A number of my gardening books, including the Seed Savers Handbook, recommend keeping your seed collection the fridge, to extend its life.

My hard-learned recommendation: don’t listen to them.

As per our previous post, we planted a pile of seeds in seed-raising mix. Still more went into the ground. None have germinated.

It seems that storage in the fridge has very efficiently sterilised my entire seed collection. I suspect it’s due to the cold spots in the fridge that I’ve only recently started to discover.

So this morning, I placed an emergency order of seeds, to get me the beans, tomatoes and other staples needed for spring. Not a massive cost, but a big blow to my confidence as a gardener.

Still, I guess this gets us just a little bit closer to the experiences of a true farmer: one flood or drought later, and you’re left with nothing, wait until spring next year to start again. At least we’re a lot better off than that, and we can get some seedlings to make up for the time lost waiting for the dead seeds to come up.

Right. Round two.