Seed company

Seed companies produce and sell seeds for flowers, fruit and vegetables to the amateur gardener. The production of seed is a multi billion dollar business, which uses growing facilities and growing locations world wide. While most seed is produced by large specialist growers, large amounts are produced by small growers that produce only one to a few crop types. These larger companies supply seed both to commercial resellers and wholesalers. The resellers and wholesalers sell to vegetable and fruit growers, and to companies who package seed into packets and sell them on to the amateur gardener.

Most seed companies or resellers that sell retail, produce a catalog – generally published during early winter for seed to be sown the following spring. These catalogs are eagerly awaited by the amateur gardener, as during winter months there is little that can be done in the garden, so this time can be spent planning the following year’s gardening. The largest collection of nursery and seed trade catalogs in the U.S. is held at the National Agricultural Library. The earliest catalogs there date from the late 18th century, with most published from the 1890s to the present.Shakers were among the earliest commercial producers of garden seeds; the first seeds sold in paper packets were produced by the Watervliet Shakers.

Seed

A seed is an embryonic plant enclosed in a protective outer covering known as the seed coat.

It is a characteristic of spermatophytes (gymnosperm and angiosperm plants) and the product of the ripened ovule which occurs after fertilization and some growth within the mother plant. The formation of the seed completes the process of reproduction in seed plants (started with the development of flowers and pollination), with the embryo developed from the zygote and the seed coat from the integuments of the ovule.

Seeds have been an important development in the reproduction and spread of gymnosperm and angiosperm plants, relative to more primitive plants such as ferns, mosses and liverworts, which do not have seeds and use other means to propagate themselves. This can be seen by the success of seed plants (both gymnosperms and angiosperms) in dominating biological niches on land, from forests to grasslands both in hot and cold climates.

The term "seed" also has a general meaning that antedates the above—anything that can be sown, e.g. "seed" potatoes, "seeds" of corn or sunflower "seeds". In the case of sunflower and corn "seeds", what is sown is the seed enclosed in a shell or husk, whereas the potato is a tuber.