The best (and worst) seeds to save from your garden
Part 2 of my four-part spring seed sowing series!
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Hello! Happy Monday and welcome back to the second instalment in my four part seed-sowing series. Today we are talking all about hybrid and heirloom seeds.
What are hybrid (and non-hybrid) seeds?
Hybrid seeds (like you’ll often buy in the shops) are seeds that have occurred from very intentionally planned cross pollinations. Instead of letting random plants cross-breed all over the place, people who produce hybrid seeds create two ‘parent lines’ - parent A and parent B. Both parents are bred to have very specific (and very genetically reliable) traits, so that when they’re crossed, the offspring have a mixture of the best stuff from both parent, and they express their parents’ genes in really predictable ways.
Historically, plant hybridisation has been used to achieve bigger fruits, better yields and increased resistance to bugs, which is why hybrids don’t have much of a reputation for flavour (it wasn’t considered a priority in the past). Nowadays hybrids are being made with flavour in mind, so it’s not totally true that hybrids won’t taste as good as heirlooms (more on heirlooms in a sec).
The bad side of hybrids
There’s one problem with hybrids though. Remember how the hybrid seed is a predictable cross of Parent A and B? That’s all well and good, but what happens when they hybrid plant makes its own seeds? What then? Hybrid seeds (because they are crosses between two genetically distinct parent plants) have much more genetic variation than we typically see in plants that have self fertilised. For the first generation of hybrids, this genetic variation causes something called ‘hybrid vigour’ which means that the plant usually grows really well. But when the hybrid plants have their own plant babies all this goes out the window.
The offspring of hybrid plants have a lot of genetic diversity too, but it occurs in a totally unpredictable fashion and doesn’t lead to ‘hybrid vigour’. If you wanna get deep into all this stuff, it’s got to do with mendelian inheritance - basically the way that dominant and recessive traits are passed down from parents to their offspring. You should absolutely travel down an internet wormhole of all this stuff, because it’s incredibly cool. But for now let’s just say that the offspring of hybrid seeds are unpredictable and usually not as good as their parents were.
This is why it’s not usually worth saving the seeds that come from your hybrid plants. Although hybrid seeds can reproduce (they’re not infertile), when you re-sow them, the new plants won’t be ‘true to type’ and they probably won’t be what you’re hoping for.
How to spot a hybrid seed
How do you know if you’re growing a hybrid? Look for ‘F1’ in the plant name on the packet. Hybrid seeds are labelled ‘F1’ because they are the first generation bred from those special parent A and B plant lines. Now, I’m not trying to tell you not to grow hybrids. I grow hybrids myself (almost all of my corn plants are hybrids), but it’s good to know which seeds you sow are hybrids and which aren’t, and to probably not bother too much about saving seeds from hybrid plants.
What are heirloom seeds?
Seeds that are very much worth saving come from ‘heirloom’ plants. Now, for the record, there is a fair bit of ambiguity around what actually qualifies a plant as an ‘heirloom’ variety. The whole idea of heirloom plants is shrouded in a kind of glittery, aspirational halo, but there are no truly hard and fast rules about when something can be called an heirloom and when it can’t.
Typically, calling a plant an ‘heirloom variety’ simply denotes that the plant has been in circulation for at least 50 years. They’re really just older varieties of plants that have stood the test of time and have been in circulation for a while - there’s nothing overly special about them.
What’s good about heirloom seeds is that they’re usually tasty (which is why they’ve been handed around for such a long time) and they tend to reproduce true to type. If you want to ensure you’re not introducing hybrid varieties into your garden (and you plan on saving seeds year after year) you can look for seeds labelled ‘heirlooms’ or those that don’t have the ‘F1’ label and go from there.
Stay tuned…
And so we’ve reached the end of the second instalment in our seed sowing series. Stay tuned because next Monday I’ll be back with a guide to saving and storing your seeds. If you want to be able to grow your own veggies, herbs and flowers for free, year after year, this guide will explain how.
Thank you for reading! See you next time for more Lo fi life!
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Do only fruits, veggies and herbs get called heirloom or hybrid? As in, if I've bought flower seeds (everlastings, poppies, sunflowers etc) do they come in heirloom or hybrid?
Ahhh this is so helpful! I never knew what heirloom seeds actually were and why they were often better. This explains a lot!