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Gardening is a perfect example of reaping what you sow.
You can't harvest good vegetables if you don't plant good vegetables. While all vegetable seeds on the market are good somewhere, they do not all grow well in our high desert, high mountain or other local environments.
Always plant what you want to eat. Growing produce you do not like makes no sense. Quantify how much of each vegetable you need for your family. Believe me, there is no way you can get your family to eat your bumper crop of radishes three meals per day.
It pays to do your research before you plant. It takes no more water, no more fertilizer, no more weeding, no more pest control and above all no more labor and time to grow a good productive cultivar than one that may not produce well in our area. The word cultivar is a contracted word that is short for cultivated variety or one that has been introduced by humans.
We need cultivars that will withstand cool springs but are equally adapted to the hot summer conditions. Depending on the year, frost-free growing seasons average some 150 to 180 days along the Wasatch Front. However, for much of that time, it is too cool to grow warm-season crops.
Where can you find good cultivars' seeds? Start by talking to local gardeners, neighbors and master gardeners. Check local greenhouses and nurseries for their favorites, and ask at farmers markets to get their favorites.
There is magic and mystery in seeds. Stop and consider these tiny, dehydrated bits of starch, fat, oils and cellulose.
By themselves, they really don't look like much — yet inside them they hold the genetic potential of most of the plant world as well as feeding most of us on a daily basis.
Examine your diet. Wheat, the pecans and several other grains in your cereal are all seeds. The sweetener in your soft drink, the bread you eat, rice, peas, beans, sunflowers seeds and peanuts come from seeds. Even the ink on this newspaper page comes from the soybean seed.
Another interesting aspect is seed size. In the vegetable garden, lettuce seeds average approximately 25,000 seeds per ounce while beans and winter squash will have slightly more than 60 seeds per ounce. Larger seeds are generally easier to plant and get to emerge in the garden.
Flowers are even more variable. The "smallest seed" honors go to the orchid family.
Some of these have 35,000,000 seeds per ounce because all that is there is the microscopic embryo plant with no stored food. In your own garden, begonia seeds can have 2,000,000 seeds per ounce.
With a price tag from one nursery of 45 cents per seed, that would put the retail cost of these seeds at $900,000 per ounce. When you look at that, the price of those plants you buy each spring seems pretty reasonable.
The largest seed comes at a lower cost per ounce but you don't get many plants. The Coco-de-Mer palm from the Seychelles Archipelago in the Indian Ocean is a huge seed that gets 12 inches long, 3 feet around and can top the scales at 40-plus pounds.
While the broad range of seeds is interesting, I am including answers to the three most common questions about seeds that gardeners have asked me.
Question one is, "How do I know I am getting good seeds?"
There are two answers to this question. The first is that seed sold legally in the state of Utah is good, meaning that that seed will grow. The Utah Department of Agriculture and Food requires that seed sold here meets certain requirements as to the germination percentage and the year it is packaged, the seed quality and what weed or other seeds can be in the package.
What the UDAF does not regulate is how well a seed, any seed, will grow here or how well it will produce. For vegetable information consult the Utah State University's variety list to get varieties that will grow well here.
Good seeds cost money but never skimp on seed. It is the cheapest way to increase the quantity and quality of your harvest. It takes no more water, fertilizer, weeding and other pest control and above all, no more time to grow a good variety than a poor variety. The price of the seed is inconsequential if at the end of the season you have nothing to show for all your work or if you have to struggle to try and grow your flowers and they never look good.
Written by: Larry A. Sagers Extension Horticulture Specialist Utah State University Thanksgiving Point Office
