About F1 Seeds

If you ever wondered what’s behind the F1 label on some seeds, then here’s a little info:

F1 stands for Filial 1 as in first generation. An F1 seed is the child of inbred parents, where each parent has been self pollinated for 8 to 10 generations. This is a labour-intensive process that takes place in greenhouses, which is why F1 seeds are more expensive than other seeds.

Since we’re playing the grow-your-own-food game here, we have the following advantages:

• Higher yield (who doesn’t want that?)
• Resulting plants are uniform (better planning)

and the disadvantages:

• Resulting plants are uniform (boring)
• Plants mature at the same time (the output is not spread over time)
• Seeds from F1 plants are very low quality (you are at the mercy of the seed companies)
• More expensive due to hand pollination (you’ll need more money to play this game)