Seeds Of Truth

If growing from seed is the thriftiest way to produce your own food, then using the seeds you’ve saved from crops certainly ups the ante.

- Erina Starkey

By saving seeds from cherished crops, you can reproduce the plants you love, year after year, without cost. What’s more, seeds saved from your garden will already be adapted to your soil, climate and garden conditions and will have a high germination rate.

Beyond the realm of your garden, the practice of saving seeds fosters wonderful heirloom varieties that represent a vast pool of genetic characteristics. This decreases the likelihood of varieties disappearing in the future, creating biodiversity in the food chain to protect us against plagues, crop failures or changing environmental conditions.

However, not every seed is worth saving. Understanding the difference between open-pollinating, cross-pollinating, self-pollinating, heirloom and hybrid varieties will help you decide which seeds to sow and which to throw.

HYBRID

Hybrids are the result of a cross between two plants of different varieties in the same family. This process can occur naturally or through human manipulation. While hybrid plant varieties are generally vigorous and hardy, their seeds do not produce the same plant. Hybrid plants are not stable enough to be self-sustaining so to replicate the variety you need to go back to the nursery and buy more. While you can still choose to sow the seeds, they lose their predictability and will grow into a new combination of the crossed genes. As there is no way to pursue a desired trait or replicate qualities, there’s no point saving the seeds.

Buying hybrid seeds means you’re also dependent on seed companies. When only a few commercial varieties are grown at large, unfortunately the overall diversity of fruit and vegetables is reduced.