Pulsegleaner
Garden Master
- Joined
- Apr 18, 2014
- Messages
- 3,551
- Reaction score
- 6,986
- Points
- 306
- Location
- Lower Hudson Valley, New York
Hi all,
Was trolling around the forum, I noticed a lot of talk about Richter's seed zoo (including a reference to me, which is what started the search) Since it sounds like there are some people who may be ordering from them, I thought I should present a little caution, since they are rather pricey.
When you go through their list, keep in mind that the Seed Zoo DOESN'T regenerate it's seed. What you are seeing is the ORIGINAL seed Joe Simcox gave them which has been stored. This means that, once something is gone, it's gone for good.
More importantly (in this case) it means that, the farther down the list you go, the OLDER the seed. And by old, I mean OLD. Once you get down to the Cicoria a Foglia Frastagliate, you are basically in seed that has been there since I found the site, and I've been going for over a decade. Even factoring in for the fact I think (based on the aluminum lined seed packets they use) they keep their seed in cold storage, that puts a LOT of the seed WAY past what is generally considered optimum storage time.
I would be interested in hearing from anyone who has bought recently from the things at the bottom of the list on how the viability actually is. I have (over the last few years) bought a fair amount of the the Volta White Maize and the Avakli cowpeas*, but since both we more or less totally decimated each year by critters, I cannot comment on their viability.
(So many of the latter, in fact, I'm a little surprised they still HAVE any (given the generally low amount of seed they usually have for any variety).
Anyway that's all I had to say. Over to you guys.
Was trolling around the forum, I noticed a lot of talk about Richter's seed zoo (including a reference to me, which is what started the search) Since it sounds like there are some people who may be ordering from them, I thought I should present a little caution, since they are rather pricey.
When you go through their list, keep in mind that the Seed Zoo DOESN'T regenerate it's seed. What you are seeing is the ORIGINAL seed Joe Simcox gave them which has been stored. This means that, once something is gone, it's gone for good.
More importantly (in this case) it means that, the farther down the list you go, the OLDER the seed. And by old, I mean OLD. Once you get down to the Cicoria a Foglia Frastagliate, you are basically in seed that has been there since I found the site, and I've been going for over a decade. Even factoring in for the fact I think (based on the aluminum lined seed packets they use) they keep their seed in cold storage, that puts a LOT of the seed WAY past what is generally considered optimum storage time.
I would be interested in hearing from anyone who has bought recently from the things at the bottom of the list on how the viability actually is. I have (over the last few years) bought a fair amount of the the Volta White Maize and the Avakli cowpeas*, but since both we more or less totally decimated each year by critters, I cannot comment on their viability.
(So many of the latter, in fact, I'm a little surprised they still HAVE any (given the generally low amount of seed they usually have for any variety).
Anyway that's all I had to say. Over to you guys.
