I don't trust the Plants & Seeds I buy anymore.

[Gary350]

I had Silver Queen seeds left over from last year I planted for my first corn crop. The new bag of seeds I bought for the second corn crop says Silver Queen but the corn it grew looks like Peaches and Cream.

I bought 2 bags of Blue Lake Bush beans this year, 1 from Farmers Co-op and 1 from the Garden Center. 1 bag is a mix of about 20% pole beans.

The 4 beef steak tomato plants that I bought took 4 months to make ripe tomatoes. I sliced the tomatoes I can see they are not beef steak, they don't taste as good as beef steak either.

This year I am saving seeds so I know what I have next year. Saving seeds is a pain in the butt considering it took me 2 hours to save 1 lb. of Blue Lake bush bean seeds and a 1 lb bag of seeds is $5.00. I have enough corn ears saved for about 300 seeds all I really need next year is 100 seeds. I have squeezed the seeds from Big Beef, Beef Master, and Jet Star into buckets of water, then sifted them out and dried them on paper plates. I am not sure these will be true Big Beef, Beef Master, and Jet Star next year just have to wait and see. At lease I have enough tomato seeds to plant directly in the garden next spring I have very good luck planting about 15 seeds in each spot they usually all come up and 1 plant over powers all the rest.

I saved watermelon seeds too.

Once the weather gets cooler and we start having more rain the pepper plants will start to grow and I will have seeds to save. October I will save 50 okra seeds that is all I need.

[imafan26]

Remember seeds only come true from open polinated varieties. Jet Star and Beefmaster are hybrids and will not come true from seed. However, I have some fifth generation sungold tomatoes that I like better. Big Beef may be a stabilized hybrid but maybe not.

Occasionally I have had problems with seeds I order. Empty packets and the wrong seeds in the package. However, it is rare and I have always been able to get new seeds and sometimes a bonus along with an apology from the seed company. If you get your seeds from a reputable source you should get what you ordered 98% of the time or get an exchange.

[jal_ut]

Many of the variety names are hybrids. Saved seed won't come true next season. I suggest buying from a different supplier/source.

Hey, if the seed was not true to advertisement, contact the seed company and complain.

[ButterflyLady29]

I feel for you. I've had mislabeled seeds and plants several times. Once I sold several par-cel plants only to find out as they matured that they were actually dill. Then there were the mispackaged ghost pepper seeds from last year. And this year I've got green chocolate and lilac peppers, some cost me $2.50 each! Usually the company the expensive ones came from have a really good product, not this year.

[imafan26]

About peppers. New hybrids can be unstable. The Ghost peppers I got were fine the first time but the seeds from that crop were very unstable. I had ghosts with zero heat and they were not crossed. I have had similar problems with several packages of Jalapeno from different sources. The jalapeno M had some hot some not on the same plant. Often as bad as only one out of five being hot. Jalapeno M is supposed to be a hot variety. I have since swiithched to the local Wailua pepper which is hot and stable.

[pepperhead212]

I have had some major problems with certain seed companies in the past, but the great majority of companies I buy from I have always gotten the right seeds from, and had good germination %. When I save seeds for peppers I make sure that I isolate the blossoms, as they cross easily. And peppers are what I have had the problems with in the past.

[greenstubbs]

Soooooooooo, who are you getting the bad seeds from, call them out! Do you really want the rest of us to buy from these folks and get hosed too?

[Peter1142]

Get your seeds from Johnny's, they are the best. The 1 time I got mislabeled seeds from them, they contacted me before I even realized it, eager to get to the bottom of the issue and proactively providing a refund to all customers who purchased the seeds. Their service is top notch.

[pepperhead212]

Soooooooooo, who are you getting the bad seeds from, call them out! Do you really want the rest of us to buy from these folks and get hosed too?

Several of the companies are no longer in business, for obvious reasons! But one is still around - Reimer's Seeds - which is the one I had terrible problems with pepper seed (what they started out selling) germinating. And in David's Garden watchdog others didn't have good results, either, and checking just now, out of curiosity, things haven't improved for them in the ratings. https://davesgarden.com/products/gwd/

[ButterflyLady29]

The Par-cel seeds were purchased years ago. I've not seen them offered since. The ghost peppers were from an individual who weeks later told me that although he grew only ghost peppers, his neighbor grew several other varieties of peppers. The lilac peppers were from Chef Jeff. The chocolates were purchased from an individual and I don't know where they got their seeds.

So does that help?