When do you rely/fall back on hybrids?

[littleminnie]

There was a post today that mentioned being flexible about certain hybrids. Especially when you grow for market, you may choose to use hybrids sometimes. I was wondering what veggies other people tended to go with hybrids for. I use hybrids a lot for brassicas, sweet corn if I grow it, and onions. I have loved the Goliath jalapeno but have seen other hybrids as large but cheaper. Otherwise I do OP peppers. I have enjoyed growing PM resistant summer squash if I can find it but otherwise OP is not different than hybrid in squash to me. I have grown 3 hybrid tomatoes for a few years: Goliath, Sungold and a determinate paste type. Next year I am growing 0 hybrid tomatoes. They didn't do any better for me this season. In fact every Goliath had a crack.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Mostly I don't pay attention to whether something is a hybrid or not.

I consider the term "hybrid" to have more to do with marketing than with performance. I plant a lot of hybrid peppers and tomatoes whatever the nursery is offering. They don't do any better or any worse than the open pollinated peppers and tomatoes that I get from the nursery. My land-race tomatoes do a lot better than just about everything from the nursery. Hybrid corn does much worse for me than the open pollinated varieties that I am growing.
I suspect that many varieties that are marketed as F1 hybrids really aren't.

With squash, watermelon, and cantaloupes I can't tell any difference.

At least for me if I was going to fall-back to a safe and reliable seed, it would be towards open pollinated and not towards hybrids.

[spacecase0]

I will not use hybrid seeds unless I have made them.
or I plan to breed something with it,
or if I happen to have them,
but spending money on new seeds each year for some marketing promised short term gain seems pointless to me.

[paquebot]

I also use mostly hybrids for brassica and peppers. Carrots are about 50/50. I want them for eating and thus want to get the most for my money. I've grown Golden Bantam sweet corn before but would only go back to it if there were no hybrids left. But in all my years, only grew 2 hybrid tomato varieties. One was from Czechoslovakia in the mid-1980s and the other was Juliet the first year that she was available.

Martin

[flowerpower]

I realized that when I first started to garden, I tended to choose OPs. Because those seeds were cheaper. Like 10 for a buck then. Look at the seeds in the dollar stores, there are alot of op types. Maybe every 2 yrs, I grab a pack of the sweetest bicolor corn I can find. Just to grow a few ears for myself. I will save seeds from hybrids I buy at a market.

[mjc]

Another, older name for Open Pollinated...Standard varieties.

[seedywen]

As a small market gardener, networked cooperatively with most of the larger market gardeners in our district, offer the opinion that sourcing quality seed, both open-pollinated and hybrid, over the past ten years, has been a challenge.

In recent years, here in the Canadian Pacific Northwest, growing conditions have lobbed curveballs without number. Often the only predicability is 'unpredicability'.

Hence most of the people I know utilize hybrids, especially short season, most varieites, in an attempt to bring product to main season market. Outside on the main season, people try to extend their season, early, late, overwintering by any varieties, often utilizing open-pollinated, 'heritage' varieties.

We currently have a community Seed Saving Project ongoing, to try and source these open-pollinated varieties from local growers. However still a long way, in my opinion, from creating a viable local seed bank for community resilience. Speaking as someone committed to the 'cause'

[ottawagardener]

Seedywen: Sounds like a worthwhile project. I don't use hybrids anymore though as mentione above, there are certainly hybrids in my garden as I don't generally segregate for my own use preferring to mix things up. I was almost convinced to try hybrid broccoli/cauliflower/cabbage because I used to have a hard time growing them but it turned out that what I was really having trouble with was cultivation practices and maybe some degregated OP types than really needing hybrids. However, I don't market garden so I'm not sure if I would sing a different tune if there was something really specific my customers were looking for?

[littleminnie]

However, I don't market garden so I'm not sure if I would sing a different tune if there was something really specific my customers were looking for?

It is extremely important for me to have broccoli the entire season. That is my cash crop- side shoots of broccoli. So that is a crop I just can't risk using an OP on. But I agree that sometimes people make more out of heirlooms being harder to grow than they really are. Like I said, this bad tomato season proved that hybrids didn't do any better than heirlooms. I also didn't see a difference in peppers nor in summer squash. There used to be an OP summer squash called Romulus that was PM resistant. I wish I had saved the seed (long story) because it doesn't seem to be available anymore. I have found (not to change the subject) that the zuc leaves that are thinner and frillier get PM less than the wider leaves. Anton F1 and Romulus OP are like that and do well for me...

[sandbar]

I grow one hybrid tomato, Sungold (or Sunsugar ... I forget ... they're both sweet, orange colored cherry tomatoes), but there are some I've trialed in the past. I just prefer the OP maters' taste, color, shape and heritage.

I only grow hybrid sweet corn often selecting early, mid and late season varieties which I plant all at the same time and get harvest through the summer.

I do primarily grow hybrid pumpkins selecting varieties with powdery mildew tolerance.

I've tested hybrid squash (zuke, butternuts, etc.) and haven't found their performance much different than the OP varieties. I do grow hybrid acorn squash because my OP variety just doesn't do well for me.

So, a few hybrids for specific, market purposes ... but, I'm really a 90%+ OP grower. No hybrids in peppers ... my OP peppers' flavor knock out the hybrids!!

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Nov 17, 2010 10:03:20 GMT -5 ottawagardener said:

I don't market garden so I'm not sure if I would sing a different tune if there was something really specific my customers were looking for?

For what it's worth, from a purely semantic point of view... Most of the plants in an outcrossing open pollinated population are F1 hybrids... And I don't think that "heirloom" and "open pollinated" have much to do with each other.

