I had a very good mix of heirloom and hybrid tomatoes this year. The hybrids looked better, tasted better and produced much better. Say what you want about heirlooms but I won't give them garden space again. Hybrids all the way for this PA gardener from now on!
Rich Zone 5-6
I'm glad you are satisfied with your hybrids, but if there weren't heirloom plants, don't you think the price of the hybrid plants would go up? Just sayin'.
It's always good when someone finds a cultivar that suits their taste and growing conditions. I would never suggest that people should persist with growing things that don't suit them - that's what it is all about getting fresh produce that you enjoy. And there are some cases where over time many people have found that hybrids are superior to open pollinated varieties, for example sweet corn.
There are a few things to consider though:
- Many people have had the reverse experience, open pollinated tomatoes tasted better to them than hybrids. It is hard to do representative tests on your own, as I said to you before, growing one heirloom in one season in one location doesn't say anything about all the others. There has been at least one large systematic tastings and testing of tomatoes that concluded that overall heirlooms tasted and yielded better (Diggers Club, Victoria).
- If you stick to hybrids you cannot usefully keep the seed for yourself or swap with neighbours and your choice of cultivars will be restricted. You must go back to the supplier every year and pay what they ask, and in the case of tomatoes you will be limited to a small fraction of the cultivars available. One reason there are so many cultivars is that people kept breeding and selecting until they got one that suited them in their conditions. That is impossible with F1s.
- I have a small problem with big business controlling food production. I know it is the only way it can be done for now and feed enough people but it isn't the only way or the only way for ever. I have a big problem with big business controlling the means of food production, which is what you get with GM crops and F1 hybrid seeds.
I find it odd that you post from a country that prides itself on individualism and has half the population rabidly wanting to reduce controls on the individual (by government) but you seem quite happy to hand your lives over to big business who are not elected and only exist to make a profit. To me keeping control of seeds, that humans have taken thousands of years to breed, in the hands of the individual is just common sense. That may be "doomsday fear" around your place (Atlanta?) but is it really irrational?
David
LOL! I expressed precisely the same viewpoint very much earlier this year. Early on, I composted all of my "Brandywine" except one and, based on yield, keeping _it_ was a waste of good dirt. As I see it, entertaining this, that, or the-other "heirloom" is foisting upon oneself all of the reasons reliable hybrids were developed in the first place. Who needs it? But then, again, I am neither tomato connoisseur nor among the "heirloom" cognoscenti, I suppose. Sentiment or some irrational "doomsday" fear are not among the reasons that I grow vegetables.
Yes I would imagine the price of seed would go up if it weren't for heirlooms. However, I don't mind spending a few bucks for a pack of seeds. For the home gardener, the price of seed don't matter near as much as it would to a large commercial operation that sets thousands of plants. My slow release granular fertilizer costs me a lot more than seed :)
Rich
Obviously, investment bankers aren't fellow men, because they can make a mess out of the myth of a free market.
I hear that the price of tomato seeds went up in Mozambique, a couple of days ago.
I'm a shade of green. My mate enjoys both of those vegetables far more than I and I'd willingly add them to the garden but neither is suited to this climate. There've been atttempts at growing asparagus in the northern portion of the state but with little success and I found one account of home garden success with artichokes, also, in N. FL.
This area has two seasons: Jan-Feb and Summer. "Spring" might be a week or two, not necessarily comprised of successive days, in late Feb or early Mar. On the plus side, there never is a time without flowers or fresh kitchen garden produce.
LOL! That's too rich. No offense, but that you would make such a blanket statement leads me to believe you ignorant of what investment bankers do in the economy and to suspect you have drunk of the "progressive" Kool-Aide. Neither here nor there in a gardening forum, though, eh?
If I wanted a drunken fool, you'd be my pick.
""Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders' equity, myself (Alan Greenspan) included, are in a state of shocked disbelief," he told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. . . Mr. Greenspan brushed aside worries about a potential bubble, arguing that housing prices had never endured a nationwide decline and that a bust was highly unlikely."
No housing bubble? Why are so many people in default then?
ROBERT SCHEER: I covered these hearings in Washington when the Clinton Administration in the '90s basically fulfilled the promise of the Reagan Revolution. Reagan was not able to reverse the sensible regulations of the New Deal of Franklin Delano Roosevelt designed to prevent us from getting into another depression. And those regulations of Glass-Steagall, which Feingold was against--was for keeping and against reversing, said that investment banks playing with supposedly rich people's money should not be allowed to merge with commercial banks that were using the deposits of people that were insured by the taxpayers and that these were different activities. And Reagan could never pull off that kind of deregulation. In fact, because of the savings and loan scandal at the end of his term, he actually had to sign off on increased financial regulation. But when Clinton came in, he brought in one of the big players on Wall Street, Robert Rubin, who has been head of Goldman Sachs, and basically turned to him and said, "You know, what do I need to do to get Wall Street on my side?" And they said, reverse what they considered to be onerous financial regulation. And Clinton delivered on that. He brought in Rubin then to be his Treasury secretary, who was followed by Lawrence Summers, who's now the top economics adviser in the Obama White House. . . But that's what happens when you have an economic breakdown. We saw it in Germany, for God's sake. You know, you look--the demagogues scapegoat all the people. You know, they scapegoat immigrants. And what you have now is a lot of money, a lot of money, from the big banks and everyone else, going into lunatics' camp--the campaign of lunatics. But why? Because, "Oh, get government off our back. You know, big government," ignoring the fact that, you know, this government did not get big and the debt did not rise because we're trying to help firemen or school teachers keep their jobs. It happened because we have, literally, through the Fed and through the federal government, spent, you know, what? Three, four--committed three, four trillion dollars to make the banks whole."
