Hey everybody. So, if you live in the Northern hemisphere, the seed catalogs have started
piling up in your mail box, the department stores and gardening centers are full of packets
of seed, and you're anxiously watching the weather forecast to find out just how soon
can you get that first packet of seed in the ground, but as you start flipping through
the catalogs and seeing what's offered on the shelves, you start to scratch your head,
because you see things like GMO, you see things like Hybrid, Heirloom, Organic and you're
not entirely sure what all of those terms mean. You've perhaps seen reports about Genetically
Modified Organisms or GMO's and you're concerned and you don't know what the right way to turn
is. Well, I want to address a few of those today without getting too far into detail
because I don't want the video to stretch on and on. I want you to just be at a comfortable
place where when you go to plant your seeds this spring, you know what you're getting into.
I want to start the video by first saying that you can relax a bit about the dangers
of you possibly planting GM or Genetically Modified seed. You simply will not on accident
purchase GM seed. It's not going to happen. There's no such thing as GM seed sitting on
the shelves of your local gardening center. They don't sell it in small packets. Instead
when you do find it, it's in large sacks that are going to cost hundreds of dollars because
they're meant to plant acres upon acres of that one crop. So no matter where you stand
on the pros or cons of Genetically Modified seed, don't worry about whether or not you're
going to be able to just accidentally purchase and plant some. It's not going to happen.
I'll get more about Genetically Modified seed in another video. It deserves its own time.
So let's get down into what you are actually going to find in your seed catalogs and on
the shelves at the store. I went to the store myself and I picked up a few packets of seeds.
This was one that says right across the top of it Heirloom Collection. Now Heirloom seeds
are those that are open pollenated and have been around for some time. They've proven
themselves as stable varieties and we know that the seed that they produce is true to
seed. Now what that means is that the seed that comes out of the fruit or out of the
flower is going to produce the exact same plant that that fruit grew on. The upside
of growing open pollinated or Heirloom varieties is that you can save the seed, or, said another
way, buy the packet once and never, ever again.
Now, the next kind that you might find are Hybrid seeds. I picked out this one from the
store because it was the most ominous sounding. It says G90 Hybrid. That just sounds scientific
and doesn't sound like food at all. Now I want to tell you a bit about Hybrids. Hybrids
are plants that have been selected to be cross bred by a person under controlled circumstances
to produce the seed that has certain valuable traits that they can then use that seed to
grow new plants. So what that really means is, let's say as you scroll through your catalogs,
you see something that says that it's an open pollinated variety and it's known to have
a certain disease resistance, and then you see another open pollinated variety that says
that it is very good for growing in hot humid conditions, but what if you want both? What
if you want something that's resistant to that disease and grows in a hot and humid
condition? Well, over time, and the course of hundreds of years, Mother Nature may well
devise a strain herself that does that, but some people can't wait that long and they
want to do something right now, so they take two plants and in a controlled measure, cross
pollinate them to produce a seed that produces a new plant, that the new plant has both the
traits to be resistant to a disease and do well in a hot and humid condition and when
they have that plant through controlled methods, they clone it and then they keep producing
seed off that same plant and keep selling that seed to you as a Hybrid seed. Now the
reason they produce it that way is because there's a catch about Hybrid seeds. You cannot
take the seed off of the plant and expect it to grow true to seed. It will grow, but
it's probably not going to grow, there's a lower chance of it growing, the same kind
of fruit, the same disease resistance or growing tolerance that the see that you purchased
from the store had. Instead, whatever it grows is going to be edible but it may not have
the traits that you were looking for. So the catch is that you end up having to go back
to whoever developed it to get the seed again. There's nothing Genetically Modified about
it, instead it's just someone speeding up natural selection and trying to get the desired
traits out of a particular plant that they want.
Now another one that I ran into at the store is this, and it simply says Organic. Now this
means nothing more than the plants that the seed was harvested from were grown in a way
that is in compliance with the USDA, or wherever you live, organics certification standards.
It does not mean that the seed itself is Heirloom, or Open Pollinated, or Hybrid. You still need
to check into that, if that is something that matters to you. Organic means nothing more
than the seed was grown or harvested off of a plant that was grown in the standards required
by your agencies organic certification standards.
So, I hope that that sort of summarizes and clarifies some of the things regarding the
different kinds of seed packets you're going to find. To put it again into one little bundle,
you're not, on accident, going to buy GM seed. You're not going to find it in the seed catalogs
that are coming from the major companies. You're not going to find it sitting on the
shelves of the gardening center or the department store. Heirloom or Open Pollinated seeds mean
that whatever you grow you can harvest the seed and grow the exact same plant again every
single year that you harvest. Hybrid seeds mean that someone selected some different
plants to give you a seed that is going to have a certain disease resistance or other
trait to it and if you want to grow it again, you're going to have to buy the seeds again.
I hope that this clarifies some things for you. Check back in the future. We're going
to have a whole another episode about GM or Genetically Modified seeds and tell you some
of the truths behind GM seed. Thank you all for watching. I hope you liked the video.
Please don't forget to share it with your friends. This is something that every planting
season I see questions all over social media about what it really means. Share it so that
your friends can get the answers that they're looking for. Give us a big thumbs up and don't
forget to subscribe to the channel. As always, we really appreciate you watching and so does the rooster.
We'll see you next time.