Cucumbers - is it time yet??

ok I assume that way the seeds will be no good - not that m going to collect seed anyway im intending to eat them

 

Just wondered how do the seed companies produce the seeds if the F1 type are sterile?

 

F1 doesn't come true (usually) from seeds, even if the plants are not sterile.

F1 is a "first generation" cross between two "pure" parents. I don't know how they get the parents "pure", and in particular whether they are 100% pure, or not.

Lets assume you have a Delphinium that can be White, Pink of Blue and all are tall but some are Really Tall.

You selectively breed a line of Blue ones, and separately a link of Really Tall ones. You would do that by throwing away the ones that are not Blue (from the Blue line you are breeding) and eventually you will get a strain that is genetically strong for Blue-ness - such that 100% (or very near to that) are Blue. Separately you do the same for the Really Tall ones.

Then you cross the Only-Blue ones with the Really-Tall ones and fine that 100%-ish of the offspring are both Blue and Really Tall (but if you sow seed from them you get some-pink and some-short). So you can then market seed of that F1 cross as being "Really Tall and Blue" ...

... and charge a premium price (in the case of Cucumbers £1 per seed is not uncommon ...)

 

I remember reading something very similar to the above, that seed companies cross two strains to produce a F1 hybrid that supposedly has the best characteristics of both strains.
The downside is that if you save the seeds any resulting plant will not be like the parent plant, oh and the cost of course, half a dozen F1 seeds versus hundreds of non hybrid. I am sure that the cost is worth it for the commercial gardeners but not so convinced that there is an advantage for the hobby gardener.

 

There is definitely advantage for hobby gardeners IMHO ... but the hobby gardener does not need every single F1 variety that the Marketing People throw at them!!

I think female-flower only Cucumbers are a good idea, for example. They are probably THE most expensive seeds around. There are plenty of F1 varieties, i.e. of other types of vegetables and ornamentals, where F1 seed is not hugely expensive. Actually my Parsnip seed "Tender and True" (non F1) and "Gladiator" F1 are the same price but the F1 has 17% more seed in the packet

I have grown F1 Cauliflowers that have a superb curd, and the leafs grow over it to protect it from sun/weather etc.

I don't know if the club-root resistant varieties (like Clapton) are F1 - but if they are, and for that reason, that would be another good benefit for amateur gardeners. Similarly carrot-fly resistant varieties (although, for me, I think Carrots need protecting with mesh ) and so on.

I have grown F1 Delphiniums, 'coz Blackmore and Langdon's Delphiniums are expensive, and I wanted "a good, reliable, tall, single-colour" variety

The downsides of F1, which apply more usefully to Commercial growers, are things like uniformity of crop. Commercial growers often want to harvest all-at-once to clear the field, and get them all to market. I want mine to mature over a "reasonable period of time" so I can harvest them one-by-one

The marketing babble often talks of "greater vigour" and the like. I suspect that good, pure-bred, open-pollinated / heirloom varieties are just as good in many cases. I have never grown an F1 variety that was head-and-shoulders better than its non-F1 counterpart. Although ... super-sweet/tender-sweet Sweetcorn might be just such an example. Dwarf, so it produces cobs on very few leaves, which in turn means that it is a short-season crop and you get a crop even in a lousy UK Summer and the sweetness is incredible, compared to a normal Sweetcorn variety. I don't think there are any open-pollinated (i.e. Non-F1) Sweetcorn Super-sweet varieties - are there?

There are F1 varieties available which are resistant to disease etc. Sometimes, whilst these varieties excel at disease resistance, they don't score well on flavour. My approach is to grow supreme flavour first. If I lose the whole of my crop I can buy mediocre flavour from the supermarket. I don't need to grow mediocre flavour in order to be sure to get a crop!!

 

Wow Kristen, your answer seems to have finished this thread off, however, I find it has raised a few issues for me.
First of all let me say that I respect your opinion, we all want to grow the best for ourselves and I do use a few F1 varieties although I do tend to stay with "what my Dad grew", however you have raised a few questions for me. Perhaps I am naïve but I try not to purchase GM crops of any kind even though I do realise that we probably need these to feed our ever increasing demand for food. My reason is probably because of the propaganda and subsequent opposition to GM when crops were being trialled, however, isn't this exactly what I am doing if I purchase F1 seeds, are these a GM product? If that is the case (and I honestly do not know to what extent it is) how does that affect, if at all, my attempts to be an organic gardener and not introduce man made chemicals of any description onto my small plot.
As I say, I honestly do not know, I may be barking up the wrong tree as they say but I would like to be enlightened.

 

I sincerely hope so - nice as a dictatorship might be I prefer a debate

I'm sat on the fence. I hate the idea of eating GM food, but Mrs K is a scientist [Biology and Biochemistry] and can see no problem with eating a crop that has been genetically modified (in terms of how the gut breaks the "food" down into the various constituent parts that it needs). I do have other issues with GM - such as the use of Terminator Genes and the idea of making Roundup-resistant crops - so now we have cross pollination in the wild making a problem that our most effective weedkiller cannot then tackle ...

Yup, very valid point. That would be my wife's starting point along the lines of "Nature could naturally put those genes there, all man is doing is encouraging it, ergo 'No Problem'"

For me GM encompasses the situation where scientists manipulate the genes in a way that nature would not (or not easily - i.e. it would take A followed by B followed by C for nature to do it; but you have to ask yourself "How did Man evolve from Ape?" - that must have taken a chance A, B, C scenario, or a radiation storm that meddled with the genes, or ... something else). For example they take a gene from one thing, possibly not a plant, and stick it into another - in a Petri dish, rather than by just transferring pollen from one flower to another.

