shopping around!

[BarleySugar]

I have a gift voucher burning a hole in my pocket, so I've been looking at ways to spend it. I mentioned in an earlier thread about needing some cucumbers, and I rather fancied going up market and treating myself to some more expensive ones this year, especially resistant to mildew.

One greenhouse variety, resistant to everything, caught my eye at a massive £7.99 for 5 seeds, let alone P&P which would bring it to £9.98.
I googled the variety, and found 5 seeds of the same for £3.75 with £0.95 P&P, making a total of £4.70.

Finally I found a supplier that does them all in for £4.50, which if I was strong and ordered nothing else, is the cheapest to date.

However with the first 2, I can order other seeds to make up for the postage, or just buy my ordinary selection from the second supplier, which is less than £2 a packet for more seeds

Despite succumbing eventually last year to the dreaded mildew, we were overun with cukes for a while, and were giving them way to family and friends, so it isn't a bad variety.

Does anyone else spend time doing this, then going back and getting the same variety they always have grown

[Snadger]

That makes for awfully expensive cukes................

[Alison]

Personally I wouldn't spend that much on seeds but then again, maybe I'm tight. The most expensive ones I've ever bought are these - Seeds, Herbs and Bedidng Plants from Kings Seeds Cucumber F1 Petita which were very productive but I still felt pretty ripped off.

[smallblueplanet]

I'm constantly stunned by the price of cuke seeds - I grow the smaller 'mediterranean' type (about 5"-6") in the greenhouse. We originally bought a pkt with hundreds of seeds in, back from a holiday in Cyprus which cost about 50p and a couple of years ago when I was worried that those seeds wouldn't be viable (they still are!) I bought a pkt of Turkish cuke (Biet Alpha) seeds for about £1.50 which also had 100s of seeds in it!

4 seeds for £2.75? I should cocoa!!!

[Suechooks]

I bought some cheap cucumber seeds last year along with a freebe packet off a magazine and they were 'orrible. Even the chooks wouldn't eat them unless the very tough skin was cut. The expensive ones are just that but the quality of crop is better. Still cheap i you look at the price of cuke in supermarket.

[vicky]

I grew 'Swing' last year, rrp about £1 per seed (don't worry, I didn't pay that!), they were nice cukes and you get a lot per plant, so comparing to buying cukes in the supermarket it works out cheaper!

I also had to supplement my plot (toddler is anti plants!) with one shop bought plant £1 per plant, fruits were disgusting!

I've used a voucher to buy some expensive cuke seeds this year, couldn't do it out of my own pocket though!

What variety are you after?

[cupcake]

I shall be growing Crystal Lemon as I got them free!

[crazy_red]

A packet of freebie Crystal Lemon for me too! Thank you, Hidden Eden......

[BarleySugar]

For the last couple of years I've grown Natsuhikari from Dobies, £1.85 for 8 seeds. They cropped well, and tasted good too, but did suffer badly from powdery mildew last year. I've used all the seed now, so as I wasn't intending to buy anything else from them this year, to save postage I thought I'd order a different variety from T&M. Carmen seemed resistant to just about everything, but very expensive. When I checked back with Dobies for P&P I realised there was such a big price difference.
Carmen, depending on which website you read, yields 40-100 cukes per plant! (12-14 inches). If you do the maths, I don't think I saw cukes for much less than 60p last year, so saying 50p to be conservative, and taking the lowest figure, thats £20 worth of cucumbers per plant. Even at £1 per seed, that is a good return, plus home grown taste nicer than shop ones. (You get the feeling I'm talking myself into something here?)

I will probably do some more research before i decide exactly which ones to go for. I grow them in the greenhouse up and along strings, but it is unheated and I usually go for 2 or 3 plants. Last season seemed to be cut short by the powdery mildew, which is why I though of changing variety. I had a similar problem with the courgettes outside, masses to start with, then stopped short. It even got my follow on plants before they produced anything. Maybe the weather was a factor, but resistant plants seem to be the way to go.

I think the main point I was trying to make though, was that the price of seeds and P&P varies so much from supplier to supplier, and one who is cheap on some varieties may be dear on others. I thought it made sense to buy all I wanted from one to save postage costs, but this isn't necessarily the case. Exhibition Seeds (but I've never used these before so don't know how reliable they are) add postage to each item, so what you see is what you pay, but if you order a lot of stuff, surely then you will be paying over the odds on postage?

I was hoping for Crystal Lemon from Hidden Eden, but got carrots which I needed as well, so that's fine.

[Mcbee]

Never seen the attraction of growing q's - i think tey are jst water in a bag

Having said that the seed does seem v. expensive. You could uy an awful lot of organic ones from the green grocer for that!

[sewer rat]

I only grow two varieties - Pepinex 69 and Femspot - both grown in my tunnel up canes. Both these varieties are F1 All female plants so no bitterness and I have not suffered from any disease problems with either variety in the last two years. Take a look at the album on my members page to see what they looked like this year.
Both crop exceptionally well and repay the seed cost many times over.