From

Location

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Date Posted

New Brunswick

Well I pulled a stupid. Saved my seeds out of my carved pumpkins, and forgot, left them out and it went down below 32 deg. F that nite. They froze....I tried to germinate one immediatly and it didn't sprout. I stuck the other frozen ones in the freezer. Are they ruined??? I did find some still in the pumpkins and saved a few of those. I think they should be ok. I never saw such big seeds! Do big seeds mean big pumpkins????

11/4/2004 6:56:13 AM

Cologne / Germany

Big seeds, big pumpkins - I doubt that. What was the weight of the pumpkin you took the seeds from? I have some good proven seeds here but they look pretty average.

Some growers do freeze their seeds from what I read. I prefer to store mine dark, dry and cool around 50 F. But there are many new pkin plants on the compost pile every spring from seeds freezing over winter, so no problem. Just a concept of mother nature.

11/4/2004 8:02:38 AM

New Brunswick

Hi...the pumpkin weighed 348 pounds. I always dry and store mine in plastic bags or containers. I just wondered what would happen if you threw fresh wet ones in the freezer. Guess I will know eventually huh???? The one I attempted to germinate was not even filed... I do have the ones I got directly from the pumpkin the next day drying as usual.

11/4/2004 12:08:08 PM

I'm with Gordon... GO UTES!

Freezing won't hurt them at all. In nature they freeze.
In fact, some seeds, probably not pumpkin seeds, need a
period of cold or even freezing to make them able to
germinate. This process is called stratification.

It might make a fun project to study whether
stratification helps or hurts germination rates of AG seeds.
We already know that AG seeds will germinate (most of the
time) whether they are stratified or not. But is the rate
of success changed in either case? My guess is that it is
not significant, but that freezing might actually help (a
little bit) the eventual germination process.

11/4/2004 1:09:02 PM

Napa Valley, CA

The size of the seed is not a factor in determining how big a pumpkin it will produce. Huge seeds look impressive but an AG seed the size a dime can produce a pumpkin as large as that of a quarter size seed.....or even larger.
Genetics is the important factor.....not seed size.

11/5/2004 1:06:10 AM

C N Y

which is too bad, considering the size of my 811 Kuhn seed!

11/5/2004 6:44:44 PM