Do more expensive seeds of the same plant variety make for better seeds?
Johnny's seems to have expensive seeds compared to some other sources (Henry
Fields, Territorial), but does that make them any better?

Thank you.

No. Two things to look for tho. (1) Amount/number of seeds per packet.
Many of the cheaper companies put a minimal amount of seeds per packet.
(2). Reputation of the retailer. There are a few out there who tend to
sell older seeds. This is more prevalent in the "heirloom" niche than
with commercial cultivars. Some of the "heirloom" venders are not too
careful about varietal purity either. So you might get something quite
different with different vendors, even when the name and description
are the same. Most major retailers buy thiers seeds from the major seed
producers like Seminis , Rogers, Seeds by Design, Sakata ........

FDR wrote:

Do more expensive seeds of the same plant variety make for better seeds?
Johnny's seems to have expensive seeds compared to some other sources (Henry
Fields, Territorial), but does that make them any better?

Yes. Johnny's has a higher germination rate than some (all?)
competitors.

--

http://www.midnightbeach.com Contracting, consulting and training
..NET 2.0 book coming out in June http://www.midnightbeach.com/.net

On 5 Mar 2006 09:21:55 -0800, "James" wrote:

Organic seeds are in my opinion a waste of money. Organic farming
doesn't not change the genetics of a plant.

The irony being duly noted and all, what, pray tell, makes you think
that changing the genetics of a plant is the object of organic
farming?


Penelope
--
You have proven yourself to be the most malicious,
classless person that I've encountered in years.
- "pointed"

I didn't say it was the objective. I'm just giving a fact. What I
want from the seed is the genetics that will produce the plant I want.

Trouble with organic farming is that it take a few years to get going.
Many newbies get sucked into organic and then give up. Newbies should
not start organic unless the plot had been organic farmed

The best thing when starting with a weed patch is to invest in enough
Roundup to kill all the weeds. Only then would you stand a chance
converting into organic. Of course if you have the time to hoe several
hours daily you CAN skip the Roundup.

On 5 Mar 2006 17:36:25 -0800, "James" wrote:

I didn't say it was the objective. I'm just giving a fact. What I
want from the seed is the genetics that will produce the plant I want.

Buying organic seeds means the farmer that produced them is trying to
tread lightly on the earth, and I want to support those efforts. Even
if I don't manage to be %100 organic in my yard, I can sure give a
little help to those who do.

Trouble with organic farming is that it take a few years to get going.

No, it doesn't. It doesn't take any longer to set up a flower or
vegetable bed doing it organically than using chemicals. I moved into
the house I'm in now in mid-summer, too late for much of a veggie
garden; but by the next spring, I had a 15 X 20 foot area cleared and
turned. I didn't use any weed killers or chemical fertilizers, just
lots of compost, manure, and a shovel. The second year, after having a
tree cut down and a shed removed, I extended the garden another 20
feet. This time I had a tiller, which was lovely when it came to
getting all those tree roots up.


Many newbies get sucked into organic and then give up.

I'll assume you're speaking of your own efforts, otherwise I'll have
to ask for a cite. I also note your deliberate negativity. Using the
words "sucked into" implies that organic gardening is some sort of
scam that people, to their detriment, are deceived into attempting. It
not, it's a very legitimate and pleasant way to manage a farm or a
garden. It's not for everyone, but it's not a scam.

Newbies should
not start organic unless the plot had been organic farmed

Oh hogwash. With all the information the Internet puts at your finger
tips, anyone can get all the help they need to garden exactly as they
want. The most important part of putting in a garden is good soil
prep, but that's true for both organic and chemical users.

The best thing when starting with a weed patch is to invest in enough
Roundup to kill all the weeds. Only then would you stand a chance
converting into organic. Of course if you have the time to hoe several
hours daily you CAN skip the Roundup.

I'm sorry your attempt at gardening organically left you so twisted
and bitter, but not everyone has that much trouble. I don't own a hoe,
and the biggest problem I have with weeds is the Lemon Basil thickets
that spring up all over my yard.

