Eli5: why we need to plant seeds, but in nature they just grow where they fall?
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I think you’re not asking why we choose which seeds go where, but why can’t we just let plants we want make seed and drop them and then come up on their own the next year. I’m a market farmer that grows hundreds of different plants so here’s why I do it. 1. Some plants evolved to grow in warmer climates and seeds that drop naturally won’t survive the winter here. Or some things will survive winters but get diseased when they get wet in the spring so we have to plant the seeds once the weather improves. 2. Succession planting. It takes weeks or months for a plant to make seeds, during which time it isn’t producing. If I pull plants as soon as they stop being productive, I can replace them with younger ones or with a different type of plants with a later growing season. 3. Some plants are way too good at spreading by seed and if I let them drop, I’ll be paying for it for years, pulling plants out of pathways and beds where they’re not wanted. They become weeds. I grow some flowers that can make thousands of seeds each, and then I grow thousands of those flowers… it’s astronomical the chaos those seeds can have.
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