Carolyn, you mention "diseased." I don't like that word. Do you think that it is safe to grow out the few remaining "Black Russians" ? What is left appears to be doing well, just in miniature with variable leaf forms. I really don't want to contaminate all the rest though.
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You said some were stunted growth-wise hence my comment about possible seedborne disease. But if you havge somne of the correct leaf type that aren't, no harm in growing those on.
Infection is a quantitative process.
However, with crossed seeds you can't even assume that the RL ones are going to be Black Russian.
About crossed seeds. Most folks who know me know that I don't trade seeds, with few exceptions. And that's b'c I simply didn't have the time to fool around with crossed seed when I was growing so many varieties each summer.
I certainly understand that traded seed could be crossed, but I do expect a higher level of standard when dealing with a commercial vendor.
One of the problems with varieties offered commercially is that they often, or even most of the time, don't grow out what they're going to be selling b'c they want to get it on the website or in the catalog ASAP.
There certainly are several exceptions to that of those folks selling seed who do their own seed production, but even there, they don't always have time to check before listing it.
The same thing happens with SSE listings. I grow variety X in the summer of 2006 and want to list it. I have to submit the SSE application in the Fall of 2006 by a certain date to get it in the catalog.
And with the numbers of varieties I grew each summer for so many years there was no way I could check out all of them before listing.
Another facet of this is that you can save seed from 10 fruits of variety X and if even one fruit has a couple of crossed seeds the batch has to be labelled crossed. And often it takes hundreds of folks growing out from those seeds offered to even find the few X pollinated plants.
Carolyn
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Carolyn
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