And Round Up is not the worst thing you can do to a garden, it doesn't
linger in the soil, and it only affects the plants sprayed. It
doesn't, however, kill the seeds in the soil; either, so you have to
keep spraying and spraying and spraying over the growing season, and
that makes it easier to damage the garden plants accidentally. I,
personally, would rather till the garden once in the spring, then use
mulch and weed paper to keep weeds from coming back; much better use
of my time, and I don't have to buy several expensive bottles of Round
Up. And, as a bonus, the mulch and weed paper conserve water and
prevent splash up of soil that can cause some plant diseases. The very
few weeds that do manage to get a roothold are easily pulled when I'm
harvesting.

I'm not a fanatic, I've used the poison ivy Round Up on some poison
ivy in the yard. I'm very allergic to it, and I can't get close, much
less chop it down. I used Andro on fire ant* mounds when I first
moved in, just until I could get the nematode populations in this yard
up high enough to keep them under control. Now, of course, I watch
with amusement as my neighbor scatters Andro about all summer, while
I've had maybe two or three mounds in the last couple of years.

I believe that working with nature is much better way to solve
problems than applying chemical band aids, both for me and for the
earth as a whole; but I recognize there are times when a little help
from a chemical goes a long way. Setting up to garden organically is
just not as hard as you make it out to be, though, and it's not an all
or none proposition.


Penelope


*Just to nip it in the bud...No, sprinkling grits on a fire ant mound
does not kill the ants. They do not eat the grits, swell, and explode.
All you get from sprinkling grits on a fire ant mound is fat, happy
ants. Adult fire ants do not swallow anything solid, they feed the
solid to their larva, which chew the grits before swallowing them, and
then regurgitate nutrients that the adults eat. Fire ant colonies that
disappear after the application of grits are moving because of the
disturbance to the mound entrance and not because of death. They'll
just open another entrance a few yards away.
--
"Maybe you'd like to ask the Wizard for a heart."
"ElissaAnn"

"James" expounded:

The best thing when starting with a weed patch is to invest in enough
Roundup to kill all the weeds. Only then would you stand a chance
converting into organic. Of course if you have the time to hoe several
hours daily you CAN skip the Roundup.

Huh? This paragraph just defies logic.
--
Ann
e-mail address is not checked

Penelope Periwinkle wrote:

Buying organic seeds means the farmer that produced them is trying to
tread lightly on the earth, and I want to support those efforts. Even
if I don't manage to be %100 organic in my yard, I can sure give a
little help to those who do.

The original question was if expensive seed are better. You wanting to
help organic farmers doesn't really answer the question.


Trouble with organic farming is that it take a few years to get going.

No, it doesn't.
You're lucky. Try starting with a plot that's loaded with millions of
weed seeds in the top 6".

Many newbies get sucked into organic and then give up.

I'll assume you're speaking of your own efforts,
I garden at a community garden. Each year the area is rough plowed.
Any plot not actively gardened with have a thick carpet of many
different weeds in a month. Every spring there's a crop of newbies.
Every year we need newbies because last year's quit.

We have free shreaded leaves, horse manure, sheep manure, chicken
manure for the taking. Several regulars have tillers and will even
till for other gardeners.

Newbies should
not start organic unless the plot had been organic farmed

Oh hogwash. With all the information the Internet puts at your finger
tips, anyone can get all the help they need to garden exactly as they
want. The most important part of putting in a garden is good soil
prep, but that's true for both organic and chemical users.

They also make it sound so easy. Newbies faced with real life discover
it's no picnic if they have to feed the tiger mosquitoes while
breaking their backs working the land. Also cultural practices alone
cannot defeat fungi and mold in a humid climate if you want to grow
stuff not well suited to your garden. I don't have a plot with good
air drainage and 8 hours of full sun. I guess one organic principle is
to only grow what's suited to your area. I really don't know if I want
to just grow swamp grass and poison ivy.


