I’d prefer to get seed from the most recent harvest, rather than from previous years’ harvests.

After years of using commercial seeds, I considered 50-70% germination to be highly successful...and like most gardeners, blamed myself for the failure rate...until I started saving seed from my own stock plants. In one season, my success rates increased dramatically which I ascribe to fresh seed (and I am not just referring to easy annuals either).

Buying seed from a commercial source is my last resort, after saving or swapping my own...in fact, if I want seeds I do not already grow, I will buy the plant in order to increase my stock from seeds or cuttings, rather than risking a long wait for an uncertain outcome.

Some companies are much worse thasn others...but it is common practice, across the industry, to remix older seeds with new stock...so you may end up with very old seeds indeed.

Also, I have a long list of seeds which absolutely must be sown while fresh as viability drops almost to the point of uselessness, after any amount of time. Apiaceae and nearly all the ranunculaceae family, for example

Interesting to read that, Campanula. I had no idea it was common practice across the industry. Until receiving that recent email from my favorite seed company, I'd assumed that seed companies only sell seed from the most recent harvest. I have to say it does come as quite a surprise to find out that's not true. I don't have the slightest doubt that there are very real commercial reasons they mix older seeds in (who wants to sit on older stock that can't be sold?), and I also don't doubt that the germination rates of what they do sell generally "meet industry standards." I absolutely recognize that our beloved seed companies need to make a living and thrive, and it may very well be that they couldn't make enough profit selling only latest-harvest seeds. But divorced from these commercial considerations, from my perspective as a philosophically-oriented gardener, I find this news quite shocking.

I find it shocking, too. But I've noticed the last 2 years that packets of seeds have other seeds mixed in. Like a shell pea plant with the snap peas. This has occurred with 2 different, usually reliable, companies.

What are the best places to buy seeds?