Germination - the Science of Seeds!

The other night, I settled down with a cold beer to watch Tottenham take on the San Jose Earthquakes in a pre-season friendly. Now, once I'd had a good laugh at their pitiful stadium, and sneered a few times at the inane American commentators trying to pretend they understood football, I started to get a bit bored. It wasn't what you'd call a good match; truth told, it was just a runabout to get a bit of fitness into their legs.

After ten minutes, my eye drifted to the green folder on the dining table that is home to my gardening notes. I started flicking through the 2010 planting plans, and before you knew it I was grading each crop. I awarded them a massive 100 points if I'd had germination figures of over 80 per cent, a less massive 75 points if the figures had been between 60 and 80 per cent, a middling 50 points if the germination had been between 40 and 60 per cent, a mere 25 points if it had been between 20 and 40 per cent, and a big fat zero if germination had been under 20 per cent.

Once everything had been given a score, I set about calculating the average for each seed supplier. As a point of interest, when I first started this gardening lark, I read many blogs and forums where the order of the day was to only purchase seeds from small companies with heritage or rare breeds, and the person selling them had to have dirty hands, a scruffy dog and a name like Tarquil. To buy seeds from the big names was, apparently, frowned upon.

Knowing less than an idiot meant I was inevitably drawn to one or two large commercial garden centres. My seed collection soon consisted of many packets from the big names. I had seeds from Mr Fothergills (I suspect he's not a real person, as his picture on the packet is a cartoon), Suttons, Unwins and Thompson and Morgan. Now, I don't think I actually excluded any of the big boys in my initial seed frenzy. Proper gardeners shook their heads and told me I was dancing with the devil. My crops, they said, would fail, and demons would torment me and cut off my winky.

To placate the gods of non-commercial seed merchants (as if there are any non-commercial seed merchants, you silly hippys), I also ordered several seeds from Nicky's Nursery, and following my first (and only) gardening lecture by the Raven, I also bought some of her seeds. Yes, they were over-priced, and yes, she is a bit mean with the seeds, but I bought them anyway.

So, what results did I find? Obviously, according to the hippys and proper gardening types, the big four suppliers will have failed, and the two smaller companies will have sailed through, because big businesses only got big by getting things wrong! You buy from the man, you end up with bare earth!

So, without further ado, here are my findings...

UNWINS - 97.5
MR FOTHERGILLS - 95.6
THOMPSON AND MORGAN - 95
SUTTON - 90.9
NICKY'S NURSERY - 56.2
SARAH RAVEN SEEDS - 40.6

As a point of note, the Sutton score includes two zero ratings for my failed initial leek and celeriac crops, even though it might have been my error. The subsequent sowings were very successful, but I included the two failures anyway. Even with those included, it still shows that the overall germination rate has been very high! It's also worth noting that many of the Nicky's Nursery seeds were Asian, and might not like the UK. That said, Nicky's Nursery dropped most points on the non-exotic seeds!

Well, you can draw what conclusions you like, but I personally will be using the big seed merchants for everything but the hard-to-find crops. It makes sense, because I'm eating a lot more of their stuff!