Kitchen Garden Seed Kit

Details

A season's kitchen garden in paper packets, with the one number that decides whether any of it works printed on each of them. Germination percentage is the product. A seed packet is not something you can inspect: the seed inside is either alive or it is not, you find out three weeks after you prepared a bed, and by then the sowing window has moved on. So each packet here carries the germination percentage from a real test on that lot, the date that test was run, and the packing date, and the seed is sold inside its viability window rather than until the stock clears. The generic label is the whole problem. A printed claim with no test date behind it is a statement about seed in general and not about the seed in your hand, and a lot that tested 80 percent two years ago is not 80 percent now. Two other things routinely go unsaid. The first is hybrid against open-pollinated. Both are legitimate and an F1 hybrid is often the better plant, but seed saved from a hybrid does not grow true, so selling it without saying so sells you a garden you cannot continue. Every packet here is open-pollinated and says so on the front. The second is chemical seed treatment. Fungicide-dressed seed is normal in agriculture and is dyed, usually pink or blue, precisely so that nobody eats it or feeds it to birds, and it has to be labelled as treated. Nothing here is treated at all.

• Germination percentage tested per lot and printed on the packet, with the date of the test
• Packing date and viability window on every packet, not a shelf life that runs until stock clears
• Open-pollinated only, no F1 hybrid, so seed you save grows true
• Untreated seed, no fungicide dressing, no thiram and nothing dyed
• Varieties chosen for Indian seasons, with a north and south sowing calendar
• Paper packets in a card wallet, no plastic and no polybag
• Open-pollinated varieties are less uniform than hybrids. Fruit will vary in size and the crop will not all arrive at once
• Untreated seed is more vulnerable in cold wet soil, so sow to the calendar rather than early