On 28/9/07 14:53, in article
, "Des Higgins"
wrote:

snip

Last time I bought a packet of Sungold tomatoes; it said 12 seeds and
there were 15 and I planted all 15 and got 15 plants. They are fancy
(F1) seeds so expensive to produce; usually you get hundreds or
thousands of seeds though and way more than you need.

The other end of that extreme in the Which tests was one packet of
Delphiniums of which 94% were dead. ;-( I don't feel that the suggestion
that it doesn't matter if some fail because there are too many in a packet,
is a fair one. People *pay* for a full packet of what is supposed to be
viable seed, not a packet of 50 seeds in which 6 germinate. Some failure
rate might be accepted but I think that is certainly unacceptably high. And
of course, as we see here, people often either share seed packets with
others or hope to grow seeds for charity sales etc. For those who haven't
read the article's link that I posted, the tests on the seed viability are
not the whole of the report. It also comments on the range offered and the
info in the catalogues, for example and it coves 15 seedsmen.
This morning's radio feature remarked that the best way to get good,
reliable seed is to collect your own but it did not go into the F1 issue
with that.

--
Sacha
http://www.hillhousenursery.co.uk
South Devon
(remove weeds from address)
'We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our
children.'