[ContainerTed]

I'm the T'villian that Ami refers to above. I had noticed that the seeds sent from him were not coming up well. So, I alerted him that there might be a problem, but I didn't know what.

Ami immediately began a germination test and his pictures above show his results. I then decided to take a closer look at the seeds themselves. Last night, I sent Ami a Private Message, a portion of which follows

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As an old electronics repair type, along the way I picked up a microscope - the type used to do close pitch soldering. It's good for 60X and a bit more and has a mounted light.

This morning, I put some of my home saved seeds and those you sent to scrutiny. I know mine had been subject to a lot of TLC and used them as a bench mark. What I found with SOME of yours was what could only be cracked seed shell casings (probably picked up courtesy of one of our postal systems). My saved Cherokee Purple and Supersteak seeds did not display any of the cracks I saw on some of the seeds from three of the four you sent me. Golden Cherokee was worst, followed by Mystery Black and Spudakee. KBX seeds all appeared normal.

Now, I'm not a micro-biologist, but I've done enough close inspection under that scope to be absolutely positive that I am seeing cracks - cracks that were most likely introduced by a crushing type of pressure. A couple even showed the inner germplasm.

Your packaging on the envelope you sent was so good, that I figured the ones you sent were going to be the least likely to be postally abused.

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The envelope he sent me had a sheet of paper with a computer printout of my original Email requesting seeds and a thin layer of foam-sheeting (about as thick as a paper plate). The seed packets were nested inside the foam which was inside the paper - inside the business sized envelope.

From the beginning, I suspected "Postal Abuse"- maybe even from being x-ray'd into oblivion or otherwise subjected to large heat or cold temperature swings. When I looked carefully at the original ziplocks Ami sent the seeds in, I didn't see any obvious crunching with any kind of debris visible to the naked eye, but the damage was there.

BTW, I have Golden Cherokee seeds from two sources, both of which originated with Ami. In a trade with another individual, I received a "bonus" pack which contained some Golden Cherokee seeds, and that person told me the source. That group had been in the hands of the USPS at least twice and also showed seed damage. And that's where the old troubleshooter in me finds the prime suspect for the source of the damage.

I guess the lesson here is that no matter how good the products are at point of origin, they are at the mercy of the handling.

Hope this helps any others. The only solution I came up with for this season, is to plant enough to get a couple of seedlings. Not all of the seeds were damaged, just enough to cause major concern.

There's a lesson here for all of us.

I'm going to try to figure out a way of interfacing some kind of camera to the microscope. If I do, I'll post pictures of course.

Ted