thanks bboy: so you are saying that you visually inspect them for known characteristics? is there a better way? that seems like it could get subjective with "taste" or "color" etc. And what about a blueberry bush I have that I know nothing about other than it's a blueberry bush given to me? I should find a list of all known cultivars of blueberries characteristics (i'm presuming this would be very long) and start going down the list doing my best guesses or just sell it as a "blueberry bush unknown" or something else? thanks

John, You sent me these Red Savina seed 2 or 3 years ago. We had nearly perfect superhot growing weather this year with a long dry summer and then wet fall. The Red Savina's were so hot that I had to process them outdoors wearing a mask. My M-I-L tried to cut up a few to fill a quart jar with slices to make hot sauce. Her kitchen was uninhabitable for 2 hours. I have 3 quart jars of sliced peppers in vinegar. One half of one pepper is enough to make 2 gallons of chili almost unbearably hot. I cut the pods in half and nipped out the stem and seed. When finished, I had a small bowl full of seed that I let dry for about 10 days. Then I tried to shell the seed off of the placenta. Big mistake, I did it indoors. In less than 5 minutes, the air was so full of pepper oil that I was asked to leave the house. I finished separating the seed outdoors. I now have a package of about 2000 pure Red Savina seed from the large plant and have saved a few hundred seed from the smaller plant. My only dilemma now is whether or not to grow plants for next year. 3 quarts of super hot sauce is enough to last me several years. One note is that everyone who tried them agreed that the flavor was superb. We had carefully cut some peppers open and removed the seed and ribs to get rid of most of the heat. This was the only way we could eat them fresh. Fusion

This can be a problem if you buy seeds from a small individual who makes his own seeds and messes up. I like to get seeds that originated from a big seed wholesaler. If he messes up the news will get out and I will have a better chance to find out about it. I also like to save seeds because all too often the seeds are not available the next year. Seeds keep being dropped. ***** When dealing with OP seed there's not a company that hasn't had problems from time to time, but it really does depend on which companies you chose to deal with. And that's b'c some companies produce almost all their own seed, some subcontract out and some buy wholesale from the company that bred certain varieties. And some companies do a combination of those. Dan, I don't think you were here at GW when I used to do a wrong variety thread each year, which I did for several years, although I know you've posted here for a couple of years. There were those companies that rose to the top re seed purity, seed quality and service. At that time, and I expect that to be true today, the top companies included a couple of large ones as well as several small family owned companies. It's not whether a company is **small or large**, per your comment about not wanting to deal with a small company,rather, it's the specific company in question and their sources of seed as I mentioned above. The greatest amount of Xed seed at that time was seed that was traded between individuals and if I were to do those Wrong Varieties threads today I'm sure, from my readiong at several message sites, that that situation would still obtain. When I did those threads I was the one who contacted the owners of those companies that had wrong seeds b/c I knew many of those owners and still do. Some companies were glad to hear that they had a problem, but there were a couple of companies that wanted the persons who had problems to contact them directly so they could affirm that indeed the person had purchased the seeds from them. The ultimate responsibuility for reporting wrong purchased seeds rests with the person who bought them but I've also found that many folks just don't want to report errors. YOu aren't going to hear about seed problems any more frequently with a large company as opposed to dealing with a smaller family owned company. It's the seed purchasers you may or may not hear from on a public message board such as this one. There are those companies that have discovered a problem from feedback and then waitied until they got good seed and then replaced, at no cost, the bad seed with the good seed. It's a complicated issue, that's for sure, but I cannot agree with your contention that it's better to order seed from a large company versus a small one. Carolyn

Yes it looks like her advice is the best. I'm so cheap, even the cost of thread is dear to me. But with the little hand sewing that I do (except for hand quilting) it will last a lifetime. My DH asked me to sew a couple of buttons on his workshirts the other day and you would have thought he had asked me to run the Boston Marathon. I detest mending! I'll sit for hours and hand quilt, but try to slip a little mending job on me and I'll run for the hills!