Buying Dead Seeds?

Friday, October 16, 2009 by Jeremy Dore - Categories: gardening seed germination
< Back to the GrowBlog Index

One of my favourite parts of the gardening year is opening a new packet of seed and sowing them.  Seeds represent so many garden aspirations and hold the promise of an abundant harvest.  Yet, amazingly, recent tests in the UK have shown that up to 59% of packet seed is dead when you buy it, with no chance of ever germinating and producing a crop.

These alarming results come from the independent consumer review magazine ‘Which?’ who have been conducting annual seed tests for three years.  Each Spring they buy packets of seed for 3 vegetables and 3 flowers, choosing the same variety where possible, direct from 17 of the leading seed suppliers.  These are then sent to a seed testing laboratory and germination rates are measured.

Best overall this year were Nicky’s Nursery, Dobies and Suttons while Simpson’s Seeds performed worst with 59% of their runner beans failing to germinate and 33% of their spring onions.  At this rate they were well below the minimum legal guidelines set for over 30 different vegetables in 2002.  This is in stark contrast to the winners who all had over 85% average success rates.

The technical term for whether a seed can grow is ‘viability’ and it is something that varies widely from plant to plant.  Despite the occasional story of seeds from hundreds of years ago germinating in a museum, the reality is that most species die within a few years and sometimes even less!  For home grown vegetables the following seeds have particularly low viability and should be replaced each year:

• Parsnip which also takes 2 – 6 weeks to germinate
• Onion
• Spinach and Orach (mountain spinach)
• Parsley
• Scorzonera and Salsify (oyster plant)

In contrast most types of squash, lettuce, brassica and tomato seed can be successfully kept for 4-5 years and still produce good results as long as they are stored in cool, dark, air-tight conditions.

So, should we be worried about seed viability?  Personally, I don’t think the ‘naming and shaming’ of seed companies does much good.  Comparing this year’s results with previous ones, some of the worst performing companies were actually recommended as ‘Best for Veg Seed’ by ‘Which?’ last year!  This is presumably because they choose different plants to test each year so that the seed companies can’t predict which will be tested.  In reality nearly all seed companies purchase the seed they sell from seed growers and wholesalers, with a few exceptions for exclusive varieties.  Although most of them test the seed before selling it there will always be variations due to different growing conditions and the weather.

The only seed germination rates I feel concerned about are the ones where you get very small numbers in a packet – squash, peppers and special rare varieties.  If there are only 6 seeds in a packet then it’s very disappointing when half of them don’t sprout. 

For other plants I am not worried about some not growing.  Like most gardeners I always sow more seed than I need to.  Then, when they germinate I can easily thin them out to the required spacing or transplant excess seedlings to another location.  In this day and age we have the luxury of seed being a cheap commodity and, with most packets containing thousands of seeds, I am happy to take a few failures as part of the course.   There is always going to be room for improvement but this is nature we’re dealing with and gardening will never be an exact science.

If you have had experience of particularly good or bad germination rates then please do share them below.