Needling a little but well able to be passed over.
Taking as much offence as possible and returning more. What is the point in making it personal? Why must somebody who disagrees with you be a bad person?
David
In article , "David Hare-Scott" wrote:
I love dialogue. We all get trapped between our ears, and need a fresh view in order to have more grist for the mills of our minds to work on. Presently, in the U.S. of A., we have, essentially, angry mobs running around blaming the huge deficits on Obama, and calling for the return of the Republicans that got us into this hole to begin with. Now, don't misunderstand me, Obama is a jerk. He thinks that the progressives have nowhere else to go, and that he can continue on as a new and improved George Bush. However, if he was the man that was elected, he would have had investigations into the Bush Administration. He would have stopped the torture, and he would have brought our soldiers home, but he hasn't. He doesn't talk about coming home (Now we talk of war in Indonesia, Somalia, and Venezuela). He talks about being out of Iraq, where we still have 50,000 troops, god knows how many mercenaries, an embassy that is large as 80 football fields (427,829 sq. m.), and a State Department staff armed with Black Hawk helicopters, drones, M1 Abrams tanks, and some 5,000 mercenaries. Would you like to "super size" your visa? However, as I have just said, we are where we are because of Republican lying, and Democratic acquiescence. We have 2 choices in this country, the smiling fascists (Democrats), or the full-tilt crazies (Republicans). Where I can, I'll vote third party, but the Republican party is alway a clear and present danger. Here in California, the "Better Business" people have thrown their lot behind the Republicans. Needless to say, the better it is for business, the worse it is for consumers. We need to shut down the War Department and their suppliers. Stop subsidizing fossil fuel extraction, and nail Wall Street investment bankers to the wall by their balls. Merrill Lynch was given $10 billion by American tax-payers to buy back junk stock that they had created, and they paid themselves $3.6 billion in bonuses!! Can you see where the anger comes from, when to complain is to be accused of having "drunk to much progressive Kool-Aid"? That is an invective, not an argument. This stupidity has to stop, and that is why it is personal. I have hung way out on a limb here. If someone wants to make a fool of me, all they have to do is chop it off. In the mean time, I'm not going to make the mob hysteria thing easy, if I can help it. People need to think, and not just go into a knee jerk reaction, if someone is a Muslim, or a Mexican. We just had a taxi driver slashed in New York with a knife. His offense? He was a Muslim.
Otherwise, you are quite right, and the criticism is noted.
Kill any more honey bees lately, "Bonehead"?
I mean, this guy want to be the King of Stupid.
Grrrrr
Just use your killfile. If you and David didn't reply to him/her/it, I wouldn't have to see what he/her/it writes.
I think errors need to be corrected but I will try to stay more on topic.
D
The madness will end, when the currencies of the world collapse. Then almost everyone will be poor. A new kind of government will be created. Perhaps a new world government? Perhaps a new world currency without a world government? The chaos may last a long time between then and now.
First there were local tribes, then city states, then nations, then .... The next step is a one world government. The next step in evolution of our planet. Each time during these long transitions is a harsh period of wars and turmoil.
Those that grow and preserve their own food will do better than those who do not. Those living in the country will do better than those living in the city.
Yes I would imagine the price of seed would go up if it weren't for heirlooms. However, I don't mind spending a few bucks for a pack of seeds. For the home gardener, the price of seed don't matter near as much as it would to a large commercial operation that sets thousands of plants. My slow release granular fertilizer costs me a lot more than
I'm going to save seeds from my Better Boys this year (even though it's a hybrid) and plant them next year. They *might* be crossed with Stupice that was planted next to them, but I doubt it. I've done this before with hybrids and it usually works just fine for a home gardener. To much variability though for most commercial growers.
Bob
I've not done well with saved veggie seeds; they don't germinate well and/or produce a weird looking crop. I'd rather buy fresh each year, home gardening entails too much labor and expense to shoot oneself in the foot at the git-go by trying to save a few pennies on seed. I buy the smallest size packets and swap what I don't use with neighbor gardeners... most every community has a gardening club that maintains a seed bank... check at your local library.
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