# Don't Plant Too Many Seeds!



## lynxx (Nov 11, 2010)

When you plant, do you use the entire seed packet and fill the whole row? You really don't have to do this unless you have a big farmstead:

Each seed is one plant. With a germination rate of 80%, a 200 seed packet will give you 160 plants. You will have to thin them so they will have room to grow, which I can't bear to do. If you thin them to 50 plants, that's still too many scrawny, crowded veggies trying to ripen all at once. Instead, for fresh family eating plant 3-5 seeds now and 3-5 again every two weeks. You will still have more veggies than you know what to do with.

The rest of the seeds will keep in your refrigerator up to 7 years. Seeds need warmth and water to sprout, so keep 'em cold and dry.

Great crops to everybody!


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## Danaus29 (Sep 12, 2005)

It depends on what the crop is as to if I plant the whole pack or just a few seeds. Beans, corn, peas, okra of course I plant the whole pack. Sometimes several packs. Lettuce, tomatoes, beets, etc I plant just a few seeds. But then sometimes your seeds get too old to sprout before you get them all planted. 

If I had better luck with carrots I would plant more of them. There's many ways to store carrots so they last several months. Those would be one I would plant the whole package if I could get them to grow well, or at all.


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## ChristieAcres (Apr 11, 2009)

I always plant all of the seeds if heirloom, then sell the extra seedlings, and harvest seeds for the following year. For herbs? Plant the whole package, that way more plants to sell. I sell locally and online. I have set aside some seeds for varieties I didn't collect from (some were setting seed later in our season and it got too cold).


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## Farmerwilly2 (Oct 14, 2006)

I almost never plant all my seeds at once. Too much rain, late frost, runaway tractors, escaped goats----the list of things that can go wrong is almost endless. I want seed to replant if I need to. If I need a packet worth of seed to get what I want I'll make a point of buying 2 packs. I spose I'm one of those wantin to be prepared for murphy kind of folks.


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## Nina (May 10, 2002)

Onion and pea seeds aren't supposed to keep very long, so we try to use them up quickly. Tomato seeds will keep for ten yrs. or more so we store a lot of 'em.


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## Ed Norman (Jun 8, 2002)

We plant once and pray the frost holds off until harvest. 

I was looking at mangel seed directions last night:



> Plant seeds early in the spring, 1 inch apart and 1 1/2 inch deep. Cultivate frequently. Begin thinning when plants are 3 inches high and continue until the roots stand 10 inches apart.


That's not gonna happen. Pull out 9 seedlings for every keeper. I would rather till up a bigger area and plant more, spaced right, with no thinning.


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## Our Little Farm (Apr 26, 2010)

There is no way I could stagger the plantings as suggested as there would not be enough time for them to grow to harvest. I much prefer to plant all at once with the exception of squash and lettuce. I can then can or dehydrate the harvest.
I also plant with correct spacing to begin with, doing any different would be wasting seed.

3-5 seeds? It would depend on size of family, what vegetable we are talking about and if you canned or dehydrated your produce. Too many variables.


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## Paquebot (May 10, 2002)

Ed Norman said:


> We plant once and pray the frost holds off until harvest.
> 
> I was looking at mangel seed directions last night:
> 
> ...


Because mangel seed may be multiples or seedless cores, it's hard to predict how many are going to come from each seed. Mangels transplant well so it does not have to be death for the thinnings. In fact, some instructions call for starting the seeds in plug trays and transplanting into the field. When I grew them, they were planted about an inch apart and then transplanted about 8 to 10 inches apart.

Martin


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## NickieL (Jun 15, 2007)

I sell extra seedlings so I go ahead and plant all the packs or most of a packs. Then again, I buy from a company that has smaller seed counts.


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## Paquebot (May 10, 2002)

Found a small company today with tomatoes having 10 seeds per packet. Most beans were 25 with larger ones being only 10. That was www.cherrygal.com/ Didn't look at what other counts were.

Martin


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## ChristieAcres (Apr 11, 2009)

I should have added that I have my little greenhouse going since Spring, and almost 400 little pots in it last year all at once. Then, set up metal plant shelves behind it, and filled those up. There is my extra space for seedlings! Also helps if I lose some, since I always have so much extra. 

That is great to know, Martin, since any who want to harvest their own seeds (heirloom) may find some at that site. Unless selling, small kitchen gardens don't usually have room for more than a few squash, for example.


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## Callieslamb (Feb 27, 2007)

I want to can my produce more than 2 jars at a time, so I plant 3 PACKAGES of green beans each year - 6 of corn. We have a short growing season (compared to other places I have lived anyway) so I don't do much succession planting. How much to plant at once is a matter of what you want to do with it. 

I do start lettuces, onions and some other small crops inside just so I can transplant them into rows without wasting 3/4 of the seeds when thinning.


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## Our Little Farm (Apr 26, 2010)

LOL Callie! I also plant a huge amount of green beans and buy them by the weight rather than by the packet.


