Seeds are a really important part of growing vegetables,
and there can be a lot to consider when selecting which ones to use in our gardens and fields.
Some of us will seek out seeds that are certified organic, or would prefer seeds
that are produced locally, and others are happy with any inexpensive and easily available supply.
The viability and reliability of the seeds is an important aspect for those
of us who have struggled with poor quality seeds.
But it is the choice of varieties that tends to be focused on a lot more, especially the preference
for either heritage or hybrid varieties, and various other classifications in between
And the selection between the two seems to depend on a lot of different factors,
especially issues of control, reliability and our expectations of the future.
For me it is a mix of all of these, and to usually depends on the type of vegetable,
where I try to focus on what works best for me right now,
but this is starting to change as the focus of my growing shifts.
With a lot of vegetables I typically only grown one variety, something that seems to work,
even if I don’t have much to compare it to. But it is the tomato crop where we have grown
the most diverse range of varieties, including a trial of 54 varieties a few years ago,
and another trial of 28 varieties last season. The purpose of these trials was to find
varieties that worked well in this context and that we liked to eat.
The varieties that we selected tended to be older varieties,
often considered heritage varieties from other parts of the world.
But this was mainly because we are generally looking for flavour in tomatoes,
and we really like the large tomatoes that are more common among the older varieties.
This is quite a bit different from what a lot of large scale growers focus on,
where they generally seem to prefer smaller cherry, and medium size salad tomatoes,
often ones that don’t crack or split when travelling from the field to the market.
We do grow some of these smaller and medium size type of tomatoes but definitely lean towards the
varieties that we think produce tastier fruit. Almost all of the varieties that we selected to
grow again are open pollinated varieties, sometimes known as standard varieties,
which have been produced through careful breeding at some point in the past,
and maintained as a defined variety through controlled conventional pollination.
And quite a few of them would be known as heritage or heirloom varieties,
which is more of a classification of how long ago the variety was bred,
or ones that were a speciality of a particular region, some of which have become quite rare.
So heritage and open pollinated varieties are best able to supply what we want from a tomato crop,
at least what suits our current expectations and preferences.
But we have only been growing tomatoes in the protected microclimate of a polytunnel,
which greatly increases the number of varieties that we can choose from that will grow well.
But there is probably only a very limited range of different tomato varieties that will
grow well outside in this maritime climate that we have here in Ireland, and perhaps
a hybrid variety would work much better. That is what I found with the squash crop,
which is also a marginal crop to grow outside in this climate.
I had tried a number of different varieties of squash and pumpkin in the past,
some of which were reasonably successful when we had good growing seasons and others were not.
But it wasn’t until I started growing a F1 hybrid variety called Crown Prince,
which was recommended by other growers in this climate, that I started to get much
more consistent harvests of good quality squash. For the past 5 or 6 years I have been growing
primarily this variety, which is the type of squash we really like to cook with and has
a great taste, at least in the seasons that are warm enough for it to ripen.
This was the first hybrid or F1 variety of vegetables that I grew,
and the success I have had with it has prompted me to start trying other hybrid varieties.
I had previously avoided them, partially because my usual seed suppliers didn’t
stock any hybrid seeds, and I had also picked up a bias against these controlled varieties
because I wasn’t able to save seeds from them. But I have been growing for many years without
saving any seeds, so avoiding hybrids entirely for this reason didn’t make as much sense.
I still think that the inability to save seeds from hybrid varieties is a significant issue,
especially in the longer term, but in the shorter term and when starting out, I now feel that it
is much less of an issue than I use to. The fact that theses hybrid varieties are
highly controlled is a related concern, as they are essentially a proprietary product,
and we have to keep going back to the same source to buy new seeds every year.
Each batch of seeds from and hybrid variety can only be produced with a first generation or F1
cross breeding between two carefully bred and controlled parent plants,
all of which is kept a secret. This allows the breeders to be
the only source of these seeds, which allows them to profit from all of the work that goes
into developing and maintaining these varieties. But for many growers, these hybrid seeds offer
enough benefits to make it worth while paying the extra costs to be able to grow the varieties.
In the case of the hybrid squash I started growing, it was the ability to produce a lot
of tasty squash in a climate that usually isn’t very suitable for growing squash,
that made it worth paying more. For other growers it is often the
uniformity and increased yields of the crops that are the main benefit, though this is
often not so important for those of us growing at a small scale primarily to feed ourselves.
And hybrid varieties can offer disease resistance, faster growth, better flavour,
productivity or other desirable characteristics. Perhaps if all if the work that had gone into
breeding hybrid varieties had instead gone into breeding new open pollinated varieties,
then we may have seen lots of new varieties that are open and easy to save seeds from,
that have similar characteristics, but that is not the world that we live in.
We still use open pollinated seeds for most of the vegetables that we grow,
but I have been slowly trying other hybrid options over that past few years.
We now grow a hybrid variety of white turnip that I had seen other growers recommend, and
they are a lot more productive and tastier than the open pollinated varieties we used to grow.
We have also been starting to grow a few hybrid varieties of beetroot and carrots,
used by market gardeners, specifically because they are faster to mature for an earlier harvest.
In one of the larger polytunnels we only grow hybrid varieties of cucumber,
especially ones for pickling, but we also grow open pollinated varieties
in the other smaller tunnel, and have good crops from all of them.
We have settled into growing one hybrid variety of Calabrese or broccoli, a cabbage that is really
impressive, and the hybrid spinach variety we grow in the spring that works really well.
But in all these cases we don’t really know how they compare to other hybrid or
open varieties, especially for growing at different times of the year.
And it is the same with the hybrid courgettes or zucchini variety we rely on, as it works
really well, and having consistency between the gardens and seasons is useful for the types of
explorations we do, so we have stayed with it. But I don’t know if other hybrid or open
pollinated varieties would be better for dealing with some of the issues we have with these crops.
