100's of old seeds, circa...This is your fathers marijuana!

In.The.Basement said:

Hey everyone,

I found an old cookie tin with hundreds of old seeds, neither of my parents know where they came from,

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My guess would be that they are from the 70's-90's. I know thats a huge gap but i would lean towards older. Their was a plastic sandwich bag with a smaller amount of seeds inside, not too sure when those came on the scene but some investigatory work may be in order, it was the open kind with no ziplock.

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I'm trying to germ a bunch with paper towel method, I will keep trying until i get them to pop. I found them in my basement, dry and fairly cool, so that may be good.

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Do you guys think I should leave them down their or put them in a fridge?

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Jogro said:

LOL. . .Sure they "don't". . .wink wink. . . They probably only had sex that one time you were conceived, too.


Believe it or not, the original branded Ziploc bags came out in 1968.

Open plastic sandwich bags date back to the late 1950s and are still manufactured today, meaning that just knowing you've got one doesn't help you date this stash at all.

If you can figure out the year(s) of manufacture of that cookie tin, then you'd at least know the seeds couldn't have been put in there BEFORE that! Its also probably a reasonable guess that the seed collection "started" roughly the time the tin was in production. Try that angle.

Year they were put in there does potentially makes a difference, needless to say. 40 year old seeds are a lot less likely to be viable than 20 year old.

In terms of strain, stuff pre mid-1980s is likely to be all outdoor landrace sativa, mostly from Mexico, but possibly from Columbia, Jamaica, Hawaii, or Asia. You can't really identify the origin just by looking at the seeds, but you might inspect them carefully to see if there is more than one obvious type of seed there. "Golden age" of imported seedy herb was probably the late 1970s/early 80s, for whatever that's worth.

If you had some good older pure Jamaican or Columbian seeds in there, those could be interesting.

Most of the seeds probably won't be viable, though I really wouldn't be surprised if a few of them did actually germinate. I've seen 10 year old seeds pop just fine.

Assuming they did, many of these older foreign landrace strains won't do well at all outdoors in the USA, because in most of the country winter frost will come and kill them before they ripen. If you're lucky enough to live somewhere with no winter frost, you might do OK here. Growing these indoors is also tricky because they tend to stretch, go hermie, and take a long time to finish flowering; in some cases as long as 4+ months.

Post mid 1980s, and its probable that your seed collection is all Mexican commercial.


Its as good a method as any. Again, I think after 20+ years your germination rate is likely to be pretty low, but you may get lucky.
You never know until you try, and bluntly the seeds aren't getting any "younger". If you don't try, who ever will?


I'd leave them.

After at least 20 years down there, at this point, I don't think a few extra days/weeks of refrigeration is going to change anything, and I think putting them into a fridge might dry them out, or otherwise change their water content.

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