More about Seeds

If you are like me then somewhere in the back of the cupboard will be a box of seed packets labelled good intentions. Just what it is about those colourful sachets of promise I'm not sure but then who can resist a pretty picture, or as Monty Don once said ' seed packets are like book covers, we browse through them and buy on a whim'. Last year I had a clear out and started afresh, this year, with an order for 33  different packets from Kings Seeds (who on earth has the room to grow that many vegetables) and they are still being added to. The temptation is awful as there are six major seed companies all sending colourful brochures to me as well as a plethora of small ones offering unusual or heritage seeds. Just how many there are in the U.K I do not know but a trawl of the Internet found a U.S site listing no fewer than 63.

 

The first illustrated seed catalogue was published in 1730 so I guess there has always been keen gardeners about, and in 1904 one catalogue listed on fewer than 170 different peas, 145 cabbage, 74 onion and 58 beet, but then it was the heyday of kitchen gardens. I suspect many were similar or even the same in the way we may call it kale or turnip here and borecole and rutabaga elsewhere.

 

I got to thinking about all this because, just at the minute, I'm finding  germination rates a little erratic. It seems sometimes I need to sow twice what I need to get half what I want. Now there can be many reasons for that, it can be too wet or too dry, or too cold, today's temperature for instance would be normal for late January. But it can also be that the seed is not viable. Way back 1852 the Gardeners Journal accused seed merchants of mixing dead seed with live and in 1866 an RHS committee reported that seed was adulterated, stored too long, dyed and oiled to look good and in trials, germination rates were as low as 28/100.

 

Thank goodness for trading standards and the EU,or not if you're looking for heritage seed. Their pig headed insistence on uniformity has meant that only approved strains can be sold legally. This was a big problem for the Heligan Project when it came to restoring the kitchen garden and growing the sort of vegetables grown before the First World War took all its young men to an early grave in Flanders. Fortunately men with more commonsense that the common market got round the problem by saving heritage varieties and giving the seed through various associations and societies such as the HDRA at Royton. As Tim Smit says in the forward to The Heligan Vegetable Bible 'It is ironic that a productive tradition began on the large estates should have been dependent in large part on allotment holders for its presavation'.

 

So what of the seed we buy. It may not be a surprise to learn that our climate in the UK today is not exactly conducive to seed production. According to Kings Seeds a three acre field of sweet peas in a good year will produce 1.5 tons of seed but in 2002 that entire crop was lost. Now most of the seed they sell is grown in either southern Europe or South America, and I guess that must the same for the others. At Kings each batch from abroad is tested  for germination and purity in their laboratory and given a number, that number then stays with it to the point of sale.

 

On balance the failure of any of my seed to germinate is down to me, but Oh! the magic when it does. I'll leave you with this thought from the garden writer Anna Pavord, 'seed sowing is an essential rite of passage for the gardener'.