If you have a packet of seeds a single variety, how do you pick the ones to sow? Instinct tells me the fatter ones.. Am I right? I've just sown a few cosmos xanthos and it made me wonder as there is a bit of variation in size.
It could be I suppose. I guess a fatter seed may contain more nutrients for the plant when it germinates, but it may be that big or small they all contain enough nutrients and the rest is water.
It's something I wonder about with a pack of mixed coloured flowers of a single variety so I try to sow a selection of different sizes and shades of seeds in the hope I'll get a good mix of colour.
Interesting question
Billericay - Essex
Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.
My reasoning, if you can call it that, is that the lighter coloured seeds may be lighter colour flowers later. @Pete.8 above, seems to have much the same approach. If I’m only sowing a few I go for the fatter seeds too.
That lighter/darker colour seeds approach still doesn’t explain why I got mainly white flowers (which I didn’t want) from a packet of mixed sweet peas last year. Think I’ve just blown my theory.
I don't know about flowers but I always choose the fattest seeds when doing "big" veg -beans, peas, cukes, courgettes. No idea if it really makes any difference. There is of course always the question of Inclusivity - obese seeds should not be ignored
Was thinking something similar this morning while pricking out some delphinium seedlings, and wonder if the puny looking seedlings were a different colour from the 'fit looking' ones, i.e. are pink delphiniums deceptively looking puny? Think I read somewhere that we might be discarding the exquisite colourful ones.
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I guess a fatter seed may contain more nutrients for the plant when it germinates, but it may be that big or small they all contain enough nutrients and the rest is water.
It's something I wonder about with a pack of mixed coloured flowers of a single variety so I try to sow a selection of different sizes and shades of seeds in the hope I'll get a good mix of colour.
Interesting question
Billericay - Essex
Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit.
Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.
That lighter/darker colour seeds approach still doesn’t explain why I got mainly white flowers (which I didn’t want) from a packet of mixed sweet peas last year. Think I’ve just blown my theory.
No idea if it really makes any difference.
There is of course always the question of Inclusivity - obese seeds should not be ignored
Cambridgeshire/Norfolk border.