go with half pound bags of various seeds.

Seed Storage

When you get the seeds home, put the paper bag in a zip-lock freezer bag, then put the bags into a deep freezer. If frozen, seeds can last more than a decade. The purpose pf the zip-lock plastic bag for an extra layer to prevent oxygen and moisture from getting to the seeds.

Here is a forum thread where squash is grown from decade old seeds – Germinating Decade Old Seeds.

When stored in a deep freezer, seeds will last for decades. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault in on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen keeps seeds stored in special bags, much like mylar bags. Some of the seeds stored there are suppose to be be viable for 1,000 years.

As survivalist we are not worried about storing seeds for 1,000 years. All we want is a seed stockpile for a collapse of society. By having a good rotation policy on place we can rotate out our seeds and replace them with new ones.

We will talk about rotation in another article in the near future.

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Tips On Starting a Seed Stockpile