How Long Can You Store Cover Crop Seed?

0:03 [Music]

0:10 Can I order additional seed and how long will that store? So I do have people that will order extra seed to.

0:16 Meet that one acre minimum and they'll use that same seed for a year. How long do you guys typically say that the seed would last?

0:24 On a mix. All depends on how you store it, you know. If you've got a relatively small amount of seed, you know keeping it cool, even putting it...

0:35 It in the freezer. You know, the seed warehouses, you know where they're keeping the seed library of the world. I mean, those are in cold storage so the

0:46 Cooler you can keep it the longer it will last but even if you know the main thing is keep the mice out of it so put it in some sort of a sealed plastic container keep it out of.

0:55 The sun. Keep it in your house so it stays cool. One little trick that you can do is get a little bit of diatomaceous earth and sprinkle in your seed mix.

1:04 And that will keep bugs from coming in there because it's a really good natural bug deterrent. It's not a chemical. It's a very powderized.

1:24 Keep it sealed up, keep it dry, keep it cool, and you know a year, easy two years, three years. You know I've seen tests on some of

1:34 The brassicas radishes turnips things like that that five six years out they're still over 90 percent germ. Not everything will do that. I wouldn't as a general rule.

1:45 Wouldn't encourage people to store stuff more than a couple of years, and then only if you're really got it sealed up good. Yeah, and diatomaceous earth is.

1:56 Actually fairly easy to come by. There's a lot of brand names, a lot of your household insecticides—not like raid, the stuff you spray, but the insecticide powders that you might put in the house. The active ingredient for some of those are diatomaceous earth. Yeah, and we actually have that on hand. If you're wanting to store something long-term, ask us—we can probably throw a little bit of that in for you too.