Okay ... the holidays are over, the tree is down, the snow falls, the wind blows ... but we can escape by thinking about, dreaming about what else? GARDENING!
Likely you are starting to order your seed catalogues but before you put your order in, perhaps you want to check and see what seeds you have left over from last year and years previous. If nothing else, you can prepare your stash of seeds for the usual seed exchanges.
Mother Earth News is a good source of advice on gardening (among other things). Check out the article on Savvy Seed Care for some guidance on sorting seeds, cleaning seeds, and generally getting them ready for the seed swap. Included is advice on when you might want to skip seeds and buy transplants and how long seeds are usually viable.
The key word here is "viable." It would be a bit of a waste to throw out perfectly good seeds based on some general advice so here is a video, Home Germination Testing (~20 minutes) produced by Seed Savers Exchange, to illustrate how you might go about testing that viability and the PDF handout that accompanies the video: Home Germination Testing (PDF).
Enjoy!
