Should Hybrid Vegetable Seeds Be Saved? – Growing a plant, by itself, till it is the purest form of itself, sometimes taking years to perform, is what is called a pure plant. It is taking that plant, the best that it can be, and cross pollinating it with yet another pure plant. Two best of the best plants, mixed into one plant through hand pollination. You now have a Hybrid plant; a plant that contains the characteristics of two pure plants, in one. It can take years and years to get what is considered a pure plant. It takes growing it season to season to season till it not only looks good, produces good, healthy foliage and flowers, but healthy and delicious fruit as well.
Saving seeds, all kinds of seeds, are entirely possible. Seed Saving enthusiasts all over the world grow plants, just for seed saving, for their own uses as well as for their own entrepreneurial aspects. Some people save seeds just to share with the world, such as on seed trading sites. You might be surprised on how many different types of varieties and species one might come up with just by trading with someone who is half way across the world; twilight rose seeds for better boy tomato and such. It is big, big, big in the gardening, growing world.
Not saving Hybrids
Saving hybrid seeds is not recommended though. Just the thought of being able to recreate that tasty, beautiful plant and fruit that came out of ones garden just this past growing season, makes a gardener tingle with excitement. The hybrid plants are cared for lovingly, matured to perfection and then the seeds taken gently and carefully to their resting place till the next growing season comes about. A sad disappointment comes about, when the next growing season produces a fruit that looks nothing like what the year before produced. The newly grown hybrid seeds are no longer a pure version of their previous ancestors. Even if you cross pollinate them with another of the same saved seeds, you are yet again, cross pollinating your plants and the results will not be what you expected.
A new unsavory hybrid
Growing a hybrid from saved seeds often times will produce an off version of what its beautiful predecessor was. Once you have an original hybrid, now growing, it must be pollinated with another plant, preferably one of the same species. Here you are doing something similar to trying to create a ‘pure plant’ except you are not creating yet another version of the hybrid you once grew. You are creating a plant that has the characteristics of two hybrids and the mixture can end up better or much worse than you have ever imagined. On the upside, some plants may very well end up tastier, with lacking foliage. On the downside, you may end up with a plant, with an off tasting fruit and lacking foliage. The disappointment of what might have happened to your wonderful, previously grown hybrid plant can be devastating.
Continuing to save seeds
Thinking positively though, we have lots of people who have the time, energy and space to continue to grow pure plants, so that we may enjoy true hybrids in the all their excellence. If you do have the time and space to do so, then it is possible for you to create your own form and version of a hybrid, of your own liking. It can take years to create and may only be good for one beautiful year but once done, your efforts can be noted world wide and people will want to try some of the seeds from your new hybrid plants.
