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9 Responses to “Free Heirloom Seeds”

1. 

   Mike H said on January 26th, 2010 at 2:50 am

   Thomas,

   Do you know if these seeds were open pollinated? Many seed companies sell mostly hybrid seeds which means that harvested seeds won’t come true. I’ve given up on the regular seed catalogues because they don’t clearly identify their open pollinated seeds. I now buy only heritage seeds because they will all be open pollinated.

   Dan Jason at the Seed and Plant Sanctuary for Canada has a very good how-to on vegetable seed saving at http://www.seedsanctuary.com/articles/seedsaving.cfm

   Mike

2. 

   Thomas W. said on January 26th, 2010 at 1:45 pm

   @Mike: Thank you for the link!
   The seeds that produced the seeds in the above article were organic, non-F1 hybrids according to the seed company website. I don’t know if that makes them open pollinated though?…

3. 

   Mike H said on January 26th, 2010 at 9:47 pm

   Organic is good but not directly related to whether or not the seeds will come true. F-1 means that it’s a first generation cross. Non-F1 simply means that more than one generation of breeding is involved. It is not likely that the seeds harvested will come true to what you grew. That’s not necessarily bad because the parents were selected for desirable characteristics.

   Open pollinated come true because the genetic characteristics have been stabilized over generations.

   As I said, the only way to be sure that seeds harvested from this year’s plants will produce the same plants next year, is to use open pollinated seeds aka heirloom seeds.

   Mike

4. 

   Thomas W. said on January 27th, 2010 at 1:44 pm

   @Mike: What exactly do you mean by seeds coming true? Is it when the 2010 generation of spinach looks and tastes like the 2009 generation of spinach? I’m thinking of ways to test this, like growing plants from 2009 seeds together with plants from 2010 seeds, but I think that would mess up the genes instantly, like with humans.
   What is common practice, do you scrap every seed from last year, or?…
   Separating plant generations by more than a mile (2 km) as stated in you link above is not very practical in my garden
   Anyway, I’m planning on sowing my saved spinach seeds this year, and if I’m lucky I can probably dig up some photos of the mother plants from 2009 and do a comparison.

5. 

   Mike H said on January 30th, 2010 at 2:54 pm

   Seeds coming true means that the seeds will produce plants that are the same as the parent.

   No, I harvest seeds from year to year but I grow only heritage seeds so I know that that I will always get plants the same as I had the previous year.

   The plants will adjust to my area over time and be hardier and stronger. I also like the idea of preserving genetic diversity by preserving heritage varieties. It’s also a good way to keep costs down.

6. 

   Thomas W. said on February 3rd, 2010 at 12:30 pm

   @Mike: I agree, saving seeds does make a lot of sense.

7. 

   Mike H said on February 6th, 2010 at 11:56 am

   Thomas,

   I was looking back over this thread and your comment about growing plants from 2009 seeds together with plants from 2010 seeds made me realize that I skipped over how you get the seeds from open pollinated varieties to come true. You have to isolate the flower from pollinators and do the pollinating yourself. Once pollinated you have to keep the flower isolated from pollinators until fruit appears. One of the best books that I’ve come across is Seed to Seed: Seed Saving Techniques for the Vegetable GardenerSuzanne Ashworth. It’s available at the http://www.bookdepository.com

8. 

   Thomas W. said on February 16th, 2010 at 5:12 pm

   @Mike: Thank you for explaining, and thank you for the tip about the book. I’ll definitely consider getting hold of a copy, as I have seen it mentioned a couple of times now.

9. Free beetroot & spinach seeds - Vegetable Gardening Forum said on June 11th, 2010 at 5:12 am

   [...] giving away spinach seeds too, grown in my garden in 2009. 4 bags left, one per person: http://happyfarming.com/2010/01/22/free-heirloom-seeds/ __________________ Learn how I grow my own food: [...]

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