Catalog bought VS: Store bought?

When I was a kid it was Gurneys

last few years I've tried packets of Burpee seeds at Wal fart.


What do you use and Why?


*** Gurneys went down hill

I only use those in the store if I am short etc. I have used Jung's for well over 40 years. I have however found places for potato seed and plants that are working well for me and are very competative in price. This year I have plenty of seed potatoes.

Bryce

I used to order from Gurney's or Jung's. Both were good. Lately, I've been buying seeds from farm stores or Home Depot. Seems, you have your choice of Burpee or Ferry Morse around here. It's a crap shoot as to whether they are worth a darn. I did buy some off-brand tomato plants cheap at our Running's store last year. I won't make that mistake again.

Get your stuff from the local Amish greenhouse and be done with it.

Oh, and if I have a successful crop of something, I try to save the seeds. I shouldn't have to buy much for seed this year.

Depends

Some like beans breed true so I save those. Others are already hybrids like my preferred Silver Queen corn so I buy. Others like collards or peppers readily cross but some are worth the trouble to isolate to get true seed.

Many heirloom tomatoes will come true to seed easier than the F1s. Has to do with the flower structure but isolation helps.

Squash I don't bother saving as they cross easily and I always have multiple types. Well exception being Seminole Pumpkin as it's the only Moschata type I grow. The summer Pepo types I'll have four or five different types.

Warrior what is a Moschata?

Tomato seeds I usually save from year to year unless I want something new then I go to ebay. Our local farm store carries a brand from kansas I think that are really cheap for the amount of seed you get. For stuff like okra, yellow squash and cucumbers that's where I get my seed for those. I wasn't planning on ordering anything this year so I did pick up a pack of sweet pepper seeds at walmart (ferry mores). Eight dang seeds in the pack. Never again at walmart.

Jungs or Seeds-n -Such

I think I'll order this years seeds

tired of Burpee or Ferry seeds

Butternut family. What we call squash is actually five different species. They tend not to cross species, though they can, but readily do within species.

Moschata is the hard stemmed squashes.

Pepo is the summer squashes and jack-o-lantern field pumpkins.

used to do a lot of catalog

now mostly just the store , I don't grow as much of the stuff I used to

also save bean seeds I got some Jade from a member here and they are the best green beans

I like to order from Seeds n such
Large variety and good prices
I grow lots of extremely hot peppers and they have a full variety of those seeds

Plant Heirlooms and you can save your own seeds.

^^^^^^
This

Farm and fleet only Carrie’s Livingston seeds brand and after 2 years of poor production gonna try burpee’s seeds. With Livingston we had beans that only half sprouted (on 4 different types) but also seeds were mis packaged. I always buy the bush variety but one package was actually pole beans. The seeds were not being eaten by birds or anything cause when I would replant the empty spots I found the old seeds and hadn’t even started to germinate.

We order a lot from baker creek and some other places. Wife saves some seeds and will also pick things up locally if they have something she wants to try.

Then there is her in hand seed stash. Remember when people collected base ball cards and keep them in binders? Yes she has binders full of seeds with different varieties. A binder or two just with tomato varieties.

I don't know how many if what she plants but I do know one year she planted 26 different varieties of tomatoes I don't know how many plants Total well over 100 probably closer to 200.

Seed trays have bee full for weeks, she has been up potting and has a lot put in the ground now under plastic low hoops. Ashe planted a bunch of things yesterday she said turnips and such.

She is one heck of a Gardener.

I order mostly from Baker Creek, purchase plants from our friends greenhouse or buy from another herb farm. We also get a lot of random tributes that grow from previous years... which is actually where some of my most prolific plants end up coming from.

if you took the necessary precautions ahead of time
tomatoes cross pollinate so if you have more than one variety closer than around 50 feet from each other then cross pollination is very possible

beans are the easiest as they don't pollinate they are self fertilizing

otherwise things like zucchini you would either have to grow your plants very far apart or use a screen box

a lot of the zucchini volunteers do retain some traits , crook neck seems to be a dominate trait that shows up a lot on my volunteers

Look at the local libraries, a lot carry free seeds, probably last years and probably from local stores getting rid of leftovers but it doesn't hurt to look, and they're free...