Video: Selection Of Seeds For The Season
2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47
When choosing seeds for the new season, do not chase after cheapness and curiosities: you can be deceived. If you study the messages in the periodicals, read all kinds of ads or bypass unauthorized outlets selling seeds, then you will definitely come across hybrid plants-curiosities that do not have any grounds.
At the same time, it is characteristic that the seeds of such hybrids are very often camouflaged under promising names that differ from both botanical and analogs among cultivated and wild plants. Since in winter quite a lot of summer residents and gardeners are already beginning to acquire seeds, often paying tribute to exotic novelties, I think that it will be very useful to give examples of subsequent misunderstandings with hybrid plants.
Judging by the periodicals and the analysis of the seed market, the most common on sale are such fictitious names of hybrid plants as "Pumpkin-watermelon", "Pumpkin-melon" and "Pumpkin-squash", as well as "Cucumber-melon" and "Cucumber -beans ". At the same time, biologists, without denying the theoretical possibility of obtaining such fruits, established when checking that the first of the fruits is nothing but a fig-leaved pumpkin, the second is a large-fruited pumpkin, and the third turned out to be an ordinary squash of the Kveta variety. As for the fourth and fifth fruits, when checked, they turned out to be Chinese melon and cyclanter, respectively.
According to the testimony of individual summer residents and gardeners who fell for advertising and bought seeds, although they managed to get hybrid fruits, they were far from promised, but of a completely different quality. For example, the gardener V. Chernyak, when testing "Pumpkin-watermelon", came to the conclusion that the fruits are inedible, and the gardener M. Litvinov, having tested the fruit of the "Cucumber-melon", concluded that it had "a disgusting taste, similar to the taste of a diluted solution of copper vitriol ".
Examples like these can go on and on. On sale, for example, there is often a hybrid "Spinach-raspberry", which appears when checked with thick-leaved cheese from Kazakhstan, as well as "Indian cucumber" and "Vietnamese zucchini", which are actually a common lagenaria. Moreover, such metamorphoses are often facilitated by individual amateur gardeners, keen on selection and sending seeds by mail. In this case, for example, the hybrid "Parsley-celery", "Naranjilla Chinese" or "Square peas" are respectively such well-known plants as lovage, melon pear, and the rank of sowing. There is also such a hybrid as "Smokryzh", which is often sent by mail, but turns out to be a complete analogue of the well-known hybrid of currants and gooseberries,which is called yoshta.
To sell the seeds more successfully, very often they are given rather attractive names. For example, three years ago I was tempted by two varieties of onions sold under the names Giant and Sibiryak. Unfortunately, the first, instead of the promised bulb mass of 0.6-1 kg, had no more than 0.15 kg, and the second, instead of a height of 50-62 cm, had it no more than 20 cm, and subject to the recommended cultivation techniques. As it turned out after consultations with biologists, both onions have no direct analogs, although the first resembled somewhat the imported variety of Isles Greig, and the second was very close to the well-known chives, called "Skoroda" and found almost everywhere. Considering that the first of these onions has to be grown from March through seedlings, and the second is popular as an ornamental plant,cultivating them instead of the usual onions turned out to be inexpedient.
Based on the foregoing and remembering the saying: "What kind of seed is such a tribe," I advise you, first of all, when choosing and buying seeds to take care of varietal qualities, guided by three basic requirements dictated by practice.
1. To exclude the acquisition and use of seeds obtained from hybrid plants, since they do not have the ability to preserve the properties taken from parental pairs in the first generation, and do not retain varietal traits in subsequent generations.
2. Do not purchase seeds from the southern regions of the country and imported, not proven by practice, as they often lead to failures due to inability to adapt to new climatic conditions.
3. It is necessary to acquire and apply, first of all, varieties related to zoned, recommended for the conditions of the North-West zone, and allowing to increase yields by about 30-35% compared to non-varietal ones purchased at random outlets and by mail.
However, as experience shows, one should not be careless when buying zoned varieties, since it is quite common to sell seeds in violation of the requirements arising from the orders of the Ministry of Agriculture and Food. There are two most frequent violations: the first is that all or part of the information is printed in a printing house on sheets of paper and pasted on bags with seeds. This testifies to the lack of proper packing of seeds on special equipment, which means that there is no guarantee that this is not a fraud of the buyer.
The second violation is to lengthen the sales terms of seed packages until 2008-2009, although with single and double seed packages in 2005, they must be sold in 2006 and 2007, respectively. It is clear that, most likely, stale goods are being sold in this case.
When choosing seeds, one cannot but pay attention to their sowing qualities, the main of which are purity, germination and sowing suitability. We must remember that the higher these indicators, the less seed consumption will be. It is highly desirable to test all three of these indicators by experiments according to the recommendations given in the literature. If, for example, it turns out that the purity is less than 90%, and the germination rate is less than 50%, then it is recommended to replace the seeds.
Taking into account all these recommendations will help novice summer residents and gardeners to more competently approach the choice of seeds, eliminate all possible misunderstandings and achieve high yields of good-quality products.
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