i was talking with a CSA farmer friend yesterday, and she told me that for a number of reasons she doesn't grow heirlooms.

I asked her "why, wouldn't saving your own seeds cut some of the cost?", and she replied that since she grows only 14 varieties of tomatoes (2,000 plants total), if they were all heirlooms she would be restricting the genetic pool by starting to save seeds from the initial "parents" plants year after year, and the resulting offspring would lose vigor.

That got me thinking. Do plants (tomatoes in this case) have to be "hybridized" (cross within the same species) in order to get better? Is there a way to keep the purity of a certain strain without compromising the long term health of the variety?
As small scale, backyard gardeners, should we always buy hybrid seeds rather that save our own in order to avoid too much "inbreeding"?

Does anybody have an opinion on this?

I run the risk of sounding very uninformed, but in my area, everyone is very big on learning to save seeds, holding workshops, etc., and I never even knew it compromised the descendants. If that's true, that's disappointing. Why save then?

The idea of saving seeds is appealing to me, but I have concerns about maintaining vigor, disease resistance, and predictability.

I too am uninformed, but I beleive that as a practical matter, saving seeds, with the intent of maintaining a healthy, varied garden year after year will require an investment in time for record keeping, cleaning, drying, sorting and storage that I am just not ready to make yet.

quote:

Originally posted by Octave:
As small scale, backyard gardeners, should we always buy hybrid seeds rather that save our own in order to avoid too much "inbreeding"?

Does anybody have an opinion on this?

Are you kidding? Most everyone here has an opinion on everything!

My opinion is no.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't an F1 hybrid (the typical hybrid seed produced for sale) simply a direct cross between two open-pollinated (often heirloom) varieties that have been inbred for long periods of time? The constant inbreeeding of the parents provides the desirable traits that the hybridizers wish to incorporate into the the new seed. Wouldn't those parent strains suffer the same loss of vigor that any other heirloom variety would suffer if your friend is correct?

Some heirlooms have been around for over a hundred years while producing vigorously the whole time. My Brandywine tomatoes that have been producing huge crops are from a strain that is said to trace back to the 1880s or 90s. The key to maintaining a vigorous heirloom is simple, only save seed from the healthiest, most vigorous plants.

Maybe someone with more knowledge of plant genetics can set me straight. I''d like to see some research that explains your friends opinion.

If we were to grow only hybrids, we would actually be severely reducing the available gene pool that may be needed in the future. Keeping these valuable strains in existance is our insurance that we do not allow a few multi-national corps to solely determine the fate of our food supply.

I'm down to only a couple of hybrid varieties in my garden these days and I'm working on eliminating them. In addition to the cost savings of producing my own seed and having old friends growing in my garden, I'm not supporting an industry that has shown gross social irresponsibilty.

An example. Hybridizing seed is very labor intensive and though we don't often purchase hybrid cotton seed for our home gardens, much of the work is done by hundreds of thousands of children in India between the ages of 6 and 14. Multi-national corporations (including Guess Who?) purchase this seed to sell world-wide though, of course, they deny any knowledge of the use of child debt-bondage as the source of their product.

So again, my opinion is no.

Wayne

I totally agree with Wayne.

Also, I would add that saving your seeds makes for *stronger* plants, not weaker.

The reason is that you are saving seeds from the plants that produced the best, and thrived in YOUR environment. Over the years, your plants would keep getting BETTER, not worse.

Verses buying seeds from China, or even well managed seeds from the US, produced 3 states away.

Even if you lived next door to a seed company, I would argue that your saved seeds would be better, since those plants had been adapting to YOUR yard.

Oh, and no, I don't save my own seed.

I agree with Alaskan on the adaptation factor.

Whether it's edible or ornamental, hybridizing (breeding) for certain features *can* result in offspring that are more desirable than the parents - for whatever reason. However, I've never heard the argument that future heirlooms from saved seeds will lose vigor.

I think she is misinformed, and perhaps listening to seed company propaganda.

I consider saving seed practically a duty. It's not only helpful for the home gardener, it's a service to humanity and the planet.

I essentially agree with you all.

I'm going to save my heirloom seeds, and even some from my hybrids just for fun, because that is a better option, IMO.

I really don't know what to think about the farmer friend other than if I were her, I'd try to be more self-sufficient. She says she buys from Jung every spring, and she would never do it differently. She also says heirlooms don't have the "portability" factor (in other words: thick skin) of the hybrids, they are more predictable, less work (no need to spend time saving seeds), and taste just as good. Actually she kind of hinted that she mostly grows customers' favorites, so perhaps the demand for uniformity doesn't come from her. It almost sounds like we are dealing with a supermarket culture, after all.

As a rule hybrids will not produce seeds true. An F-1 hybrid is a cross of two open pollinated, or heirloom, plants, and some of these can produce viable seed true to type, but then you get an F-2 and what you get crossing them is anyones guess. One reason the hybridize is to get some better genetics, maybe disease resistance, maybe early fruit, maybe better taste (not), Some reason, but many heirlooms have these traites, plants do not survive many eons without having a good reason to survive.
That CSA farmer friend does not really understand what she is talking about.

