Topic: Is this for real?

[Tee Gee]

I have noticed this trend for the last couple of years, and I am beginning to think that it might not be entirely the seed merchants fault!

I get the feeling that" Weather change/ global warming" call it what you will has much to do with it !

I have noticed  the seasons recently  are out of kilter from what they used to be and this is IMHO may be throwing the plant's reproduction cycle out of kilter.

For instance; Winter as I knew winter have not been seen for a few years now, in fact if you take this year for example (although the effect on plant seed production  will not be seen until next year) you will recall:

January / February very wet, and we had ‘the floods’.
March was a bit indifferent.
April was glorious summer weather
May was rather like what I would expect in Spring.
June was a mixed bag but generally cool for the time of the year.
July seems to be similar to June.

I have noticed with my Spring Bulbs most of them have not produced flowers and I put this down to the leaves dying back in the warm weather before they have charged up the bulbs for the next season.I always liked to allow my leaves to die back over a 5-6 week period this April they were gone in less than a fortnight.....so I am expecting even fewer flowers next year!

Is a similar thing affecting the seeds we are buying now i.e. the seeds are not ‘viable’ or are affected in some way that they are producing rogue plants because of the ‘non-seasonal’ weather????


Then there is the other matter that has appeared over the last few years; compost recipes have changed so much so that I often call Multi-Purpose Compost as Not Fit for Purpose Compost!as much of it is!

This year I have had problems with my compost where I lost hundreds of seedlings!( I mentioned this n a previous thread)

For those that survived growth was extremely poor particularly if my plants were containerised. Plants that I managed to plant into the beds in my garden are performing as they have always done for me.

Why?????


Well at first I blamed the compost recipe and thought that some herbicide had got into the mix through using recycled garden compost,e.g. aminopyralid! But I have now discounted that because my symptoms were not as I encountered them a few years ago when ‘aminopyrald’ first raised its ugly head!

So what was giving me my problems ?


I found that seedlings I planted out in the beds performed as I would expect them to do but the stuff in containers suffered! They just did not develop!
 
It was not till I pulled up a few plants & seedlings from the container that I found that generally the roots had not developed! I found that with seedlings the roots had not developed feeding & water roots they were a brown coloured single stemmed (tap root). Established plants had a mass of black lifeless roots!


This got me to thinking pH.

As I didn’t have a reliable pH meter I googled dozens and read all the reviews and finally purchased one that had the least negative reviews rather than one that had lots of good reviews....yes I am a sceptic!

When it arrived I tested it in various situations I stuck the prongs into a bag of lime and yes it recorded a high number and when I stuck it in a bag of peat it recorded a low acid reading. So fine, it was indicative of what it should do but I have no way of establishing if the individual readings were accurate.

Then I stuck it in a few containers that had suffering plants in and I found the soil/compost was generally under 6 and on occasions as low as 5!

So no wonder I was having problems!


But how had this happened? I pondered lots of things e.g my collected water in the water tub might be acidic, but then this was what I also used on plants that were OK, so I discounted that!

I wondered if the Perlite I had added to the compost to aid drainage might be the cause but when I stuck the probes into the bag of Perlite it registered neutral.

So what could it be then I had a ‘eureka’ moment I decided to test the new & unused compost and lo and behold it was ‘acidic’ so much so it generally registered just under 6 and on one occasion as low as 5.

I had now found my answer.


So now I have adjusted the pH of all my compost with the aid of a bag of Lime I had from my Allotmenteering days!

I purchased a bag of Peat ( Bl**dy hell! That has got expensive) perhaps this is to put people off buying it! In fact one supplier commented by saying making compost this way is “Old School” I replied “ Well I m Old!


Another factor I have noticed is: How wet my compost gets! OK if plants were dying they wouldn’t be using the moisture but I think it is more than that!

The suppliers are tending to use the sales jargon “This compost has a wetting agent in it” but to me I think this is counterproductive.

OK in days of old when Peat based composts dried they were very difficult to re-wet but now with peat free/reduced composts this is not a problem IMHO.

In fact, I think it is the wetting agent that is over wetting the compost resulting in drowned plants!


