Ok so i am pretty good at vegetable gardening and i get good yields of nice fruits every time but i dont think i am reaching my full potential. My problem is that i put way too much effort into selecting the best soil amendments and nutes and such but then i go get my plants at walmart. Its like growing bagseed if seedbay was right next door. what my question really is, is this: Do the seed descriptions in veggie and fruit seed catalogues hold true? ive seen so many since i ordered some catalogues recently that its hard to tell. if they are all true then every variety is the most vigorous, disease resistant, earliest and heaviest yielding, and that cant be right Ive seen so few descriptions that were somewhat honest with statements like "cannot tolerate low pH soils" or "susceptible to fulsarium rot" or whatever but most of them sound like some of these seedbanks with the far-out over the top descritions.

If anyone could post any experiences, thoughts, or ideas regarding vegetable seed selection i would be much appreciative. i am most interested in tomatoes, peppers and chilies, cukes, asparagus, broccoli, anbd spinach

This year I used seed from the dollar store 5 packs for a dollar, everything but my pot seed that I have grown this year, and I got some from a friend on here (flowers & herbs) all the ones I got from the dollar store came up and looks just as good if not better than the pics on the packs.

i know i can get good results with el cheapo seeds.....ive been a walmart seed shopper for a minute now....however ive learn with pot that genetics is everything and ive also learned you get what you pay for alot of times in life.....so i am wondering.....whats the scoop on the hybrids and catalogue varieties as far as accuracy of descriptions of the different types.

[cloneX]

Why not do a trail yourself, get some cheap seeds and some from a catalogue. I would be surprised, if you get any difference in yield or germination. But try it out and let us know.
I bought chilli seeds and they didnt do great, where as I bought actual chillies from the local supermarket and scraped out the seeds and planted them and they did alot better then the packet of seeds I bought

vegetable seed is no different than mj seed; some of those descriptions are right on the money and others are just wishful thinking. as a farmer i need the best possible genetics and they arent easy to find. with a few exceptions, you have some straight clowns "breeding" vegetables. most heirloom tomato seeds are produced and maintained through selfing as opposed to inline crossing. it makes me crazy!!!


another thing to consider is your environment. for instance, i ordered a lot of seeds that were produced in Wisconsin. they sucked. i live in the deep south so, surprise surprise, they didnt make it past june...

i now order seeds from a seedsman that lives close to me.

very rarely do you find great genetics in wal-mart. you need to start from seed to get the results you want, imho.

good luck,
bob

[Johnny Rotten]

Some hybrids are great, some suck....same with cannabis. Tomatoes...go with the heirlooms....brandywine, Cherokee Purple (my fav), org. beefsteak, black cherry etc...some heirlooms suck, yellow pear!! Some hybrids are great...celebrity, big boy/better boy mostly for pure toughness....some are very disappointing.

I tend to stay away from hybrids....you can't save seeds, and the taste is usually not there. They have to sacrifice something to make them so tough. Watermelons, on the other hand, are great!! the hybrids are pretty good foe watermelons.

almost all vegetable seed are "el cheapo". there are plenty of online vegetable "seedbanks". some even ship stealthy!! seed savers exchange is a great thing to be a member of if you like heirlooms. its also a great place to share your own stabilized crosses and whatnot.

try a google for tomatobob, rareseeds, sse, tomatogrowerssupply. i have had good luck with all those. toamtobob for tomatoes and rareseeds for everything else. rareseeds has a lot of heirlooms from the ozark mountain area. the ozarks have very tough growing conditions thus thier seeds preform well in most areas.