onion seeds

[feather]

We grew onions to go to seed, a mixture of two kinds, it will never be a pure strain. They are both long keepers.

They are tiny.

I know when Weed, collected his seed, he vacuum packed them. That may have kept the bug eggs and bugs down.

I'm collecting the onion seeds and putting them in plastic but not vacuum packed. Is it probably best to freeze them to avoid bug damage?

Any thoughts on it?

[1shotwade]

That's what I would do! Actually freezing seed suspends it, fooling it into thinking it has only been through one winter instead of multiple ones. This extends the viability of the seed.
Wade

[Weed]

If bugs or their eggs are a concern OR if you have a large qty, you should freeze them. As part of a halfhearted experiment (no record keeping) to see how long frozen onion seed will remain viable, I vacuumed sealed them to lock out moisture. As it turns out, I saved a good deal of money so far, that would have been spent on seed/shipping costs.

Just about every source I googled about onion seed viability is in agreement, it's about one year. From the Mako seed saved in 2016, they've come up very strong in 17', 18' & 19'. I've never had the patience to germination test them for an actual percentage, but maybe I will this January when I start next year's crop.

If you have a large qty to freeze, you might want to do something similar: when I vac sealed them, I counted out 400 seed, weighed them with a calibrated digital scale and sealed them in convenient individual packs of 400, 800, 1200, 1600 (write the year saved and estimated qty on each packet). 

In 2018 I saved another round of Mako seed but I culled the small flowers & only saved those from the largest umbels to avoid small seed. I've seen different varieties at the local nursery that were planted in 288 trays (I have a few of those) so I might try sowing individually.

I have plenty of pure Mako seed from 18' if you need any👍

[feather]

1shotwade, Weed, thanks for the responses and information. This is our first year saving seed and DH is over the moon excited about it. We'll freeze them and they are labeled for year too. They are two kinds of onions, the mako (from Weed,) and we planted something else, and I'm a lousy record keeper for that. It was pretty painless to grow the flowers but they did need to be staked and tied up, so they didn't break off. Now that we got our feet wet with growing the onion seeds I'm pretty sure we'll do that every year.

We weren't careful enough drying them, so they were a little humid in one corner of the box and some of them germinated, so we quickly fixed that removed those and saved what we could. They are pretty touchy that way. It's been a humid summer all around.
Weed, I think I'm set for seed and I really appreciated you sending seed in the past couple of years. You did such a great job of packaging them in vacuum sealed envelopes.