COPAKE FALLS, N.Y.

WHAT could be a greener, more feel-good purchase than seeds? Aren’t the tiny plant embryos, huddled in the suspended animation of dormancy inside a simple paper packet, true innocence incarnate?

I had held to that conviction for more than 25 growing seasons, dreamily lost, like other gardeners, in the annual onslaught of catalogs stacked on our kitchen tables in February and March. But those seeds may be far from innocent. It turns out that growing vegetables for their seed often involves more chemical use than growing those same crops for food.

I am not speaking of genetically engineered hybrids, the patentable plants created in laboratories by manipulating an organism’s genes. They get much press and concern, and it is a concern I share. But those seeds are not for sale in the home-garden catalogs; they’re a different story. I’m not even speaking of what I perceive as a false construct over hybrid-or-heirloom, as if it were an either-or debate and one could not ethically elect to grow both (as I do). Gregor Mendel made hybrids; nature has done it herself, though neither spliced anything in the process.

No, it was this other, less-spoken matter that hit me hard where I garden. In my own vegetable beds I use no chemical heroics, and yet I had been using some conventionally produced seed that is often coddled and adapted to a life of “high inputs” that it won’t get from me or from an increasing number of other chemical-averse home gardeners.