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Contract Grows

I have seen mention of contract grows, apparently one does not have to be a very experienced grower to land one of these. Is there any compliance on the part of the vendor who 'contracts'' these. Are you as a seed buyer, paying premium prices are you assured isolated seed?

With all the unexpected results we are seeing from seed I guess I can now understand how the results from any seed is in question is up in the air until you see the pod you grow. I guess as long as you refund or replace seeds after complaints you would not be negligent, but it looks these 'contract' grows and third party seed vendors, unless there have a compliance program, could be a handful with the customer complaints.

How many seed seller here, only grow there own seed stock, just curious.
 
We (old barn nursery) do not contract grow and never will.
And actually yes you can grow out enough seeds. You don't need to grow everything every year. You also don't need many seed stock plants to get seed stock...at least at our level. Our main biz income though isn't really focused on selling tons of seeds.
 
mmcdermott1 said:
We (old barn nursery) do not contract grow and never will.
And actually yes you can grow out enough seeds. You don't need to grow everything every year. You also don't need many seed stock plants to get seed stock...at least at our level. Our main biz income though isn't really focused on selling tons of seeds.
thanks Mike, now maybe Peter can reinforce your position.
Maybe Judy could comment as well.
 
I´m growing around 600 pepper varieties this year and to replenish our seed stock doesn´t need fields of peppers for each variety.
Standard is 6 plants per variety and maximum are 24 this year
We do not depend on a single "could be the next world record breaker" so there is no need for bulk production.
 
I know that some larger seed vendors have contract growers, but we never had the need for this.
 
Peter
 
armac said:
thanks for your input, but do you have any information on the subject posted?
 
 
Nope, nothing at all; but that doesn't change the fact that you are stirring the pot needlessly. 
 
You must distinguish between contract growing and ordering the seeds from a wholesaler.
 
As far as I know there are more companies using the second type of supply.
Both supply types are not bad per se, if the products (seeds) are ok, i.e. the seeds have no or low cross hybridization and the germination rates are ok.
 
But the past has shown, that some seed vendors sold seeds, where they really didn´t know what they had in stock.
Offering NEW introductions where the species was wrong and a high degree of hybridization could be observed.
 
My personal finding is that this hasn´t changed. 
I order several "new" pepper varieties from companies around the world every year.
The actual results 2013 are very disappointing.
I had to remove most of the plants due to a very high grade of hybridization and from the more than 20 varieties I bought only a few have survived and are suitable for a production growout.
 
Peter
 
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