One seed one plant?

Hi, yes, I am a new gardener! I am going to buy some perennial seeds to plant for next spring. When I went to order Capanula seeds, the web site said that the packet contains 1,200 seeds?? What? Why are there so many, isn't it that one plant comes from one seed? Is it that many of them will not make it so they give you so many in case you have little luck with them germinating? Should I go ahead and germinate all of these..won't these give me hundreds of plants? (too many for my garden!)

Thanks for any feedback!

Some seeds won't germinate, and often if you're starting them outdoors the birds will eat a bunch of seeds too. Often too if it's a common plant and the seeds are really small you'll find that you get a lot more in a packet than if it's something rare or something with bigger seeds. Also different vendors sell different numbers of seeds in a packet, I wonder if you found a site that sells mostly wholesale quantities? I bet there are other sites where you could find packets with 50 or 100 seeds which would be more reasonable for what you're probably trying to do. If it's a $3 or so seed packet with 1200 seeds, start some and hold onto the rest of the packet, that way if you get poorer germination than you'd expected you can always try again, but if it's more expensive I'd probably try looking at some other sites where you might be able to find a smaller packet for less money.

ecrane3, thanks so much, you are such a great source of information! If I could ask you one more Q please: when the seeds actually sprout, either inside or outside (some seeds I will have to start inside, but some say to sew directly into the ground in spring), if the sprouts are very close together, will I separate each sprout the reccomended distance from each other since each sprout will produce one plant right?

Correct, each sprout makes one plant so it's best to thin them out, otherwise you wind up with things way too close together and that can cause the seedlings not to grow as well, and also creates problems with air circulation which can lead to fungal problems as they get bigger. For ones that you direct sow outdoors, it's easiest just to pull up the extra seedlings to thin them, but if you start them indoors there are ways you can "prick out" and separate the seedlings and then plant them at the appropriate spacing outdoors once you get them there. If you want to learn more about seed starting, critterologist has written a series of articles on it--here's the list of the articles she's written, scroll through them and you'll see the ones on seed starting http://davesgarden.com/guides/articles/by.php?user=critterologist

You are great, thanks SO much for the info and the link, I'm going to check on it right now :)