If I provide sweet corn, tomatoes, peppers, carrots, cucumbers, onions, beets, and summer squash my customers are happy. It doesn't matter what variety I plant. It doesn't matter if I take them big, or small, or red or yellow, or purple. I would be so bored taking the same variety to market every week, or every year. My customers would be so bored if the only thing I took to market looked exactly like what they can get at the grocery store.

Of course I market diversity as something that makes my vegetables special... So I offer all the benefits of organic... Plus the benefits of more and better nutrition because of the extra colors... Plus the benefit of dealing with a farmer that is maintaining a genetically viable crop that will be here for the long haul despite political, social, or environmental troubles.

The best thing ever is to open up a half dozen cobs of Astronomy Domine multi-colored sweet corn and put them in a bag on the table... I love the happiness on people's faces when they learn about it.

And when I plant land-race cucumbers every person that visits can find something that is their perfect cucumber. Broccoli is not a socially favored vegetable here so I don't grow much, but I imagine that it would be the same for broccoli as it is for corn or cucumbers.

[DarJones]

I rely on hybrids for some specific vegetables like corn and brassicas which have serious problems if they are inbred or open pollinated. As Joseph says, if you plant a diverse population of corn, most of the seed will be hybrids so you can grow your own.

For tomatoes and peppers, there are only a few hybrids that I will grow and that is because of specific flavor or disease tolerance. Sungold, Mountain Magic, Big Beef, and Amelia are my current hybrid tomatoes. For my own use, I tend to grow open pollinated varieties which have flavor and production such as Druzba, Eva Purple Ball, Burgundy Traveller, Heidi, and Brandywine. For peppers, I am having excellent results with Island Sunset bell pepper and Chapeau de Frade medium hot. I grow a couple of hybrids for customers such as Super Chili and Boris Banana because I have not yet found an open pollinated pepper with the production, flavor, and other traits needed for a good hot sauce pepper.

I am just as happy with yellow crookneck squash as with any of the modern hybrids with one exception. I really like Zephyr squash from Johnny's.

Cabbage, Broccoli, and Cauliflower that I grow are all hybrids for the simple reason that I can't get the performance from any open pollinated varieties. This is primarily a result of my hot humid climate. Bonanza broccoli, Snow King cauliflower, Gonzales cabbage are varieties that work in my local climate.

Cantaloupes and watermelons will always be open pollinated varieties. You can't get better than the flavor of Yellow Moon & Stars or Ledmon or for that matter, a really good Congo or Jubilee. Susan Healy makes a very good melon as does Rocky Ford.

I don't grow any hybrid beans, peas, cowpeas, limas, peanuts, or other legumes.

DarJones

[Darth Slater]

I grow for market, and only grow OPs, I have grown hybrids also, and my OPs just perform better, I find in tomatoes there is such a wide variety that if you need a specific trait it may be harder to track down but most can do the same as thier hybrid counter parts. Watermelons for me are different I like pony yellow a.ka the explodo melon and Yellow doll, I grew 5 differnet species this year and those were by far the sweetest and productive, I had great results with black tail mountain but it just didnt have the flavor. I am not so knowledgable about corn, But I have always done well with se candy corn and Sh2 varieties. Hopefully Joseph and Dar can change that for me. I am looking forward to trying their popcorn!! I also have a huge field for sweet corn.

[seedywen]

Interesting to read about the diversity of experience among this growing community.

I started gardening in the interior West Kootenays,(about 200 miles north of Spokane) where summers tended to be shorter and warmer then where presently garden on the B.C. west coast, 2 km from the ocean, 300' above sea level, zone around 7b.

In the Kootenays, gardened on sandy soil, on property that sloped to meet the Kootenay River. Here, garden on deep blue clay soils, deposited after the last ice age. Growing crops and saving the seed have been very different from one region to the next.

In the interior, crops and seeds matured relatively quickly(all that extra sunlight) Conserving water with deep mulches a necessity.
Here the growing season extends far longer and to an extent(maximized with careful planning) through the winter. However some years, I find it difficult to get even early hybrid corn to mature sufficiently by October. The variety of diseases/pests make food growing, a constant learning curve.

That said, I save seed of almost every vegetable/herb/flower I grow unless there are reasons to propagate by other means. I'm learning from the people on this forum all the time, on what might like to try next. Which is very helpful, given, our Farmers' Institute, grower's network sponsors the annual community seed exchange and garden fair.

The dedicated seed savers among us, 'seed' the exchange with about a thousand, packages of locally grown,(hopefully) quality seed so that when the doors open, there's lots of varieties to choose from, that we know, generally grow well in our region. The starter packages are 50 cents each, which keeps the price affordable for almost everyone. Plus any leftover packages are either forwarded on to other community Seedy Saturdays(and vice versa) or given to community garden projects like church groups, schools, health authorities etc. or individuals.

However less this description seem entirely rosy, there remains the ongoing challenge of quality of seed itself especially that which comes in from the public and the misnaming of varieties on the packages. Generally I advise participants of both Seedy Saturday and the Project itself, to use these seeds as 'part' of their annual seed supply, not the whole. To source from other seed-savers like share on these forums or purchase seed from reliable companies.

A number of growers have noticed some degradation of seed available from even the same companies, over time, plus the disappearance of favorite and treasured varieties from the catalogs.

These last topics seem to be popular around here too!
Hence the importance of net-working.

[bunkie]

we grow no hybrids except those we've made or those we've traded with. the OPs we grow do very well here. and, as joseph mentioned, variety is wonderful for farmers market. the huge long oriental cukes customers are fascinated with. tomatilloes got everyone excited before they were popular. different colored toms and peppers also are a hit.

those having truble with broccoli might try the variety 'Umpqua'. we grew that this year, and it out produced all otheers we had tried, and after a heavy frost is still producing. (mainly sideshoots)