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## geo in mi (Nov 14, 2008)

lynxx,

You might want to reconsider that. Here's the minimum germination percentages as required by the Federal Seed Act for vegetable seeds sold in the US. And the germination tests which are made can be made up to five months before they are delivered for sale: (and many companies will meet, but not necessarily exceed those requirements.) http://vintageveggies.com/information/seed_germ_standards.html

As you see, many seeds are sold with a much lower percentage. And only if you have optimum garden conditions--seedbed, proper depth, birds eating seeds, creepy crawlers in your soil, too dry or too wet spots, rocks, clods of dirt, stray dog paws, you name it, you might get less germination than stated on the package. And if your seed is saved from a previous year, without your own testing for germination, assuming a percent of germination may disappoint you. I always plant at a rate which oversows, for the tiny seeds, either because my fingers are too big, or I spill half of them. And my planting window is usually too short to allow seeding by tweezer. When I actually see how many come up, then I can adjust.

geo


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## salmonslayer91 (Oct 10, 2010)

lorichristie said:


> I always plant all of the seeds if heirloom, then sell the extra seedlings, and harvest seeds for the following year. For herbs? Plant the whole package, that way more plants to sell. I sell locally and online. I have set aside some seeds for varieties I didn't collect from (some were setting seed later in our season and it got too cold).


ALLLLLL OF YOUR SEEDS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! id NEVER do that what if you have an attack of the killer slugs or a random frost cut worms i would hate to lose an hierloom that ive saved seeds from for years and have em die i always keep an emergency stash to start either later in the season or for next season


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## ChristieAcres (Apr 11, 2009)

salmonslayer91 said:


> ALLLLLL OF YOUR SEEDS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! id NEVER do that what if you have an attack of the killer slugs or a random frost cut worms i would hate to lose an hierloom that ive saved seeds from for years and have em die i always keep an emergency stash to start either later in the season or for next season


All the seeds out of the packets I buy also choosing to plant, which doesn't mean I plant every packet of seed I have... (which is a LOT) LOL, also with a little greenhouse, selling plants, seedlings, starts, etc..., I do plant all the seeds in every packet I open. These days, I am harvesting my own seeds, and won't have to buy any this Spring:goodjob: 

Attack of the killer slugs:grumble: Been there, too


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## salmonslayer91 (Oct 10, 2010)

lorichristie said:


> All the seeds out of the packets I buy also choosing to plant, which doesn't mean I plant every packet of seed I have... (which is a LOT) LOL, also with a little greenhouse, selling plants, seedlings, starts, etc..., I do plant all the seeds in every packet I open. These days, I am harvesting my own seeds, and won't have to buy any this Spring:goodjob:
> 
> Attack of the killer slugs:grumble: Been there, too


oh okay i was worried! store bought is alright then lol i have tried seed saving fairly recently so im still new but it has saved alot of cash 

Killer Slugs... dont remind me... :bored: my parents had a rock wall all throughout the property those things had MILLIONS OF SLUGS :runforhills: of course surrounding my garden i had to put out slug bait every night :lonergr: and there would be hundreds of casulties :viking:so many in fact that the second wave of slugs would passs safely over the corpses of the fallen i went out at night with a flashlight to reapply and sqash :walk: what i could see the slug bait was surrounding the vegitables surrounding the peremiter throughout the rock wall even in places far away from the garden just to bring down the breeding population :hobbyhors but yet id always lose some plant and usually the best looking tomato starts and etc never the sparce ones


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## mnn2501 (Apr 2, 2008)

Found a great way to plant leaf lettuce and radishes this last year.
Rather than trying to plant these tiny seeds in a row and then thin them out, I prepared a small area and then dumped the seeds into my hand and then rolled my hands together while moving my arms around the area I had prepared, letting the seeds drop out of my hands and scatter around the area.
Sorry, hard to descibe, but it worked well, and was pretty evenly distributed.


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## jwal10 (Jun 5, 2010)

mnn2501 said:


> Found a great way to plant leaf lettuce and radishes this last year.
> Rather than trying to plant these tiny seeds in a row and then thin them out, I prepared a small area and then dumped the seeds into my hand and then rolled my hands together while moving my arms around the area I had prepared, letting the seeds drop out of my hands and scatter around the area.
> Sorry, hard to descibe, but it worked well, and was pretty evenly distributed.



I plant kitchen gardens this way all the time. I plant lettuce, radishes, onions, spinach, kohlrabi, swisschard and carrots together in blocks. A few of each except carrots and radishes, I plant them last scattered over the entire bed, Pull lettuce, radishes and kohlrabi. Clip chard, and spinach leaves. The carrots and onions are used as needed, the rest left to mature.


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## Callieslamb (Feb 27, 2007)

Our Little Farm said:


> LOL Callie! I also plant a huge amount of green beans and buy them by the weight rather than by the packet.


I still by the packets so have more variety....but I notice that I like one or two beans now and am not so ready to experiment with them any more.


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## willow_girl (Dec 7, 2002)

I love to grow tomatoes and always start toooo many! Even after selling a couple hundred plants last year, I still had too many! So I set them out in my garden, then had too many tomatoes to contend with. Now I have a 3-year supply of canned salsa and spaghetti sauce in the pantry (but that's a nice problem to have, LOL.)


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## ChristieAcres (Apr 11, 2009)

willow_girl said:


> I love to grow tomatoes and always start toooo many! Even after selling a couple hundred plants last year, I still had too many! So I set them out in my garden, then had too many tomatoes to contend with. Now I have a 3-year supply of canned salsa and spaghetti sauce in the pantry (but that's a nice problem to have, LOL.)


If you lived closer, we could be partners in crime, so to speak :thumb: We are royalty- "queens of extreme" eep:


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## willow_girl (Dec 7, 2002)

Lol!


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## olivehill (Aug 17, 2009)

Or you could just space them appropriately to begin with. Problem solved. Who ever heard of too many vegetables, anyway? LOL!


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