The Importance of Seed Selection for a Successful Garden
The Importance of Seed Selection for a Successful Garden
The Importance of Seed Selection for a Successful Garden - When it comes to gardening, one of the most critical factors for success is the quality of the seeds you choose. While any reliable seed house can be depended upon for good seeds, there is still a risk involved in seed selection. A seed may appear to be healthy and viable on the outside, but lack the necessary vitality or power to produce a strong and hardy plant.
If you save seeds from your own plants, you have the advantage of being able to carefully choose the best ones. Let's say you're saving seeds from aster plants. It's not just the blossoms that you need to consider, but the entire plant. Why? Because a weak and straggly plant may still produce one beautiful blossom that tempts you with dreams of an abundance of equally lovely plants from its seeds. However, there is a chance that the seeds will produce plants similar to the weak parent plant.
Therefore, in seed selection, it's important to consider the overall health and strength of the entire plant. Is it sturdy, well-shaped, and symmetrical? Does it have a good number of fine blossoms? These are essential questions to ask when selecting seeds for your garden.
Size is another important factor to consider in seed selection. While we may not know anything about the plants from which the seeds come, we can still focus on the seeds themselves. You will notice that some seeds are larger and fuller than others. In this case, it's best to choose the largest and fullest seeds. The reason is simple: when you break open a seed, such as a bean or a peanut, you will see what appears to be a little plant inside. This little plant relies on the nourishment stored in the seed to grow into a healthy plant. By choosing a larger seed, you are providing more food for the plantlet to thrive on until its roots are ready to take over. In contrast, small and thin seeds may not provide enough food for the plantlet, which could result in its failure to grow.
The stored food in a seed is called a cotyledon, and most plants have either one or two cotyledons. Some plants, such as those that bear cones like pines, may have several cotyledons. Choosing larger seeds ensures that the plantlets have a better chance of survival and growth, just like how stronger and healthier children tend to fare better than weak ones.
Another challenge with buying seeds is impurity. Seeds can sometimes be mixed with other similar-looking seeds, making it difficult to detect the fraud. Seeds can also be unclean, with bits of foreign matter mixed in with the larger seeds, which is relatively easy to clean by hand. However, small seeds that are unclean can be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to clean effectively.
Viability is also a crucial factor in seed selection. Even seeds that look healthy to the naked eye may not develop into viable plants. Seeds may have been picked before they were ripe or mature, frozen, or may simply be too old to be viable. Different seeds have different viability limits in years, and it's important to be aware of this when choosing seeds for your garden.
One way to determine the viability of seeds is through germination testing, which provides the germination percentage of seeds. If the germination percentage is low, it's not worth wasting time and effort planting such seeds, unless they are small seeds. You may wonder why the size of the seed matters. The reason is that small seeds are usually sown in drills, and amateurs tend to sprinkle them thickly. As a result, even if the germination percentage is low, the sheer quantity of seeds planted compensates for the lower quality. However, for large seeds, such as corn, which are planted