A woman at the Portland seed swap told me my saved tomato seeds were 'useless'

I was at the big annual swap in Portland last fall, trading some of my Cherokee Purple seeds. This woman, maybe in her 60s, picked up my little packet and just shook her head. She said, 'Honey, you let that fruit get too ripe before saving. Those seeds are useless now, they won't sprout.' It really got under my skin because I'd been saving from that same plant for three years. I went home and planted a test batch of ten seeds anyway. Only two came up. Has anyone else had a stranger call them out like that and actually been right?

3 comments

3 Comments

juliaa2510d ago

Yeah, that "humble pie" feeling is rough. I started doing a quick germination test on paper towels before any swap now, saves the embarrassment later.

thea24612d ago

That's the worst feeling, when a stranger is right.

taylor.mary12d ago

Feel the sting of that, and @thea246 is right, it's the worst. I once had a guy at a hardware store tell me my pepper seedlings were doomed because I used the "wrong" kind of straw mulch. I argued, he shrugged. A week later, they were all damp and moldy. I had to eat a whole humble pie, not just a slice. Sometimes the blunt folks in the gardening world just know their stuff, even if the delivery makes you want to hide.