http://www.eatlocalchallenge.com/2008/01/going-to-grow-y.html

Matt: Yes, I am a member. My point is not everyone can pony up $35 ANNUALLY to get access to that seed bank. There has to be a better way is all.

Robin: Hah! Wiki sucks and you see why. I simply included it because not everyone knows what hybrid seeds are, or open-pollinated ones. I’d say what’s happening naturally in your (and my) gardens is more of the latter: hybrid, in the instance I think of it, is an intentional crossing. As a blanket statement, yes, saving intentionally hybridized seeds is not going to keep your garden going in the long term, though. I’m talking going for 30 years going. (And don’t worry about typos!)

Carol: Well, try growitalian.com and then there’s a favorite shop of mine in Indiana called Harvest Moon which stocks a ton of Italian and French seeds. They take forever to deliver, though; keep emailing them and you’ll get them. Happy hunting!

Liz: I thought a lot and went back and forth about whom I was most concerned with when I wrote the above post. Is it me, because frankly I can find any seed if I put my mind to it, or is it everyone else? I think I am considering the fourth-year vegetable gardener. The first year s/he got seeds off the grocery rack and seedlings from the big box store, was hooked, then the second year got deluged with catalogs, and for the last two years this is how they’ve been gardening. This year, s/he has BIG plans. Why then so few choices? Historically, this was not the case. People saved seeds, and historic catalogs like Henderson’s took aim at keeping traditional seeds going.

I am not anti-hybrid per se. I am just ruing the lack of diverse open-pollinated seeds of yore. You read books like Gary Paul Nabhan’s Coming Home to Eat and you are just floored, the knowledge the natives of the American Southwest have known, living where they did. That is just one foodshed. Most people have stopped kitchen gardening and farming, though, the last 50 years. Like your knitting, some folks have picked it back up again. Something VERY valuable was lost in the meantime, though, since convenience foods were made popular in post-war America. And now, we’re seeing its effects.

And Johnny’s? Yes, commercial. But it is still my go-to source for things like trellis netting, Reemay and all the other last-minute dang-I-forgot-to-order-radishes place. That I get my order in two days STAGGERS the mind.

Lisa: Yeah, I appreciate Seed Savers. The average backyard gardener probably doesn’t need it. And your farmer’s market folks are also just growing what they can! You can always ask them if they have more interesting things elsewhere: often, they grow the cool stuff for their family’s use, or just figure if something has a few bug bites people won’t buy it, so conditioned are we to grocery-store visual (tasteless) perfection.

Shelly: I have had HIGH hopes for Baker Creek in the past, but I have been very disappointed in their seeds (germination, mixed-up seed packets, more than one variety in an envelope, on and on) but it is the one place I know where I can get pea-sized eggplant, and 30 varieties of cowpeas and countless melons. They’re cheap enough I could just risk it, but I won’t.

Nada: I do feel bad that many of my rants are so American-slanted, because I know and so appreciate my international readers. But you hear me regarding diversity! Considering your drought and the fact that it is going to be 65* here (yes, twice the daily high, and yes, a record) I think things like open-pollinated seeds will be a small piece of our salvation in a rapidly warming world. (Oh, and winter is why I read Tolstoy! Too much going on, drama-wise, in the gardens in summer!)

However, variety and choice are essential to my garden, to food politics and to one’s palate. Sure we all like to grow things that we know will work and give us a good yield but what about that unexpected success from trying something new. If you don’t try, how will you ever know!

Moreover, the preservation of variety is essential to keeping what’s left of our plant diversity strong. Same thing applies to livestock.

Often I will buy seeds based on their story; grown by one family for 70 years and so on. To me the anticipation of what will unfold in my garden with these seeds is almost as riveting as Tolstoy!

http://rareseeds.com/

I completely agree with your opinion about most hybrids. Not so about sweet corn I like the SE varieties, not the super sweets but the “sugar enhanced” well what can i say I am just a fool for sugar.

lol

Shelly

More info here. I haven’t re-upped my membership in a few years. Maybe it’s time, because I agree with you.

Oddly, the vendors at our farmers market (and it’s a great market) have tendency to be pretty samey from year to year in their choices of what to grow. I’d love to see more diversity.

Hmmm.

I really enjoy yr blog.

Most people just aren’t where you are where variety in the garden is concerned. Even me! I mean, I tend to grow the same things (with a couple of new intros a year) season after season because I’ve found what works for me and my climate. Long Pie Pumpkins and Costata Romanesca and Jade green beans each year may not make for the most exciting garden around, but I like knowing I can count on them.

So I’d say, don’t be worried about the countless new gardeners out there. Let them get a taste for what a patch of ground can offer, and be comforted in the knowledge that, after a couple of years, they’ll start itching for different and better options. Too much choice can scare even the most enthusiastic newbie away. People will always find their way to more info.

One more thing…. you’ve mentioned several times that you like Johnny’s. They often turn me off because it seems every other seed is marketed toward market growers. They really push “cut and come again” culture, looks, and disease resistance, not often talking about how the dang veg tastes. And that’s just one more reason why I always come back to Fedco…. I want to know about taste and storage, first and foremost.

Keep looking, there are seeds out there for you somewhere!

Carol, May Dreams Gardens

Keep looking, there are seeds out there for you somewhere!

Carol, May Dreams Gardens

In agriculture and gardening, hybrid seed is seed produced by artificially cross-pollinated plants.

Hybridization happens in nature too. A bee moving from plant to plant cross pollinates. There’s nothing artificial about that. I have hybrid tomatoes pop up in the garden every year because of pollinators doing their job. I’ve saved and planted seeds from one specific cross and have been growing it out for seven years. I should be true to type and no longer be a hybrid. It then becomes an open pollinated variety.

Hybrid seed cannot be saved, as the seed from the first generation of hybrid plants does not reliably produce true copies, therefore, new seed must be purchased for each planting.

Hybrid seeds can be saved. That’s misinformation probably passed along by a writer who only repeated what s/he read, not someone with first hand knowledge. See the above comment on tomatoes in my garden. While you’re not gong to get the same thing you planted you are going to get something in most cases. The result could be far better, equal to or inferior to what you started with. There are several factors that determine the outcome of any kind of seed (soil quality, weather, length of day are some examples).

I don’t favor one over the other. I go for taste and what will thrive in my field regardless of whether a bee or a person pollinated the parent in the field. There are some really crappy choices in both hybrids and open pollinated. Since I don’t have to grow food that will be picked before it’s ripe so that it can be shipped 1500 miles to a store and come out looking great (but tasteless and lacking nutrition) I can make a lot of choices on my farm that commodity farmers can’t make. Without hybrids we wouldn’t have rutabagas, a cross between turnip and cabbage.

I am a huge seed snob in another way. If it comes from Monsanto, even if it’s an organic OP seed, I won’t touch it. I don’t use seed companies that support Monsanto so that leaves most of them out.

Being a snob can make growing complicated but you know, it’s worth it. Better to have exactly what we want than settle for less.