There is a really sad story about a wheat farmer in Canada that had the family farm, generations old, and they managed and saved their own seeds for all those years, giant silos full, seeds that had gotten better and stronger for their location, gave quality wheat and stood up well to the weather.

Then the neighboring farm started planting Round Up resistant wheat and it blew onto this family farm, and contaminated their plants, which contaminated their seeds. And Monsanto sued them, claiming they had not paid the fee for using their seeds (they claim all rights to any of their genetics that gets into other seeds) and forced them to destroy their seeds. It ruined these people's farm, broke their hearts.

It just goes to show how powerful saving seeds can be when you know what you're doing, and how it threatens giant corporations who want to be the only ones providing seed.

But like Kimm said, hybrids don't always do what you expect, and the plants have to be isolated and protected so that the local insects that pollinate don't get there first.

And diversity is important, even for providing different kinds of pollen for the bees and other pollinating insects. They get stronger the more diverse their pollen source is, so even if we save seeds, we should do it with many types of tomatoes, and many other plants, not just a few.

Percy Schmeiser...that's a story to make anyone upset at the mass agriculture that runs our lives...

Saving seeds is definitely an advantage over time, but only if you stay put. When people once had no choice but to save seeds they had tremendous success, as with tomatoes for example, because over generations of saving the best fruit for seed, the plants became perfectly adapted to that soil, that climate, those local pest populations, rainfall amounts, and so forth.

When we moved south from New England Brandywines did poorly in Tennessee's hot summers, but after five years of selective seed-saving, we now grow a tremendous crop with no trouble.

Mother Nature knows best.

quote:

Originally posted by Octave:

That got me thinking. Do plants (tomatoes in this case) have to be "hybridized" (cross within the same species) in order to get better? Is there a way to keep the purity of a certain strain without compromising the long term health of the variety?
As small scale, backyard gardeners, should we always buy hybrid seeds rather that save our own in order to avoid too much "inbreeding"?

Does anybody have an opinion on this?

There could be a couple good reasons why a commercial grower NEEDS to use F1 seed.

1. The buyer requests it.
2. Some of the F1 hybrids ship better.
There could well be others but those two leap to my mind first.

Inasmuch as our shipping needs are from the yard to the table, we may not need to stack our produce in crates for a ten day transit.

Also we don't need a crop to ripen nearly all at the same time, for mechanical collection.

The grower at discussion here may have those needs ie an eastern market and or specifically demanded cultivars.

IMO this is like comparing apples and oranges.

I want a perfumed thin skinned succulent tomato. I get to choose. She may not have that luxury.

Speculation of OP tomatoes being back breed to make them somehow 'truer to type' is impracticle to a perfect blooming plant like tomato.

If OP have a blessing and Monsatan needs to be defamed it is the redundancy of OP tomato seed stocks being managed by small growers. Monopolism can only produce famine ultimately.

In this old world there are too many idealogues and zealots who's need for armagedon will find any chink in Monsatan's bottom line

quote:

Originally posted by Tom C zone 4/5:
In this old world there are too many idealogues and zealots who's need for armagedon will find any chink in Monsatan's bottom line

Then there's a lot of us who see the actions of this company to be truly evil.

Call us idealogues and zealots if you wish, but to think we have a need for armagedon is just, well, dumb.

We don't need armagedon. Or insults for that matter.

Wayne

You get to be called a zealot or in search of armagedon if you plan to find out where and how Monsanto grows its seed stocks and do mischif there.

I save my own seed and barter it, and hold a hope that we-us small gardeners don't ever have to pick up the slack of Monsanto's avarice.

IMO Monsanto's monopolism is a weak link that no amount of "Homeland Security" can ever adaquately guard against.

Hm and frankly again IMO Monsanto is avaricious enough to engineer the famine for percieved profit.

quote:

Then the neighboring farm started planting Round Up resistant wheat and it blew onto this family farm, and contaminated their plants, which contaminated their seeds. And Monsanto sued them, claiming they had not paid the fee for using their seeds (they claim all rights to any of their genetics that gets into other seeds) and forced them to destroy their seeds. It ruined these people's farm, broke their hearts.

quote:

Percy Schmeiser...that's a story to make anyone upset at the mass agriculture that runs our lives...

Assuming you're talking the same story, and it's likely you are, Schmeiser's still farming.

The lawsuit Monsanto filed against him ended in '04 with Schmeiser having been found to infringe on the patents since he knowingly collected and used seed he realized was contaminated by RR genes, but there was no reward to Monsanto since he didn't economically benefit from infringing on the patent.

The countersuit by Schmeiser against Monsanto was settled this spring, with Monsanto agreeing to pay the costs of cleaning up Schmeiser's property now and in the future from RR contamination.

BTW, the reason Schmeiser knew about the contamination is he uses RoundUp for weed control.