F1 seeds verses ‘heritage’
by skinnyJ » Sat Aug 14, 2010 9:37 am
Firstly, allow me to apologise in advance if this is all old news to the people in this site, it isn’t my intention to patronise anyone, just to pass on stuff I have learned over the years to anyone who may find it useful.
The subject of this post is hybrid F1 seeds verses ‘heritage’ or ‘heirloom’ (depending on where your are from) varieties.
In the SHTF situation, or even major, if temporary, disruption to commercial supply chains, you won’t be able to guarantee that your local B&Q, Garden Centre, etc will have seeds available for your plot at the right time. As you know, many vegetables have fairly narrow germination and planting time windows, and it is therefore important to have the required seeds to hand. Even if they are available physically, will they be affordable? Hyperinflation, unemployment and other factors may result in the situation where seeds are available in retail outlets, but are still out of your reach financially, or physically, due to fuel shortages and the like.
Ideally then, the prepper might like to look to become self sufficient in seeds, that is, keeping back a small proportion of you crop not for food, but for the harvesting of seeds for the nest season(s).
I won’t go into how to harvest the seeds from many different types of vegetables that w grow, or how to avoid things like cross pollination here, but I want to outline the difference between hybrids (F1) and stable seed types.
Many seeds that you purchase from commercial sources will be F1 hybrids. That is, they are the result of two different varieties of a plant or vegetable crossed to give an offspring that has a mix of the desired characteristics of it’s parents. These offspring will themselves produce seeds, but as they are the first generation cross, these will not always germinate true to form, i.e. they may well produce fruits (i.e. vegetables) that are nothing like their parents. Indeed, in extreme cases, they may well produce sterile seeds that do not germinate at all. This makes them unsuitable for seed production for the prepper, as you never know if that lovely, sweet, long lsting prolific squash that you have grown will produce similar offspring. They may be misshapen, bland, and frankly rubbish.
Seed companies love this, as it means that every season you fill their coppers with your hard earned and dutifully buy your seed packets from them.
However, there is an alternative. Many older varieties of seeds are stable crosses, that is, the seeds can be virtually guaranteed to produce the same fruits as their parents, as they have been selected over countless generations, many moons ago. Thus, the seed is ideal for the prepper ~ if you gradually replace all of the seeds in your planting rotation with heritage varieties, you will eventually become self sufficient in seeds, and you will know exactly what you will be getting. You will also be able to ‘fine tune’ your choices, to know that the varieties you have are suitable for the soil and weather conditions on your plot, when to plant and harvest them for best results, how they like to be stored, cooked, preserved, etc, etc.
So where to buy these varieties? The ever helpful EU did its best to kill off many of these types in the 1970’s by making it illegal to sell seeds that weren’t ‘registered’ (an expensive and time consuming process) on a national ‘list’. Obviously, they did this to protect you from unscrupulous seed merchants rather than to benefit the big lobbying seed firms at the little guy’s expense. Not.
However, ever resourceful gardeners have found a way around this by the setting up of heritage seed banks and collections that you pay an annual fee to join and support, and in return get a certain amount of seeds ‘free’. In the UK, a good one is http://www.gardenorganic.org.uk/hsl/hsl.php . Using seeds from a scheme such as this, and learning how to harvest the seeds from different varieties will allow you to become self sufficient in seed over time, buffering you from another possible problem.
There is more to it ~ some vegetables (such as squash) need to be treated in certain ways to stay ‘true’, some need to be left in the ground much, much, longer (brassicas, etc), some seeds need a certain amount of messing around to make them suitable for storing (tomatoes), and things like true potato seed are a subject all to themselves, but I hope this wets you appetite to do a bit more research into the subject (I’m happy to go into these area’s to the best of my ability if anyone is interested).
Cheers
Skinny John