Can a Person Be a Plant Hoarder ?

If I see something I like , I take it home without knowing where it will go. I always have at least 10 plants waiting to be planted. Sometimes at a really good sale I almost can't fit all purchases in car. Had some close calls in parking lots, now keep pruners in car to help loading. On flip side I have a lot of space everyone as plenty of room, all the water they want, and fed when needed . Am I a plant hoarder?

LOL!!! We probably need to start a support group...
At least you dont' buy something and let it sit till it's a sad, droopy, whisp of it's former self before planting it.

YES you are a plant hoarder! Maybe if you didn't have 10 plants waiting around to be planted, you might not be.

Mary

Congratulate yourself that it is not cats.

A hoarder is collecting things and then not caring for them, but still cannot let go and keeps adding.
So as long as they are cared for and not just piling up, I wouldn't call it hoarding. Just a growing collection.

wait, if it dies and you just put it into your compost bin is that still hoarding or is that just adding to other plants their needed nutrients for a later point in time?

I am most likely a seed hoarder, on the grounds I probably have something on the order of several thousand times the amount of seed I actually can grow at any given time and am STILL always adding. I've go so many heirloom tomatoes that the seed packets actually fill up a small desktop filing cabinet, or rather overfill it. WAAY overfill it. There are probably hundreds of packet in there each with dozens of seeds in them. If I find a tomato fruit that looks interesting I will generally puree it and strain it to make sure every seed gets saved as well. There are probably several hundred thousand tomato seeds in there in total. And the maximum number of tomato plants I can actually grow in a year is............seven (and that's only If I plant nothing else).

It gests worse. I have probably 100 assorted seeds of bitter melon lying around I retrieved from overripe fruits I bought, despite the fact I find the things personally inedible. In essence I spend good money to buy spoiled produce of a vegetable I don't even like. just because I can't bear the thought of seed going to waste and getting thrown out. And I suppose that also applies to the parval gourds, the Tinda gourds, the Siamese pumpkins etc. (none of which I like) as well as the winter melons (I DO like that, but the kind I can buy won't grow in this climate [too long season] and I wouldn't have room for [anything whose fruits tend to be 60 lbs and up is WAAY past the size I have room for or the stomach to get through before it spoils] and I know it.) and the dosaki cucumbers (again would eat them if they could grow here [which they can't] and I have way more seed than I'll ever need

Then there are all the tropical tree seeds I have lying around. Having my own rainforest would be nice, but as long as I live in a suburban house, not really feasible.

And all of that STILL doesn't take into account the fact that, as I have said before, with my conditions, you could make a very compelling argument that having ANY seed is hoarding, that trying any growing is colossally immoral, and that "caring" for the seeds and plants really would mean putting all of them; every last one, into better hands; defined as "any hands but mine."

If you have been hoarding very long, Pulsegleaner, those oldest seeds are probably not viable anyway. Maybe you could start doing mosaics with them. That way you could display them and no one would think you were weird. Maybe. ??

Nyboy said:

If I see something I like , I take it home without knowing where it will go. I always have at least 10 plants waiting to be planted. Sometimes at a really good sale I almost can't fit all purchases in car. Had some close calls in parking lots, now keep pruners in car to help loading. On flip side I have a lot of space everyone as plenty of room, all the water they want, and fed when needed . Am I a plant hoarder?

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I hope so. Or I'm going to have to stop talking to you.

so lucky said:

If you have been hoarding very long, Pulsegleaner, those oldest seeds are probably not viable anyway. Maybe you could start doing mosaics with them. That way you could display them and no one would think you were weird. Maybe. ??

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Well I have though of that for a few of them. There are alresdy a few that have earned places beyond thier ages. For example I still have one pea left from my colledge hunting days (which means it is now going on twenty years old) Probably completely unviable (especially considering how mant times I've rubbed it with oily fingers) but handy as a reference item (it's the last example I have of a real "drum pea" (a pea with such an extremem example of the chenille/caterpillar trait that it forms a perfect cylinder). There a palm seed that was problaby dead before I even got it (most palms are recalictrant, so the seed would have died before I ever saw it, as a momento of a college professor I liked. But some of the others might be candidates Tomato seeds are, when you get down to it, not all that attractive in and of themselves. But for cucubit and legumes and some of the corn I suppose it is possible. There are a few I wouldn't DARE to try it with, like the rosary peas. Pretty as they are I don't want to do anything with anything that could kill me if the seed coat is breached and I get klutzy. But there are some others where I suppose it would be possible