When do you rely/fall back on hybrids?

[ottawagardener]

I have heard good things about that broccoli actually and have been meaning to try it!

[honeydew]

Well I'm an OP / heritage kinda minded gal, but from time to time I have been tempted to try this or that hybrid. The only two I have tried are yaya carrots, after buying them at the farmer's market, and sunnyvee corn, which didn't mature in time due to late planting/cooler microclimate the first summer we moved to where we are now.

Oh, and the first year I gardened I bought an Early Girl tomato plant, which I was thoroughly unimpressed with.

I have always been under the impression that there is no point to save seed from hybrids, now, with what I have been reading, I wonder if it is worth doing just for the fun of it...

Marie

[castanea]

I look for good germplasm in a variety of different plants. If it's hybrid and I want to keep it, then it's more work to stabilize it, but otherwise it's usually meaningless to me.

In some vegetable lines, the hybrids are really very easy to deal with. Hami melons immediately spring to mind. If you get hami melon seed from China, most of it is hybrid, but it really doesn't matter and here's why. All hami melon hybrid seed comes from breeding two superior lines of hami melons. Generally both parents produce excellent fruits. The hybrid normally has qualities that are relatively insignficant to me such as more consistent shape, better coloring, slightly higher brix, shorter ripeing time etc. If I plant seed from the hybrid melons, I'm still going to get a really goood hami melon even if I don't get every quality that was in the hybrid.

[littleminnie]

Sungold is also a hybrid I grow but I mean to try the OP version of sungold next year and see how that goes. It is funny that a lot of magazines and such list sungold with heirlooms. I have heard it is pretty stable but not sure. I haven't had volunteers from it but maybe that is because it cracks less than others. The volunteers I grew to maturity this season (that grew in an ok spot) were principe borghese and snow white or whatever that pale yellow cherry was called. These were both varieties I didn't like that got thrown around a lot. We'll see what volunteers sprout next season.

With the heat and humidity here I really look for bolt resistance in picking out things like baby bok choy, spinach, lettuce and broccoli rabe. Whatever gives me that I will grow. Also the PM resistant squash as I mentioned.

[DarJones]

Sungold segregates into quite a few unusual types none of which truly carries the parent flavor. There is even a red cherry that can segregate out of it. There are a couple of decent stabilized OP's if you care to dig around. I suggest getting one from Reinhard.

www.reinhard-kraft.de/

click on the fotogalerie

DarJones

[sandbar]

Bunkie, where do you buy your Umpqua broccoli seed? Or do you purchase transplants?

TIA.