Garden seed

Probably 10 or 12 years ago, we planted some Mr. Stripy tomatoes. Totally awesome tomato. I never thought about saving some seed at the time, so we used up all the seeds and bought new the next year. Totally disappointing. The initial Mr. Stripy tomatoes were at least a pound or more in weight and were an orange/yellow/red striped tomato. Awesome taste. The second year they were maybe a quarter of a pound to half a pound and pathetic as far as taste. Sad! So I bought from different suppliers the following few years and had no luck whatsoever. All the tomatoes were small, really small. The were not worth growing and not even worth picking.

Why? I don't know for sure, but I have my suspicions. Last year I planted a number of zucchini seed, both yellow and dark green. We grow zucchini in the hill garden, and the row is close to 100 feet long, so say 30 to 35 plants. I typically plant a 36- or 48-hole 1022 planter tray. All the yellow zucchini came right up with no problem whatsoever. We had probably close to 100% germination on the yellows, but zero on the dark green zucchini. So I replanted and got maybe a couple. Disappointing. This year I reordered yellow and dark green seed with exactly the opposite results. The green came up and the yellow simply refused to germinate.

For the past six or seven years our favorite cucumber has been Tasty Jade. It's a European-type cucumber that's about 12 to 13 inches long and about 1 inch in diameter. They came up great, and the plants were healthy. When I transplanted them, they grew like weeds. A few years ago it was as if the seed wasn't the same seed. The seed germinated, but the new plant didn't seem to want to root down and grow. And when I transplanted it, the new seedling seemed anemic and most of them died. So I started to try different cucumbers which were close to Tasty Jades specs. I planted probably a dozen varieties in my starter trays. Most came right up and rooted down and were ready to transplant in a couple weeks.

Most of the zucchini seeds we plant are hybrids. But in all reality more than half of our garden plants are hybrids. The Mr. Stripy seed though is open-pollinated. Hybrids are developed to enhance the desirable characteristics of some veggie that we really like. These characteristics might be disease resistance or size or taste or even lessen the cracks that tomatoes are prone to.

One fine hybrid is Better Boy. Better Boy was bred and developed to improve the quality of Big Boy which was the first hybrid red tomato marketed by W. Atlee Burpee Seed Company. This hybrid is a cross between Teddy Jones, which is a large, pink beefsteak from the Midwest, and a red parent tomato. This red tomato parent plant has been kept secret. It is interesting that the Teddy Jones tomato seed is unavailable. I thought it would be fun to grow the Teddy James tomato, but there isn't any seed available. The current owner of the existing TJ tomato wants sole rights to the seed so Better Boy tomatoes can't be recreated by some outsider.

A hybrid plant is simply the result of cross-pollinating two different plant varieties, saving the seed the cross produces and then growing plants from that seed. To create a hybrid, the pollen from one variety of plant is transferred to the flower of another variety. What the breeder does is simply take the pollen from the male plant and pollinates the female plant with this pollen. Because tomatoes tend to self-pollinate, all the stamens or male parts have to be removed from the plants that are going to be pollinated. The fruits that form as a result of this cross-pollination are harvested and the seeds are collected. This process has to occur for every F1 hybrid plant and the seed that is produced. It might take years of monkeying around with different plants and crossing them before a true winner is developed.

However, with a hybrid the seed grown from the hybrid will not hold true, but could throw back to either parent plant or be somewhere in the middle. This is why saving the seed from a hybrid is not recommended. We also have genetically modified plants (GMO) which is a totally different animal. These GMO plants are created using techniques such as gene cloning. Hybrids on the other hand are simply two plants are cross-pollinated such as crossing a white-faced Hereford cow and a black Angus cow.

There seems to be a huge demand for both open pollinated seed as well as hybrid seed since COVID. I've gone to buy different seed for our garden and it's unavailable or sold out. Very rarely in the past have I had problems buying seed. One thing the increased demand has done is increase the demand for seeds and also make them more valuable. I'm wondering if the increased demand has as a result caused the quality of the seed to slip. Germination has definitely slipped with quite a bit of the seed simply not germinating. I notice this especially since most everything we grow I start in starter trays and then transplant. For instance when I plant in a starter tray, I put one or two seeds per slot, while if planted in the garden you might put six or eight seeds per hill like in the case of cucumbers.

One solution is to let nature create your own hybrid. The process of creating a hybrid can occur naturally by accident or intentionally by manual pollination. It is possible for the hybrid seed to be stabilized and in fact become an open pollinated plant which will continually grow true to type. The process involves growing out several generations of seed and every year painstakingly selecting only those identical to the parents and discarding the rest, or I should say eating the rest.

The only long term solution I see is to save your own seed from both the hybrids and open pollinated fruit or veggies. There are many videos showing how to save your own seed. Watch a few. Keep records of what you grow and when and where. Record as much info as you can. Talk to gardening friends and share what you have and have learned. Then when you replant next year only choose the fruit or veggie off your second-generation plant that is the best in regards to taste or size or growth characteristics. Save the seed from the best to plant next year. Each year you will not only have good eating, but you will have your own personally developed fruit or veggie.