6 Things To Know Before Buying Survival Seeds

Are You Thinking about Buying Survival Seeds?

Most people who are preparing for a SHTF crisis have thought about including survival seeds in their prepper checklist.

If you have a small (or large) plot of land then survival seeds make sense.

They’re relatively inexpensive and will allow you to sustain yourself in the event the normal food system you’re used to collapses.

Now while survival seeds and survival gardening might seem like an easy fix for a broken food system that’s not 100% accurate.

Buying survival seeds because you want to get prepared for the worst isn’t necessarily as simple as you might think.

To help make things a little easier on you I’ve made a checklist of 6 different things you need to be thinking about when buying survival seeds. Using this checkiist will help you save money and it’ll also ensure the seeds you buy are around when you need them.

Your Buying Survival Seeds Checklist

1 – Make sure you get seeds of plants that are really easy to grow:

Many people make a big mistake and purchase seeds for plants they enjoy eating but don’t think about the husbandry aspect of keeping the plant alive.

Unless you’ve got the greenest of thumbs this could be a big mistake. To help compensate for a defective green thumb you can get seeds for plants that will grow without too much attention. Some of the easiest are peas, beans, lettuces, and peppers. Part of the reason they’re so easy to grow is because they self-pollinate which eliminates worrying about trying to get them pollinated in other ways.

2 – Make sure to replace seeds with regularity:

Here’s the thing about survival seeds. Unless they’ve been specially packaged, most seeds you buy have a relatively short life. If you’re buying seeds from your local hardware/gardening store you might expect your plants to have a shelf life of around 1-2 years.

If you’re taking seeds from plants then you might actually be up against an even shorter shelf life.

The bottom line is when you store seeds, pack and date them so you know how old they are. When your seeds pass a certain age (dependent on the type of seed you’re storing)  then toss them and replace them.

NOTE:  Always store seeds in a cool, dry place. This will optimize their shelf life and help them store longer. I’ll explain more on storing seeds later.

3 – Be selective on the seeds you select:

Part of survival seed selection is ensuring the seeds you buy come from the “cream of the crop.”

That means if you’re buying seeds then you’ll only want to select seeds from the best bred, most vibrant plants. This might be hard to do if you’re buying seeds from plants sight unseen, but if you’re buying seeds at a local farmer’s market then you’ll want to talk to person selling seeds to find out about the plant it came from.

Typically the bigger the plant and the more food it managed to produce, the better a seed from that plant will perform in the future.

If you’re growing your own plants then always be sure to select and store seeds from your best plants.

4 – Keep your garden protected:

Here’s another thing you need to be concerned with when buying, planting survival seeds.

Cross pollination. Cross pollination can distort the  integrity of your plants. That might not seem like a big deal…but when you consider you buy survival seeds for the purpose of growing plants with certain characteristics then this is bad news.

Cross pollination can happen in several different ways.

It’s especially likely if you have neighbors who are growing similar plants to yours. It can also happen if you’re in the vicinity of large farms who use GMO seeds could make their way into your garden. That’s not good when you consider how many of our natural varieties have been lost due to the GMO movement and how GMO seeds are unproven and potentially damaging to human kind.

Ultimately if you’re trying to save a certain plant species you’ll want to do everything you can to protect your seeds and your garden from other pollinators (bees, wind, butterflies, etc).

One thing you can do is keep the flowering portion of the plant covered and protected so you don’t need to worry about pollen from other plants coming in and ruining the plants genetic heritage.

Another thing you can do is grow most of your plants indoors until they’re done pollinating. Then transfer them outside at a later time.

Point being you want to protect your plants because you never know how long you’re going to depend on them for.

5 – Save the right kind of seeds:

Some of the best advice on saving seeds has to dow with the kinds of plants you select.

“Save seeds from heirloom and open pollinated varieties. An heirloom variety is one that has been passed down within a family for 50 years or more. Open pollinated is simply a plant that has pollinated by itself or its type. Both will give you crops true to the original plant.”

By getting these kinds of plants you both guarantee your plants grow easily and they possess the characteristics that’ll really carry themselves through a survival situation.

6 – Store them correctly:

In addition to replacing the seeds with some kind of regularity you also need to make sure the seeds you store are stored correctly.

I alluded to this above but it might need to be explained again.

First thing is keep them in a cool, dry place. Seeds will begin to degrade after exposed to moisture and temperatures above 85 degrees temperature.

Storing seeds in the freezer is an option for long term storage. For short term storage you can keep them Ziplocs or paper envelopes. I recommend keeping them in sealed, plastic containers regardless, this keeps them safe from the ravages of humidity and will also protect them from being eaten by insects.

Plus when you put them in plastic containers you can access them a lot easier than when stored in bags as well as being able to both label and stack them with ease.

The Bottom Line On Buying Survival Seeds

Here’s the thing,

If you’re going to buy survival seeds it’s always a great idea to get your seeds from someone who bred and selected seeds for prepping.

We’ve got a wide assortment of dependable and affordable survival seeds.

Click here or on the image below to view our selection of survival seeds.

buying survival seeds

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6 Things To Know Before Buying Survival Seeds

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