Which reminds me of a piece of advice I was given when I took up gardening that advice was; “More plants are killed through ‘overwater’ rather than ‘under watering’

I will end this epic here despite the fact that I could go on and on about how the ‘Amateur Gardener’is suffering but the Commercial Gardeners do not seem to suffer this problem.

Could the comment on the compost bag “Not suitable for Commercial Use” be a clue to this!.... I will say no more!

[galina]

Simply put, post Brexit the EU seed regulations are no longer in force.  And there are no British seed regulations yet.  In this vacuum it is buyer beware, who you trust. 

[JanG]

I'm finding that compost - and I'm trying a lot of different peat-free and lower peat types as well as old favourites - doesn't keep nourishing seedlings for more than three or four weeks.
I grow a lot of brassicas, for example. I've started to plant them on into smallish pots, or trays with large modules, with a pinch of slow-release fertiliser, rather than plant them out straight from module trays.
I've never felt the need to do this before. Although it's partly to do with increased flea beetle attacks and the wish to have bigger plants before planting out, it is also caused by a change in bought compost.

[Paulh]

Galina - EU regulations still apply in the present transition period and the Government is unlikely to relax that sort of thing much from 1 January 2021 either.

JanG - agreed, I realised things were just standing still, so I now put a few chicken manure pellets in each module / pot.

[Obelixx]

There appears to be no system such as the John Innes and Levington formulae for compost qualities here so it's hit and miss depending on what brand they have in stock.  Two years ago I bought a batch that turned out to be full of weed seeds and now I'm forever pulling up a very weedy form of persicaria.

 I have found one I now favour for seed sowing and cuttings but it is just plant material and no loam so when I pot on I mix in some soil from molehills now to give a bit more body and I add pelleted manure.   I use another MPC type for soil conditioning.

[Tiny Clanger]

My Husband spotted this and every time I have brought a courgette home lately he has asked "Have you licked that?"  No problems here - yet! 

[galina]

Tiny Clanger.  no need to lick every one.  The whole plant is either bitter or not.  Enough to lick the first fruit. 

[pumkinlover]

My Husband spotted this and every time I have brought a courgette home lately he has asked "Have you licked that?"  No problems here - yet! 

Evokes memories of the Cadbury's flake advert 

[gray1720]

...which goves me an excuse to get this out (ooer) - third verse:

https://halfmanhalfbiscuit.uk/back-again-in-the-dhss/dickie-davies-eyes/

[Vetivert]

This thread reminds me of a case of contamination in the whole country's (USA) commercial seed of Delicata squash. From Wild Garden Seed's website:

Have any other fresh market growers had a dreaded case of “bitter poison Delicatas?” GTF’s padrone, John Eveland, had more than one market customer approach him in autumn of 2000 with terrifying accounts of throat clenching bitterness from a single bite of his perfect Delicata squash. The victims were so emphatic, the threat of legal action so palpable, that John began calling every Delicata source in the country to find out exactly where his seed came from, and to make sure he didn’t plant seed from the same lot again.

Turns out, every dealer in the USA had seed from the same field in Colorado, and this huge lot was very slightly contaminated by the bitterness gene found in C. pepo gourds. Perhaps one bitter squash in several thousand...What to do? John had kept his own Delicata seed from 1988 thru 1994 (when he went over to buying commercial seed). We went into the freezer to find his old selection, and used this for stock seed in 2001. We found the fruits longer and more uniform, finer textured, sweeter, and significantly longer keeping than other strains. Other local farmers report the same. We’ve never had a report of a bitter squash from this line. Not one.

We have concentrated on making this the best long-keeping Delicata you can find. While no pepo-type squash will ever keep like a Hubbard or other maxima-type, we believe that ‘Zeppelin’ is the only Delicata you will still be eating in mid-January. Buttery-cream colored with longitudinal green stripes, fruits weigh 1 to 2 lbs, up to 6 good fruits per plant. Skin is tender enough to eat, the flesh is thick, a rich orange color, with a higher average brix than other available strains. As we say every time we eat it, this is good Delicata. Rock ’n’ Roll Delicata, in fact.

https://www.wildgardenseed.com/product_info.php?cPath=51&products_id=141