re: #59 Big Steve

Down in my area if you want a bumper crop of Texas bluebonnets in the spring you have to take the seeds, put them in your freezer for a week, then get the out and whack them with a hammer. For some reason this causes them to sprout better. In the real world, bluebonnet seeds sit dormant in the soil for years until a particular seed has had enough cycles to rough up the shell so it feels like sprouting. So you might be right, there needs to be control that proves that the cold storage of the cold storage of the seeds doesn’t actually help them.

Some seeds require a certain period of time below some threshold temperature in order to germinate. It’s an adaptation to avoid germinating during an early winter thaw, only to be frozen solid - and killed. Bluebonnet, as I recall, is one such plant. Not sure about mustard, but if it requires this - it’s called cold stratification - than the free-range examples must also have been exposed to such temperatures, or they wouldn’t have germinated.

If seed can survive freezing at all, it can typically survive it for a very long period of time without harm. Seeds extracted from permafrost have been germinated after having been frozen for thousands of years. Viability dwindles over time, though, with the percentage of successful germinations declining over time.

I don’t think this is a valid objection. Apart from germination, which was already discussed, any benefit to frozen seeds of this common plant would have been noted long ago and taken into account.