On Sat, 15 Mar 2003 18:45:12 -0500, "Buzzy"
wrote:

I have been growing my own bedding plants rather successfully for the past
two growing seasons but I have noticed something that irks me a bit. I have
collected my own seed from my plants and have used it to start seedlings for
the next year, but from a rather generous collection of marigold seeds, I
have had a total of three plants grow from two trays, with three seeds
planted in each cell and a total of 48 cells for each tray. So I go to the
Canadian Tire (exclusive for us Canucks ya know!) and pick up three paks of
marigold seed and put two in each cell and almost all appear! Am I missing
something here when I collect the seeds?

Many commercially-available seeds are hybrids, which don't breed
'true' to their parents, even in the areas of fertility. They're
designed/bred to produce one annual crop of pretty sophistucated
plants. One (this one) assumes seed companies have ways to separate
sad-looking seeds from the stars. You know if you examine seeds from
almost anything that there are fat 'uns and thin 'uns. This one also
assumes commercial seeds are saved under optimal conditions -- collect
at exactly the right time, dry, cure, refrigerate, whatever --
meticulously. I really don't expect all the seeds I casually collect
from a flower or veg to be ready for prime time. I always have tomato
seedlings coming up around the place I had a tomato plant (or tossed a
tomato on the compost pile), but not anywhere *near* the number that
would appear if every cherry tomato seed that hit the ground produced
a plant.

Still, a marigold blossom produces, what?, 100 seeds? Plant 'em thick
and clip off the stragglers.