On 30/9/07 09:50, in article ,
"Martin" wrote:

On Sun, 30 Sep 2007 09:31:22 +0100, Sacha
wrote:

On 30/9/07 09:26, in article ,
"Martin" wrote:

On Sat, 29 Sep 2007 23:23:25 +0100, Sacha
wrote:


If they bought seeds off the same shelves - or the virtual shelves -
available to the ordinary gardener, then the results were typical, surely?

No, because as somebody said earlier, some places look after their seeds
better
than others. It's important that the places where Which bought the seeds is
also
identified.

I don't think anyone disputes that. But I don't think it's correct to
suggest that the study is meaningless if only one packet of seeds per
producer was tested, because that is what most consumers would buy.

If somebody bought one plant from your husband that died, would that correctly
reflect the quality of all his plants?

That's apples and oranges. Far more to the point to say that if my husband
bought 20 plants from someone and 17 of them died *that* would reflect the
quality of our supplier. We do watch what comes in and how it does and that
brings us back to the fact that the public need to know who is supplying the
seedsmen from whom they buy their packets of seeds.

We bought 57 beech hedge plants from a Dutch supplier of which only 3 weren't
dead. We bought 10 beech hedge plants from another supplier of which only one
died. If we had bought only one from each supplier we might have reached
totally
different conclusions about the quality of both their plants.

The sample size has to be big enough to be significant. It's basic statistics.
An organisation like Which? should be aware of this.

I just can't agree with this, even though I do see what you're saying.
Which was acting for the consumer and in doing so, did what the consumer
would do.

The
test wasn't for the trade which buys thousands of seeds but for the consumer
who buys one or two.

Not quite, the test was for millions of readers who buy one or two each.

But each buys as an individual.



The point of the testing is simply to do the testing. I would think Which
considers that to be their only brief. After that consumers can make up
their own minds as to whether to buy seeds from x, y or z, or whether to
mix
them up from a, b and c. What the test has shown is that people buying
seeds from 15 different sources may well find that the seed is dead and
then, if they have a poor germination rate they're better informed to make
a
fuss about it with the seedsmen.

What it showed is that there is a problem with delphinium seed especially as
last year we had packet of dead delphinium seeds from Plants of Distinction,
one
that Which? rated high.

I made up my mind to cancel my Which? subscription after more than 30 years,
I
still have a subscription to the Dutch CA. Guess why? :-)

It showed a problem with a lot more than Delphinium seeds. They tested veg.
too and various other flowering plants.

I go by what was in the pdf file that you provided the link to.

So as you see it was a test based on the sort of average veg and flowers
people would normally buy.
--
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.'