I'm sorry your attempt at gardening organically left you so twisted
and bitter, but not everyone has that much trouble.
I'm not bitter. You might be twisted. Anyway, some of the best
gardeners here use Roundup and chemical fertilizers as well as OFF in
addition to organic principles. One even built a cage on his plot to
keep out deer and racoon.

Yes the best gardener here killed his tomatoes the first time he used
Roundup. He also spends 4 or 5 hours a day there; annually add truck
loads of manure, leaf mold tilled into the soil. He still have to
spend hours weeding even with all the mulch. Weed seeds drift into the
area 24/7. Cost of Roundup might be high but it's cheaper than the gas
required to keep tilling and running the weedwacker.

I'm not a fanatic,

Some of the community gardeners here are.

On Mon, 06 Mar 2006 19:12:48 -0500, Ann
wrote:

"James" expounded:

The best thing when starting with a weed patch is to invest in enough
Roundup to kill all the weeds. Only then would you stand a chance
converting into organic. Of course if you have the time to hoe several
hours daily you CAN skip the Roundup.

Huh? This paragraph just defies logic.

So does most of the rest of what he wrote.


Penelope



--
You have proven yourself to be the most malicious,
classless person that I've encountered in years.
- "pointed"

gonzo wrote:

WRT organic vs chemical.. I wonder how we ever got along without the
chem/Ag industry for 2,000+ years.. Sometimes you just have to dig in
and do your own research. You can put 10.10.10 on your garden or you
can grow a catch crop of winter rye over the winter and undersow a
green manure crop of white clover.. Gardening is all about choices!!

Before modern agriculture and chemicals people just starved. It took a
day's wages just to buy a loaf of bread. Pesants worked every day just
to grow enough to eat. Even the Chinese farmer who was as organic as
you can get, starved during bad years.

With the help of chemicals farmers were able to get ahead.

"James" wrote in message
ups.com...
from http://www.illinoisraptorcenter.org/...baldeagle.html

*DDT was originally created in 1873. Only when its use as an
insecticide was discovered in 1939, however, did it come into
widespread use. The scientist who made this discovery was awarded the
Nobel Prize in 1948.

After World War II, it became especially popular due to its
effectiveness against mosquitoes that spread malaria and lice that
carried typhus. The World Health Organization estimated that 25 million
lives were saved because of its use. Problems soon surfaced, however,
as many insects began to develop resistance to the insecticide. It was
also discovered to be highly toxic to fish.

Because it does not break down easily, DDT builds up in the fatty
tissues. Animals that ingest it, carry it for some time. It takes an
animal eight years to metabolize one half of the DDT it consumes.
Birds, like the bald eagle, ingested DDT after eating contaminated
fish. The DDT caused the bird's egg shells to be brittle and thin and
to break easily. Eggs often were broken in the nest when the parents
sat on them during incubation. This was one of the reasons populations
declined to dangerous levels.

DDT was banned in the United States in 1973, although it is still used
in other parts of the world. Birds that migrate to other continents are
still at risk. primary source: University of Oxford, Department of
Chemistry


the crap was even used as a fertiliser as it spread up the rate of growth.
As a weed killer it caused the plant to increase its rate of growth until,
in laymans terms, it exhausted itself and decided dying was a better option
than growing. We still have pockets of pastoral land contaminated by DDT.
Nasty shit and if stuffs up exports of pastoral products.

rob

"James" wrote in message
oups.com...
It might not have helped in floods but it sure did in droughts, disease
and insect pests.

No amount of organic farming could limit locust lost like a little bit
of poison. I would rather eat a little poison and live instead of
dying of starvation.

Farmers were able to use a little bit of chemical fertilizer and
produce more than using a train load of manure. I'm old enough to have
seen train loads of manure. It certainly takes a lot less time to
spread chemical fertilizer than manure.