When I was a youngster I wanted to work in a tissue culture lab and I tried to get a job at a place where their primary research was taking a Nitrogen Fixing Bacteria (the sort of thing that lives in nodules on roots of Peas and Beans, symbiotically, and provides the Pea/Bean with Nitrogen "fertiliser" which is the reason you don't have to put any Nitrogen fertiliser on Peas and Beans) - so taking that Bacteria and attempting to combine it with a Wheat seed - to create a Wheat plant that didn't need any fertiliser. I guess they never succeeded or we would have heard about it, and fertiliser share prices would now be two-a-penny

Would that sort of GM be a bad thing? It would reduce oil usage massively, at a stroke, increase crop yield and probably make growing Wheat possible in land where you currently wouldn't consider it. Couple that with creating a Wheat plant that needs, say, 50% less water, and has higher yields ... that would be a phenomenal thing ... provided it had no downsides or negative cause-and-effect

I don't know how much GM is going down that route, most that I bump into is things like Monsanto trying to sell more Roundup by breeding crops that are immune to it. Then people save and re-sow their seed, which robs Monsanto's profits, so then they want to introduce terminator genes which mean that the saved-seed from the crop won't grow at all. What the heck happens if those terminator genes escape into the wild? Scary.

I don't feel comfortable with any of that stuff. But I suspect I might be with simple "Increased yield" or "Needs less water and thus will grow in African desert". When I was a lad, probably in the '70s, Wheat yields doubled. That was just from selective breeding, but it fed the world - thank goodness that that research happened when it did otherwise we would be stuffed trying to feed the world today ...

So then we have F1. That, to my mind (but you have opened my mind to the possibility that it might be more Frankenstein) is taking a tall plant and crossing it with a plant that has shown disease resistance, and coming up with a tall & disease resistant plant. "Some of them" having those characteristics is not much cop ... I only grow 4 Cauliflower at a time, one of them being Blue would be a bit of a nuisance, and statistically sooner on later some poor sod will grow a crop where most/all of them were Blue ... so hence F1 which provides 100% of the offspring with the desired characteristics. (F1 doesn't have to be used to achieve 100% conformance, but that's mostly what it is used for).

The F1 things seems OK to me - Nature could easily do that, and (AFAIK??) it is only done by Man taking pollen from one plant and using it to fertilise another (and not by doing something devious at the microbiological level in a Petri dish in the lab). Painstaking maintaining a pure-genetic line of Tall plants, and another of Disease Resistant plants, and then manually making that one-time cross fertilisation of the two and putting the resulting seed in packets marked F1 in my local garden centre - that seems OK to me.

I do worry about a lot of things that people, myself included, tend to regard as safe. Are the tanalised timbers surrounding my raised beds safe? I am pretty sure that scientists didn't test the effects on humans of tanalised boards being constantly moist (in contact with soil) with plant roots in close proximity in the soil and then eating those roots ...

Also, is Monsanto suppressing science that shows that Roundup is harmful (and bribing politicians and officials)? There are loads of "Rant" sites that proclaim that Roundup / Monsanto is harmful ... but they lack (to my mind) links to credible, peer reviewed, science that proves that it is. Plus Roundup has been around for a blinking long time so enough time to see huge swathes of the population "ill" from its effects. So I am in the "Roundup is safe" camp.

But then look what happened with Tobacco. The Tobacco industry suppressed contrary-science for years (or commissioned shed loads of their own, biased, research to throw everyone off the scent). I, now, hold the Tobacco companies personally liable for that evidence not coming out sooner and not making the public aware (as it is today) sooner because that lead to my Father's death from lung cancer. So who to trust??

On the balance of probabilities (as computed in MY head ) I'm happy with F1.

Also: I'm not much of a fan of open-pollinated / heirloom varieties. I get better yield, less disease, better flavour from the varieties I grow (in fairness not all of them are F1). Of those the only characteristic I really want is Better Flavour - that's my whole reason for Grow My Own (along with the provenance of knowing that the crop had no chemicals used on it). I do need a crop that is unlikely to be wiped out by disease, so if I had Clubroot (hope & pray that never happens) I am sure I would grow an F1 resistant variety - rather than have no crop at all - but that apart I have enough space and am prepared to put up with some losses from disease along with having to cut some Canker off my Parsnip roots. Most of the Wonder varieties available (Blight resistant potatoes - forgotten the name for the moment - was it Carla??) lack flavour - although apparently the newer blight resistant potato varieties are better in that regard. I can buy tasteless spuds in the Supermarket, I don't need to grow a disease-resistance tasteless variety!! I would prefer to grow best-flavour Spud and if I get blight to then go to the supermarket and buy the tasteless ones

Lets have everyone's views please

 

Thank you for your answers, I still am not sure what my stance is and, like you, will probably carry on as I have for many a year now (proof to my OH that I am too old to change) It would still be interesting to read what others think.

 

I'm in that camp too I do try a few new varieties each year, but mostly because I go to the garden centre, curse because they have sold out of my "favourite" variety, the substitute variety I buy then grows really well - better than my 1st Choice - and I curse again that no one told me it was better AND that the garden centre had failed to run out YEARS AGO!!

 

Not sure I can tell the difference between those two statements

Repeat after me:

"Couldn't afford not to have it"

 

Good! Dreadful things!

Ordinary pots, and pot-on, is fine.

Newspaper pots for anything else that you want to plant straight-out please. Not much that hates root disturbance though - Parsnips and Sweetcorn are all that I use mine for (and Sweetpeas so they can have deeper-than-normal pots)

 

I save toilet and kitchen roll inners for seed sowing where I am going to plant on outdoors, for instance Dwarf French Beans, outdoor tomatoes and cucumbers etc. You can cut them to the size required for each individual seed type and they just break down in the garden.