Is Something Happening with Seeds and Gardening

Had bumper crop of tomatoes this year (using a Red Alert seeds from previous grows) - have around 120 on each plant but stoire bought seeds never made it past seedling status (around 50 still alive and perfectly healthy but only 1 inch tall).

Everything else was a bit of a failure - we had late mild frosts but some of the worst storms in decades which took down around 1 million trees - since then we've had perfect growing coonditions then the biggest drought in 500 years and hottest temperatures on record.

Crops went from harvestable to bolted within a few days so we lost all those; I think the crazy weather stressed them into going to flower.

Strangley no pests whatsoever (apart from a handful of slugs). I'm used to things getting caked in aphids - but had lots of invasive specties from far hotter countries like the queen hornet trying to build a nest in my shed.

I think the quality of seeds may have dipped a lot due to Covid - some crops had near 100% germination, others failed to sprout at all.

Regarding posts:

If you are giving information about your growing efforts this year your location and general weather conditions would be very helpful to add for those combing the thread and trying to pull together common elements. That is one thing we can do here is begin to isolate possible causes so we might hopefully address the real issues.

Possible causes:
water
soil
seed quality
weather
insects
UV radiation
EMF radiation
Diseases/fungus

What else?

a reply to: Asktheanimals

Great points, I can't think of anything else to add apart from looking into comparisons of pre and post covid comparissons of seeds/soils or how lockdown affected seed/compost production.

IMHO I think there's been a huge drop in topsoil/compost quality post lockdown - Westland Topsoil which is usually great had had more bricks/screws/fluff and general builders yard rubbish than topsoil in it; I know a lot of people who had the same experience, but others were lucky and got great stuff with no rubbish in.

How was seed production/quality control affected during lockdown in various countries?

Also may be worth looking up seed/grain laws in countries producing seeds as there's major efforts to crackdown on seeds laws to force farmers/people to only buy government mandated/produced seeds. It was the first law passed after the Iraq War as the money/profit invovled dwarfed oil revenue.

EDIT: Will fill out the points you raised later to provide clearer/more useful info.

Everyone, use extreme means to save the plant and trees of this world.

a reply to: olaru12
a reply to: Asktheanimals
a reply to: JAGStorm
Thanks for looking at the link, apologies for not getting back to you sooner, got covid right after posting, will reply when this settles

a reply to: julienl42

The secret code they created made no sense, even to them.

Do you see a theme yet ?

a reply to: inbound

Inbound, try Truleaf Seeds. I started all of mine indoors by a sunny window, and out of several hundred planted I only had a few not germinate. Tomatoes, squash, cucumber, and even more grew amazingly well.

They are pricier, but worth it in my opinion, especially since you can harvest the seeds from the heirloom varieties.

Just saying, if temps will exceed norms within the next 30 years, we have to start protecting seeds of all kinds.