Chemicals against diseases allowed crops to live instead of dying
before you even get started.

I'm not saying there are no downside to chemicals but I'm no _Silent
Spring_ fanatic. It's a question of the whole picture. DDT might have
lowered the bald eagle population but without have using it last
century you might have been killed by some disease carrying insect.

You got to ask if we would be worrying about West Nile, Killer Bees,
Rocky Mountain Spoted Fever, etc. if we were still using DDT.

Of course you can point out all the things chemicals cannot do but
what's the point? Fact is chemicals work. Also calling people who
disagree with you misinformed tends to make you sound more nutty.

It's only recently that people can afford organic produce and $4
coffee. Just the fact that organic produce costs way more than
non-organic proves chemicals work. These should be no organic premium
if it was such a good system.

I have started eliminating midifed or synthetic chemicals in my household &
garden for a number of reasons. One is cost, not just to my pocket but also
the environment. I stopped using laundry powders and detergents in favour of
washing soda (sodium carbonate). In my opinion it does a very similar job to
commercial powders, though I may need to use a little more than I did of the
powders although I never used the amounts recommended on the packaging so it
may be like for like had I used the recommended rates. Moreover, washing
soda is a product I can buy in bulk (10 kgs or more at a time, I take my own
sack) and therefore it comes with less packaging than commercially packed
detergents. As a simple product, and in bulk, it utilises less energy to
produce ans transport. It does not contain phosphorous or other aspects
harmful to water ways (though in large quantities it can in itself have
negative effects on waterways) and best of all it is cheaper than commercial
supermarket packed powders. Alternatives to synthetic or complex chemicals
do exist that can save money as well as our environment.

rob

On 9 Mar 2006 19:57:32 -0800, "James" wrote:


gonzo wrote:

WRT organic vs chemical.. I wonder how we ever got along without the
chem/Ag industry for 2,000+ years.. Sometimes you just have to dig in
and do your own research. You can put 10.10.10 on your garden or you
can grow a catch crop of winter rye over the winter and undersow a
green manure crop of white clover.. Gardening is all about choices!!

Before modern agriculture and chemicals people just starved.

spurf!

Oh, my, but you're just a font of misinformation, aren't you?


It took a
day's wages just to buy a loaf of bread. Pesants worked every day just
to grow enough to eat. Even the Chinese farmer who was as organic as
you can get, starved during bad years.

With the help of chemicals farmers were able to get ahead.


Yeah, 'cause, um, like, chemicals made all the difference in like,
floods and droughts and stuff.


Penelope
--
"Maybe you'd like to ask the Wizard for a heart."
"ElissaAnn"

It might not have helped in floods but it sure did in droughts, disease
and insect pests.

No amount of organic farming could limit locust lost like a little bit
of poison. I would rather eat a little poison and live instead of
dying of starvation.

Farmers were able to use a little bit of chemical fertilizer and
produce more than using a train load of manure. I'm old enough to have
seen train loads of manure. It certainly takes a lot less time to
spread chemical fertilizer than manure.

Chemicals against diseases allowed crops to live instead of dying
before you even get started.

I'm not saying there are no downside to chemicals but I'm no _Silent
Spring_ fanatic. It's a question of the whole picture. DDT might have
lowered the bald eagle population but without have using it last
century you might have been killed by some disease carrying insect.

You got to ask if we would be worrying about West Nile, Killer Bees,
Rocky Mountain Spoted Fever, etc. if we were still using DDT.

Of course you can point out all the things chemicals cannot do but
what's the point? Fact is chemicals work. Also calling people who
disagree with you misinformed tends to make you sound more nutty.

It's only recently that people can afford organic produce and $4
coffee. Just the fact that organic produce costs way more than
non-organic proves chemicals work. These should be no organic premium
if it was such a good system.

"James" mentioned:
DDT might have lowered the bald eagle population but without
have using it last century you might have been killed by some
disease carrying insect.

Such as? Can you cite something in particular?

