Better Veggies With Heirloom Seeds
Friday, April 30th, 2010An increasing percentage of seed companies are marketing and repeatedly selling heirloom vegetable seeds to discerning gardeners. Heirloom seeds often grow distinctively flavored vegetables which our forebearers used to dine on in the days before modern hybrid seeds. Of course, today’s hybrid vegetables remain healthy, tasty, and easier to grow when measured against heirloom vegetables. As a matter of fact, these advantages are the reasons which led to the creation of hybrid seeds in the first place. However, just as with homemade jelly and handcrafted quilts, many people think the added attention that these vegetables call for is merited by the old-fashioned aroma and the nostalgic connection to our ancestors. Another must see is the Black & Decker CMM1200 Cordless Electric Mower.
Generally speaking, the vegetable seeds which are called heirloom seeds should share two traits. They must be open-pollinated, and the variety needs to be no less than 50 years old. Although a few seeds currently featured in catalogs or stores may meet one of the aforementioned standards, they must actually meet both requirements for an established seed company to label them Heirloom. Don’t forget to look at the Black & Decker MM875 Mulching Mower.
Most seeds on the market right now are labeled as Hybrids. A hybrid is a variety which is the outcome of cross-pollinating two genetically separate plants. The problem encountered with hybrids is, they can’t replicate themselves. If you plant these seeds, then recover the seeds from the hybrid plants, that next generation of seeds will merely contain the traits of one of its genetic predecessors. Possibly a very basic explanation might help. If certain seeds produce hybrid plants that are a cross-pollination of red peppers and yellow peppers, the hybrid might create orange peppers. If you remove the seeds from the orange peppers and plant them, the resulting plants will just produce either green or yellow peppers.
Heirloom seeds, however, are open-pollinated seeds. As a result, if you harvest seeds from these plants, the next group of plants will grow ‘true to type, in other words, the identical vegetable will keep growing generation after generation. The ability of open-pollinated vegetables to copy themselves is the reason these varieties have continued producing for so many years.
While the fifty year minimum for establishing the heirloom varieties may appear to be arbitrary, the decade after the Second World War delineates the start of when American seed companies were developing and advertising the more durable hybrid vegetable seeds. Today’s gardeners have developed a new approval for the older vegetable varieties, however, and the seed companies have responded by devoting increasing amounts of advertizing space to Heirloom vegetables.
Please do not presume that hybrid vegetables are always inferior. The research which produced today’s hybrid vegetables has produced less expensive planting and higher yields in American agriculture, and that has multinational advantages. Heirloom vegetables are preferred by many home gardeners, though, as a result of their texture and flavor, and their tendency to bring back memories of Grandma’s tomato soup.