Hit the Dirt; Seeds For Success Prt. 3.

Welcome to hit the dirt this week. I'll read the third out of four parts of an insider's view of the garden seed business by Steve Solomon entitled seeds of success taken from the January February one thousand nine hundred of house myth in this section. He outlines the differences between cheap and expensive seed when it is worse to pay more for the latter. And how consumers can learn to avoid the former. To continue with the article. Cheap seed is not always under a high percentage of off type plants may not be significant. When a gardener is growing on refined species species with few or no hybrids like chives charred beings peas parsley scallions loose leaf lettuce kale or spinach. Assuming the germination is adequate and the varieties well adapted to climate and soil variations in the leaf shape of kale and parsley where the stock color of chard where the chef Lanka scallions may not matter that much. A high percentage of quick bolting off types in a batch of leaf lettuce can matter however and with their fine vegetables like radishes carrots bolding onions heading lettuce Brussels sprouts cabbage broccoli or cauliflower individual

plants that vary too much from the ideal may produce little or no edible food. For example open pollinated red radish seed the cost $1 per pound and is growing with little or no stock seed improvement or field rolling yields at best one near perfect route. Pretend plants skin colors may vary widely from pale pink to crimson or purple. Many of the bulbs will have thick rough skins coarse and or multiple tap roots and huge crowns and over half the plants will fail to make around pull that off. A low grade commercial quality seed sold at $2 per pound probably produced from hand-selected roots gives 5 to 7 decent bulbs and a couple of rougher but acceptable ones for every 10 plants. A pound of extra fancy radish seed may run $4 but such seed can produce between 9 in 10 perfect bulbs per 10 plants expertly grown. See this fine is virtually stock seed quality and garden sized packets of a few grams. The cheapest radish seed still sells for around 69 cents. Well Johnny selected seeds

sells a mini packet of Mirabelle the most uniform and refined Roddy I know for 95 cents. Another way to recognize cheap seat produce for home gardeners is by Variety all names in any species that lends itself to inexpensive mass hybridization. The old open pollinated rides tend to vanish from commercial trade. Hybrid righties have virtually taken over the commercial production of broccoli cabbages cucumbers corn summer squash Chinese cabbage Brussels sprouts onions and many carrots. I expect that soon the only decent cauliflower in winter squash will also be hybrid in species like tomato pepper bee radish and melon. Both hybrid and open ponied righties will probably exist side by side for quite some time because hybrids are more expensive to produce and often don't show sufficient advantages when it comes to lettuce and I've peas or beans. Specie is difficult to mass hybridized. Hybrid Roddy's unlikely and the old standards predominate. When I see a garden

company primarily selling old open pollinated varieties long ago dropped from commercial trade cavity varieties like golden acre Danish baldhead chieftain Savoy or flat Dutch carrots like plain scarlet Manti's Danvers or red Cor Shantung snowball cauliflower strains by a letter like a or Y or number of broccoli varieties like Waltham 29 Italian green sprouting calibers where the situ Brussels sprouts like Catskill or Long Island improved onions named early yellow globe are open pollinated yellow sweet Spanish when we see that these sorts predominate. I'm pretty sure I'm being offered cheap garden seeds or garden seed merchant buying top quality varieties has pitfalls to avoid even when dealing with repeatable primary growers. No trade could be more open to deceptions errors in labeling are hard to identify until it's too late. After all one bag of lettuce seed looks pretty much like another. And there is little hope of knowing what

they contain without growing them both out. Better primary growers will do just that. Grow out newly produce see lots before selling them thus confirming their quality and creating something the British call proven lots. Many primary growers go as far as to operate a trial grounds in Chile. The climate just like California is so they can harvest new crop seed in North America September perform Chilian grow outs from October to February and sell proven lots of new crop seed to merchants in March. Rather than accept their representations of primary growers sales persons responsible seed merchants make decisions about what goes into their catalogs. By performing their own variety trials. Growing samples provided by the primary growers doing this also give their catalog a decidedly regional bent. As the varieties offered to merchants will be appropriate for climates where they are to be grown. Few Gardens He companies can afford trial grounds in the southern hemisphere. But the better firms go to the expense of growing out the new seed lots they purchased during the next summer.

Should the lat prove disappointing they'll discard any carry over demand a refund and get new and better seed for the coming year. Of course thousands of their customers were also discovered right along with the seed merchant that the Siberian Kale was really some kind of view of colored with smooth bitter leaves suitable only for cattle field feed. That concludes this week's reading but don't worry there is more to come next week when I'll have the thrilling finale of seeds of success. This is Keith Goldfarb. See you next week and hit the dirt.