We tried a hybrid variety of aubergine or eggplant last year and it produced a much
better crop than the open pollinated variety we had been growing for years,
and we have definitely make the switch to hybrids for this crop at least for the foreseeable future.
When we started growing Pak Choi for the first time last year,
I decided to start to try a hybrid variety. I figured that with this kind of crop it might
be better to begin with a highly bred variety, until I get used to growing it as a crop, and
then in a few years to explore other hybrid and open pollinated varieties to see how they compare.
A common characteristic among most of the types of vegetables that I have tried hybrid seeds for
is that they are not so easy to save seed from. Most of them require extra care and attention
to avoid cross pollination, often leaving the plants in the ground for two seasons,
and requiring quite a few plants to maintain the genetic robustness of the variety.
And I find it interesting that there are often more hybrid varieties available for cauliflower
and other crops that are hard to save seeds from, but the types of vegetables plants that
are much easier to save seeds from often seem to have mostly open pollinated varieties available.
There are exceptions of course, especially with higher value fruiting crops,
but if it is easy to save seeds I am more likely to prefer open pollinated varieties, and am more
open to using hybrids for the others, at least until I get a bit more focused on seed saving.
But hybrid seeds can cost up to 50 times more than open pollinated seeds,
and this is one of the reasons why I have hesitated in the past in using them, but
this difference in cost can be a bit deceiving, especially at the scale that we are growing at.
For example, a packet of 25 seeds of the hybrid variety of squash that we grow works
out to about 20 cents per seed, but each seed if carefully grown, could produce 10-15kg of squash.
I can get open pollinated seeds much cheaper, but if I cannot get a good crop then it is a
waste of seed and growing space and effort. The cost of even the more expensive hybrid
seed can be insignificant compared to the what we might be able to harvest,
though I am still more hesitant about the cost of some of the hybrid seeds such as carrots.
The general trend toward buying more hybrid seeds does mean that the less popular varieties are
more likely to be dropped or discontinued by the seed companies, including a lot of
open pollinated and heritage varieties, a process I am probably contributing to.
I used to be quite interested in growing and saving seeds from varieties simply because
they were rare or at least a lot less common, or had an interesting story, origin or history.
Though that has been a lot less important for me in recent years, partially because
there are very few heritage vegetable varieties stills around that are actually from Ireland,
or that were grown here for a long time, most of that heritage seems to have been lost.
So, most of what is available are part of the heritage of some other place,
often with a very different climate to what we have here,
and I have become a lot less interested in growing varieties primarily because they are rare.
I have been more focused on growing an abundance, and developing
skills to become a lot more successful as a grower, to be able to consistently produce
abundant quantities of good quality vegetable, regardless of the type of varieties I grow.
Both hybrid and open pollinated varieties are still part of that, including ones
considered to be heritage or heirloom varieties, though this has been changing more recently.
There is a big focus on heritage or heirloom varieties as part of the climate change adaptation
and for preparing for the possibility of abrupt societal collapse.
Genetic diversity could really be a benefit in a changing climate,
and varieties that can produce well in less than ideal conditions can offer more resilience.
But in order for this to be useful, I think that we actively need to be
testing and trialing varieties, and possibly breeding new ones, rather
than simply assuming that the older heritage or heirloom varieties are going to be better.
And I think there is a definite role for the use of hybrid varieties in scenarios of
rapid adaptation and change, even in more extreme prepper scenarios.
I see some hybrid varieties as beneficial bridging or transition varieties, that can
be useful in producing an abundance, quickly, especially with the potential increased yield,
disease resistance and other characteristics of the hybrids that are available.
Although I cannot save seeds from these varieties, and they may be more difficult to purchase in the
future, I have been buying extra quantities of seeds for the hybrid varieties that I know
work well, and storing them in the freezer. Even if I may not be able to continue to grow
these varieties in the long term, right now they can be beneficial.
And if things get really serious, I have a stash of useful hybrid seeds I know I can rely on,
and that I can share with others, so that we can grow as much food as possible,
while we take the time to transition to whatever else might happen in the future.
As we are developing more growing spaces in this RED Gardens Project,
I have been interested in doing a lot of variety trials of different types of vegetables,
to find varieties that work well in our context. And with the types of vegetables that are
relatively easy to save seeds from, I want to save seeds from all the open pollinated
varieties that do even reasonably well. I want to build up a reserve of many varieties,
even if they are not the best varieties for our context, so that there is a diversity of varieties
to share and potentially use in the future, even though this does take extra space and effort.
But if some of the hybrid varieties do significantly better, or have
characteristics that are useful it might be time to buy in extra seeds if I can.
Unfortunately the choice of seeds that we can buy has been impacted by Brexit, which has cut off
our usual seed suppliers in the UK, which means that some of the hybrid and open pollinated seeds
that we have come to rely on are harder to get. And with everything going on in the world, it is
safe to assume, I think, that seed availability may be further impacted in the future.
For many people who are only starting to learn how to grow,
I think all this discussion about heritage vs hybrid varieties can be a bit of a distraction.
I think it is much more important to encourage people to be really successful as growers first,
so that they can feed themselves and possibly others.
I have found that with some vegetables, heritage and open pollinated varieties
are really appropriate, and in other cases hybrid varieties can really help,
especially while we learn, and get established.
And when we have the skills, experience, and knowledge and have developed our growing spaces,
then we can go on to the next levels of building resilience.
To wean ourselves off of the varieties and seed supplies that are controlled by others,
to become much more focused in saving our own seeds, and possibly even breeding new varieties,
in addition to developing personal, local and regional sufficiency in
all of the other resources and materials that we need for growing our own food.