If you have a few years worth of seeds, you might want to freeze them. it puts them in a suspended animation. This will help most seeds to last indefinately. When it's time to plant, take them out a week ahead of when you want to use them and let them come up to room temp. I use this method and have never had any problems with germination. Good luck and have fun!

Its almost time to start working on your gardens,even if you've never had one before. It does'nt take much room or time to supplement your diet with probably the best tasteing and healthiest produce you'll ever eat.

Even a 10 ft.x10 ft. garden spot will produce a lot of vegetables with a limited amount of work,probably less than 30 mins. a day, 3 or 4 times a week.

I can't say enough about compost and organic matter on your garden.Several years ago I set up a bow shotting range in the back yard next to the garden,two targets , 3 bales of wheat straw to each one ,over the winter the wheat straw rotted down so the next spring I just spread it out over the garden and tilled it in .The first thing I noticed was the ground tilled up easier after a few passes with the tiller the dirt was softer
and crumbly .On just the green beans that year we put up 120 quarts plus we ate green beans all summer.Their were 2 hills of yellow squash plants that got 8 ft. across. we had to cut them down ,they were taking over the garden. Till that time that was the best garden I'd ever had.

Someone asked me the otherday about saving seed,if they needed to freeze them. This is what i do with mine.

Take your heirloom or open polinated seeds{neither are hybrid so you can save the seed}
and put them in a jar in the packages and store them in a cool dark
place,buy more than you need so if something happens and you lose a years seed you'll have backup.Rotate you stock
use the older seed first.I don't know about seeds just being good for a few years,I've heard of seed coming out of Egyption tombs and growing.

do a search for heirloom seed,you will get plenty of places to get seed.

If you need to know more about gardening or anything else for that
matter, from a to z this is the place

http://agebb.missouri.edu/mac/links/index.htm

I tried something a little different this year with my income tax.
I picked out three seed catalogs with $25.00 off of a $50.00 order and
ordered $225.00 and got $75.00 off.
I got 5 shade trees{ cause i ain't got no trees} and 5 fruit trees to go with my 3 apple and 3 peach trees i got last year. I also got grape vines and black berries.

But this year i ordered open pollenated seed for the garden. Enough for about four years planting of everything without saving seed. So with that and saving seed I should be set for a while .

The best investment i have found for the garden is a two wheel seed planter . It comes with several different seed plates from beans and corn down to carrot seed size. It also has an adjustable arm that drops down and marks out the next row to be planted so you have nice straight rows to work with . It's a little pricy at $50.00 but it looks like it will last longer than I will.

Its great ,once the ground is ready to plant it takes no time to plant your whole garden [well depending on the size of your garden].
My garden is 120 ft. x 45 ft. And to plant four 120 ft. rows of sweet corn it takes about 3 mins. and about half the seed it takes for me to plant it by hand and spaces the seed just right.