You got to ask if we would be worrying about West Nile, Killer
Bees, Rocky Mountain Spoted Fever, etc. if we were still using
DDT.

And what about the insects and diseases that grow immune to DDT?
Is it right to poison and murder kids and children in your quest to
kill all diseases, all bacteria and all life?

Of course you can point out all the things chemicals cannot do
but what's the point?

Go drink a cup of DIET COCA-COLA (or any aspartame chemical,
created, sponsored, supported and promoted by the WHOLE George
Bush family and Donald Rumsfeld, the President of the company that
created and hired an FDA commissioner who accepted bribes to get
aspartame approved). The Gulf War Syndrome occured because of...
a chemical produced by the George Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and others.

Ask yourself why the Gulf War Syndrome happened and why the
United States Government refuses to investigate 200,000 armed
service members which died within 4 years of returning from the
first Gulf War. So go ahead, drink Diet drinks promoted by the
American President, by a Vice President that shoots his friends.
And stand outside for eight hours each day during the hottest days of
the month and we'll see if your here in 4 years.

More chemicals promoted, supported and delivered by George
Bush, Bill Clinton and their WHOLE FAMILIES...

http://beveragedaily.com/news/ng.asp...ks-benzene-fda
http://www.ewg.org/issues/toxics/20060228/index.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspartame

The poisonous soft drink list...
http://www.ewg.org/issues/toxics/20060228/list.php

And to think that the FDA ALLOWS and supports feeding such
drinks to children, to 3 year old kids. Don't put it off on the parents,
yeah, they're at fault as well, but it's the United States Government
that keeps quiet about such things and ALLOWS such things.

Fact is chemicals work. Also calling people who disagree with
you misinformed tends to make you sound more nutty.

She wasn't calling you any names. She was just pointing out that you
shut your eyes on purpose to things that occur around you, hoping
that you might acknowledge things your missing.

It's only recently that people can afford organic produce and
$4 coffee. Just the fact that organic produce costs way more
than non-organic proves chemicals work.

Again, your eyes are closed. Look at it this way... "organic" IS
a marketing word and nothing more, when talking about things
on a store shelf. To the people involved in Organic Farming, it
tends to carry different definitions and some use chemicals, and
some believe in and support the promotion of life, including the
promotion of fungai and moss and all sorts of bugs and worms.

Think about this...

Life breeds life more than it breeds death. Death breeds death
more than it breeds life.

These should be no organic premium if it was such a good
system.

Your talking about commercialization and advertising there, and
nothing more. If you buy a bag of bread marked "Organic" and
its produced in the same way the unmarked bags are produced,
but you pay a higher price, what are you talking about? People
tag a bag of bread as "Organic" as a marketing ploy. They put
a higher price on it, and IF they sell more of it, they then mark
ALL their bags with the word. It's 100% legal.

If you insist that everything the United States Government sells
you and tells you, that's your own fault.

Think about George Bush, the United States Congress, and the
words they love to hear coming out of George Bush's mouth.
Their favorite words seems to want to inflict fear upon the
citizens of the United States of America. What is their favorite
word? And who are the objects of their affections, and who do
they refuse to protect? "Fahmy Malak"

Jim Carlock
Post replies to the newsgroup.

Life breeds life more than it breeds death. Until it's unbalanced.

Death breeds death more than it breeds life. It's always unbalanced.

In Memory Of...
Kevin Ives (dead, 17 years old, murdered by law enforcement)
Don Henry (dead, 16 years old, murdered by law enforcement)

The FBI refuses to investigate these deaths. The FBI operative
that did the initial investigations discovered that the Governor of
Arkansas and his hired State Medical Examiner covered of the
deaths and issued a statement that the boys fell asleep on some
train tracks and were run over by a train. They were run over,
but they were taken in by two Arkansas policemen first. The
Arkansas policement were the last ones to see the boys alive.
Read the reports put out by the lady hired by the FBI to
investigate the crimes.