My germination's been a little mixed, but Salmon Flowered, Elisabeth, Telephone, Purple Podded, Golden Sweet and Sugar Bon germinated well. Waverex was terrible and Sugar Ann about 50%. Nothing to do with seed age as I first suspected as all mine except Telephone were 5 or 6 years old.
Telephone and Golden Sweet came from Real Seeds - I forget where I go everything else except Purple Podded, Salmon Flowered and Elisabeth which were gifted to me (by lovely people :)). And my 12 or so experimental varieties from the USDA and JIC have shown anything from 25% germination to 100%. Very mixed.
With French beans I'm seeing a lot more problems, but I guess they are trickier anyway. And it's much more obvious that beans from certain companies don't last long - the 5 year old cheapo seeds I got from places like Lidl and Wilko have rotted despite my best efforts to keep them on the drier side, but the ones from Real Seeds and Beans and Herbs or that I've saved myself have done much better.
It seems that a lot of people are having germination problems this year. I wonder what's going on?