The dawn of a new show year is upon us and I am keen.
Listening to chat around the show halls I think most of us hear that back in the golden days of the fancy mice were bigger, fitter, typier and well, just better! Tuning into Gardeners Question Time on the radio whilst feeding the mice I heard a listener ring in lamenting that his cosmos were not what they once were. These days they bloom later and later in the year.
The seasoned expert supplying the answer said that seed producers were not what they were. They pretty much mass harvest everything. Back in the day they would have used rigorous selection and in the case of cosmos (a natural late bloomer) harvested seeds specifically from the early bloomers, discarding the late bloomers and thus creating and supplying reliable early blooming plants.
I made a mental note to myself to be more critical and rigorous when selecting in the mouse house.