GARDEN SEEDS.
Good seeds are the very first requisite for a good garden; soil and culture cannot make good crops out of bad seed.
1. As a general rule, buy your seeds. The reasons for it are so many and so good, that you will certainly do it, unless economy prevent; but it is better to economize elsewhere.
In the first place, seed-raising is a delicate business; and, for many reasons, will be better done by those who make it their business, than by those who do not. A reputable seedsman never dreams of raising, himself, all the seeds which he sells. For example, one sort of seed is let out to a farmer who contracts to raise it in a given soil and manner, and at a distance from all other seeds. One man raises the beet seed—another man, very often hundreds of miles distant, another sort. Peas are sent to Vermont and to Canada, where the pea-bug does not infest them. Some seeds, for which this climate is not favorable, are imported from Italy, from Guernsey—just as flowering bulbs are from Holland. We suppose this to be true of Landreth, Thornburn, Prince, Bliss, Risley, etc. In cases where seeds are raised upon the premises of the seedsman, they are put on different parts of the farm, as far apart as possible.
Those precautions are indispensable to the procuration of the best seeds of esculent vegetables. Species of the same genus, with open flowers, are so easily crossed, that, if
grown contiguously, they cannot be kept pure. All cucurbitaceous plants, such as squashes, pumpkins, melons, cucumbers, gourds, etc., will mix and degenerate if planted even in the same garden. Let any one who wishes to see how it is done, watch the bee covering itself with golden pollen as it searches for honey in the cells of the flower, and darting off to another, mingling the fertilizing powder of the two. In a single morning, cucumbers will be mixed with each other, and with canteloupes; squashes will be crossed, and in the next generation will show it. Where the organs of flowers are protected, as in the pea, bean, etc., by a floral envelope, insects do not mix their pollen. I have never known pure beet seed raised in a private garden which had more than the single kind in it—or when another garden was near which had other sorts.
We prefer, generally, northern seeds to those raised elsewhere. A mere change of soil and climate is often advantageous to seeds. But besides this, greater care and skill are usually employed at the north in producing sound and safe seeds.
We can recommend, from repeated trials, the seeds of Risley, Chatauque county, N. Y., and of Mr. Breck of Boston. Landreth of Philadelphia has a high reputation; so have the veteran Thorburn of John Street, and the enterprising house of B. K. Bliss & Sons of Park Place, New York.
2. Some seeds retain their power of germination to an astonishing length of time, as will appear from facts stated by Prof. Lindley: