Hi again, Karen! Welcome, Val!
I feel like my cat when we put a little tuna fish in his bowl. Jumping around eagerly and yowling "Now!" "Now!"
My order from Seeds Of Italy (Franchi) just arrived. Fortunately they mostly use foil-lined pouches, becuase our beloved USPS must have dropped the Priority box in a big puddle. The cardboard shipper was soggy and partly crushed, and had some packing tape slapped over the soggy cardboard.
Thanks, guys!
Two of them are fine (foil pouches) but there were 170 grams of pole French bean /snap bean 'Smeraldo' ("emerald"). It's a white-seeded pale green long flat roma type from Northern Italy in a
plastic-coated cardboard box.
http://www.growitalian.com/bea...
It looks like the outside of this inner box got very slightly damp and a little crushed, but I opened it right away and spread out the beans to dry ... they seemed totally dry and clean and orderless already, so I'm thinking of it as a day or two of storage at high humidity.
Not sure I'll ask Franchi to replace them, since the replacement might arrive after the swap's mail-in-date. Also, they advertised "100 grams" and sent 170 grams (6 ounces), which is not unusual for Seeds of Italy.
Also, I totally plan to plant them and expect 90% + germination. But I am going to email Seeds of Italy and see if they can collect the insurance, or at least yell at USPS for trying to pre-sprout my seeds.
I tentatively plan to offer them in this swap
with the warning that they got humid during shipment, and make up bigger packets. At least they were packed for 2016/2017, and have an expiration date of 12/2018 (which assumed dry storage!)
Anyway, does anyone disagree? Not even offering them is certainly an option. I may be desensitized to "it rained on the seeds I planed to collect" because I live in the Pacific NorthWet.
P.S. I examined these beans very closely, which I seldom do. Out of 170 grams (6 ounces), I found 13 beans with small chips or very small areas of discoloration in the shell, brown or black.
From some vendors, I'm used to seeing some beans broken in half, entirely discolored, or with big chips. From most vendors, I expect a much higher % of damaged beans than 13 slightly damaged out of 550 beans (2.4%)
What do you think? Are 2.4% imperfect beans average, below average, or above average?
I've been thinking of Franchi as having some of the best quality seed I know. I don't blame Franchi for the USPS dragging our mail through puddles, but I might demote them from "one of the best or THE best" down to "still considerably above average".
I probably shouldn't blame the USPS much either. I'm guessing they are grossly underfunded among their other problems.
