Summer residents were told what dangers await them with seeds and seedlings in the new year

In a month, the tender shoots of seedlings of tomatoes, peppers and petunias will turn green on the windowsills, and then the opening of the new summer season will be just around the corner. In the meantime, it’s time to pick up a calculator and calculate how much our tomatoes and cucumbers from our own garden beds, lush flower beds and other joys of country life will cost us now.

Price

From March 1, 2024, foreign companies supplying vegetable and flower seeds to our country are required to localize their business in Russia. This means that foreign producers of seed material must create a joint venture in our country in which the share of foreigners will not exceed more than 49%. In addition, the joint venture must have its own fields on which the seed will grow. Experts say that China once followed this path, and now its companies themselves are quite successfully exporting vegetable seeds, including to our country.

Time will tell how successful this reform of import substitution of seeds and planting material will be. In the meantime, there is a difficult period of restructuring from “foreign” to “our own,” summer residents should prepare for a significant increase in prices for vegetable seeds, annuals and berry seedlings.

“In fact, prices have been rising all last year. Moreover, imports decreased significantly long before the law on the localization of seed production in Russia came into force. For example, our main suppliers – Dutch companies – refused to work with us due to sanctions. They are very strict there now, up to and including criminal proceedings if they find that someone continues to cooperate with the Russian Federation. Parallel imports and China remain. And our Chinese friends, don’t be fools, immediately raised prices by one and a half times for all supplies, they say, due to the fall in the ruble exchange rate. In general, there is a product, but prices for seeds have already risen twice last year and this year,” says Victoria, manager of a large garden center in the Moscow region.

Rising prices for planting material are already making adjustments to the plans of gardeners and summer residents. Summer resident Maxim complains on social networks that he wanted to give his beloved wife a birthday present – to plant a lawn at his dacha with lavender, but one bush of the plant costs 600 rubles, and he needs at least 100 seedlings to implement his landscape idea. It turns out to be an expensive gift!

Quality

The second problem that summer residents will have to face in the new season is low germination and other complaints about the quality of seeds that are imported to our market through unknown, crooked routes. Accordingly, the risk of running into fakes and counterfeits also increases.

“Now in online stores you can find seeds from producers that no one had heard of a year ago. That’s how last year I came across a company allegedly selling seeds of annuals from Europe. My pride is petunias; my entire dacha is decorated with them. That’s why I buy a lot of seeds at once, I’ve been preparing seedlings myself for many years, and there have never been any misfires. And here, out of 10 purchased bags of Shock Wave ampelous petunia, only one had flowers that matched the striped color indicated on the package. The rest turned out to be monochromatic. And the prices for it were already outrageous – 109 rubles per bag, which contained only three seeds. With gentian for the alpine hill it turned out even worse; the seedlings, as expected, sprouted, but withered very quickly. Whatever I did to it: changed the soil, illuminated it, but it still died. But the biggest bummer was with the Blue Angel aquilegia; it didn’t sprout at all. In general, I spent so much money and effort, but it was all in vain. Then I had to buy ready-made flower seedlings at the market from grandmothers, which I haven’t done for a hundred years,” complains Maria, a summer resident from Serpukhov.

Siberia rules

Of course, we will not be left completely without seeds, experts say, and our dependence on imports is by no means total. For example, Russia is 100% self-sufficient in seed material for grains, and with vegetables everything is not so bad. For example, last year there were problems with potatoes for making chips; previously, seeds of this variety were supplied to us only from abroad. But now their own hybrids have appeared.

Many farmers and summer residents praise Siberian varieties of tomatoes and other vegetables. They say they cost adequately and are much better adapted to our weather conditions than pampered Europeans. The situation is worse with seeds for onions and carrots; there is almost a 90% dependence on imports, but how many onions and carrots does a summer resident need? A couple of beds? We’ll somehow scrape together some money for imported seeds. But if we look ahead, what awaits us in the future – will our seed producers be able to replace foreign suppliers from the market?

“Complete import substitution in this area will take a long time. It takes breeders from 5 to 7 years to develop one new hybrid. We also need large investments in the industry. And not only in production, but also in marketing, in promoting goods on the market. We have bright heads and talented scientists, but we don’t have enough smart managers. Now everyone is talking about import substitution, but it seems to me that the Ministry of Agriculture is not going to seriously invest in seed farms. They simply exchanged some foreign suppliers for others and that’s it, it’s easier for them: before we bought everything entirely from the Dutch, Germans and Americans, but now it’s all China,” says former agronomist and now famous dacha blogger Natalya Egorkina.

And yet, how can an inexperienced summer resident not make a mistake with the choice of seeds in conditions when some suppliers have left the market, while others have just appeared, and there are no responses about them on the Internet yet?

“First. You need to buy only proven varieties. Second. Never give preference to seeds from only one manufacturer, this is always dangerous. It is better to take several bags of the same variety from different companies. Moreover, I do not advise a novice gardener or gardener to choose high-yielding varieties. To display their exceptional qualities, they need the same exceptional conditions – ideally selected soil composition, temperature and humidity conditions, and so on. It is better to choose unpretentious varieties that will be hardy to bad weather conditions and resistant to diseases. And thirdly, determine what is more important to you: getting a good harvest or stocking up on your own seeds for next year. If the harvest is important, then choose hybrid varieties marked F1; if you need seeds, then ordinary varieties, because you won’t be able to get seeds from hybrids,” advises Egorkina.