JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT IT WAS SAFE TO PLANT YOUR SEEDS...

It's the attack of the beetles!!!

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This is why storing your garden seeds properly is a necessity. Otherwise, like me, you'll find a horrible surprise when you are ready to plant. While some of you may laugh and find my peril entertaining, the purpose of this post is to educate others.

THE ORIGINAL IDEA

The original idea was to pick up some seeds from the grocery store and see if they would sprout. This would allow me to both save some money and get some different varieties of seeds. Only four months ago I bought these seeds at a grocery store in their bulk food section. At the time, I had an idea, as I share in this video.

OH NO!

After tucking the seeds away for a few months, the time came to get them ready to plant. It was at this point that I realized I had a problem, as I share in the vlog above.

The paper bag that I had kept the seeds in was riddled with little holes. At this point, options of what caused this were limited, and unfortunately my guess was correct.

The plastic bags inside the paper bag, and a lot of the seeds were chewed up. Many of the seeds had holes in them too and powder was everywhere. When I tried to pick up the bags, they were literally falling apart.

I dumped the seeds out and began to inspect them. I was looking for tiny movements, and soon I was able to see the culprits.

BEETLEMANIA

Inside the seeds were at least two species of beetles. Most likely some larva were in the seeds when I got them and had then hatched and feasted on my seeds. While I normally only care about moisture, sunlight, and heat destroying my seeds, pests can too. The one in the photo above is a little weevil.

Here is another species of beetle that we found in the seeds. On the bright side, this bag had just been kept by itself and was not stored with the rest of my seed collections. That is one way that I lucked out during this potential disaster.

This may look like a lot of beetles in my hand, but it is only a small sampling of the ones that were in the seeds. Another plus is that they only focused on the corn seeds and left the beans alone.

THE SHOW MUST GO ON: MAKING THE BEST OF IT

As usually, options were limited but I'm still an optimist. The first thing that I did was to do a germination test. I grabbed a handful and placed them in a plastic bag with a moist paper towel. Within a few days some were sprouting!

This means that things were not a complete loss! While some seeds have certainly been destroyed and eaten through, not every seed was lost or ruined. Therefore, I'll still be able to plant some of these and hopefully get my own harvest of these varieties! For that, I am both grateful and excited.

I wasn't sure if any of this would work out when I saw how chewed up the bags and seeds were, but it looks like there is a light at the end of this tunnel for me!

After I tried to remove as much powder and as many beetles as I could from the seeds, I decided to soak them all for a few days. I'll drain the excess water off shortly and allow them to sprout, but this should both kill any more beetles and larva and at the same time cause the viable seeds to germinate. The show must go on!

As always, I'm @papa-pepper and here's the proof:

proof-of-surviving-the-attack-of-the-beetles-and-leaving-the-macro-lens-on-for-the-proof-selfie

Until next time…

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GIF provided by @orelmely

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