Any reliable seed house can be depended upon for good seeds. However, there is a great risk in seeds. A seed may appear to be all right and yet not have enough vitality within it, or power, to produce a hardy plant.
If you save seeds from your own plants you are able to choose carefully. Suppose you are saving seed of aster plants. What blossoms shall you decide upon? Now it is not the blossom only which you must consider, but the entire plant. Why? Because a weak, straggly plant may produce one fine blossom. Looking at that one beautiful blossom, you think of the numerous equally lovely plants you are going to have from the seeds. But will the seeds produce plants like the parent?
Consider the entire plant in seed selection. Is it sturdy, strong, well shaped and symmetrical? Does it have a good number of fine blossoms? These are questions to ask in seed selection.
If you should happen to have the opportunity to visit a seed dealer's garden, you will see here and there a blossom with a string tied around it. These are the blossoms chosen for seed. If you look at the whole plant carefully care you will see the what the gardener has in mind when he did made his selection.
Another point to note. Since we have no way of telling anything about the plants from which this special collection of seeds came. We must thus give our entire thought to the seeds themselves. There is evidently some choice here — some are much larger than the others, some far plumper, too. By all means choose the largest and fullest seed. The reason — when you break open a bean what you see appears to be a little plant. So it is. Under the right conditions this 'little chap' will grow into the bean plant you know so well.
This little plant depends for its early growth on the nourishment stored up in the two halves of the bean seed. This is how the food is stored. Beans are not full of food and goodness for us to eat, but for the little baby bean plant to feed upon. And so if we choose a large seed, we have chosen a greater amount of food for the plantlet. This little plantlet feeds upon this stored food until its roots are prepared to do their work. So if the seed is small and thin, the first food supply insufficient, there is a possibility of losing the little plant.
This pantry of food is called a cotyledon if there is just one portion and cotyledons if two. plants are therefore classified in this manner. A few plants that bear cones like the pines have several cotyledons. But most plants have either one or two cotyledons.
From large seeds come the strongest plantlet's. That is the reason why it is better and safer to choose the large seed. It is the same case exactly as that of weak children.
There is often another problem with the seeds that we buy. The problem is impurity. Seeds are sometimes mixed with other seeds so alike in appearance that it is impossible to detect the fraud. Poor business, is it not? These seeds may be unclean. Bits of foreign matter mixed with large seed are very easy to discover. One can merely pick the seed over and make it clean. Clean means is meant free from foreign matter. But if small seeds are unclean, it is very difficult, well nigh impossible, to make clean them.
The third thing to note is viability. We know from our tests that seeds which look to the eye to be all right may not develop at all. There are reasons. Seeds may have been picked before they were ripe or mature; they may have been frozen; or they may be too old. Seeds retain their viability or germ developing power for a given number of years and are then useless. There is a viability limit in years which differs for different seeds.
From the test of seeds we find out the germination percentage of seeds. Now if this percentage is low, don't waste time planting such seed unless it is a small seed. Why? You may ask. Why does the size of the seed make a difference? This is the reason — when small seeds are planted it is usually sown in drills. Most amateurs sprinkle the seed in very thickly. So a great quantity of seed is planted. And enough seed germinates and comes up from such close planting. So quantity makes up for quality.
But in the case of large seeds, like corn for example. Corn is planted far apart and a few seeds in a place. With such a method of planting it is important to ensure a high chance of germination.
Small seeds that germinate at fifty per cent. may be used but for large seeds it is too low. Suppose we test beans. The percentage is seventy. If low-vitality seeds were planted, we could not be absolutely certain if seventy per cent would grow up. But if they are lettuce seeds, then go ahead with the planting.