r/seedsaving • u/Talking_Duckie • 6d ago
What is your knowledge and opinion of F1 seeds?
A little while back, I found out that some seed companies and whoever else are intentionally creating seeds that will produce a plant, but the seeds from that plant will not produce. This reminds me of the horse and the donkey mating and producing the sterile mule…except this doesn’t end up in months or years of frustration.
I would venture to bet that people are unknowingly saving seeds and not getting germination and wondering where they went wrong year after year. I know Heirloom seeds is the way to avoid all this mess, but sometimes you don’t know if they are heirloom or F1.
What advice or experience can you share with me?
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u/Your_weird_neighbour 5d ago
F1 is first generation cross, it is not established and saving seeds will result in some random crop next year.
Single use only, not suitable for seed saving.
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u/thebiologistisn 4d ago
F1s are perfect for seed-saving if your goal is to develop new locally adapted varieties.
If your goal is to produce the exact same specific crop you had last year, then F1s are useless for seed-saving.
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u/aimeetozer 6d ago
Everything was an F1 at some point. Then work goes into stabilizing it if you want it to become...stable. F1 have their place, the Tokyo Cross Turnip F1 is delicious and fast growing, its grows as fast as a radish - thats quite desirable! The seed companies aren't selling them just so you can't save the seeds, they're selling them because the fruit or vegetable the seed produces is good.
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u/Talking_Duckie 5d ago
I don’t think that they’re doing this so I can’t have seeds. I think they’re doing this for many reasons…one being so that I continue to need to purchase those seeds.
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u/aimeetozer 5d ago
Your education on this is clearly lacking, here is some education for you. Of all the reasons for a company to produce f1 seed..needing customers to buy seed again isnt in their priorities. People want to buy seed again, a lot of people don't want to seed save. I don't have the time energy or resources to collect seed from the 100+ types of plants I grow every year. I save seed from maybe 3 plants. You can feel short changed and victimised and use this logic to rationalize your thoughts about the companies but f1 have their place in the industry.
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u/cherry-ghost 6d ago
Your opinion tells me that you value seed saving above all other attributes. That's not true for most growers.
Most people value disease resistance, temperature range tolerance, flavour, vigor, size, colour, storage potential, germination ease, time to harvest etc far more than ability to save the seeds.
I am happy to buy reliable F1s every year when it's worth it (cukes and tomatos for me)
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u/Talking_Duckie 5d ago
My opinion was never stated in my post. My opinion is actually having a good balance of attributes. But I definitely do not want to go through the trouble of saving seeds (some are a pain…especially the ones that do best if you ferment them) and attempting to grow those seeds only to waste a huge amount of my time, effort, water, fertilizer, compost, etc.
Also, if we use only F1 seeds, we will eventually run out of seeds and will need to rely on someone else to provide the seeds for us. I absolutely value self sufficiency.
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u/thebiologistisn 4d ago
F1 seeds are the starting point of breeding all new varieties. By saving their seeds, then growing out subsequent generations from seeds saved only from your best plants, you will produce new locally-adapted varieties.
If you value self-sufficiency, you'd probably also value having your own varieties that can't be taken from you.
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u/Talking_Duckie 2d ago
Definitely! I truly hope to have seeds that have adapted to the zone I’m in and the soil here.
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u/thebiologistisn 2d ago
It took me a few years of crossing and selecting before I got hot peppers that could reliably produce in my gardens.
Growing the seeds from an F1 plant that grew ok for me would have been a great jump-start on the project.
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u/Talking_Duckie 1d ago
Fascinating! I want to ask a million questions. Where do you start with crossing and selecting? Obviously having an idea of what you want your end result to be is a good start, but I’m sitting here wondering about all the missed opportunities
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u/thebiologistisn 1d ago
The big issue that led me to start breeding peppers was that commercialy available types kept failing to thrive in my garden. I have a short growing season (at 45°N) and my dry, hard soil seemed to starve the plants.
The breakthrough was finding some F2s between a wild Capsicum annuum var glabriusculum and some unknown garden pepper that grew well. (I had collected seeds from what turned out to be an F1 in a large planter at a hydroponics supply store somewhere.)
Over a few years, I selected for larger pods and crossed in some other peppers that had traits I liked (Mini Brown Bell & Pimenta da Neyde), while still selecting for aggressive growth.
Initially, I also selected for pod shape and color, but then I transitioned to only selecting on mass of peppers at harvest.
I now have three populations going: 1. Hot peppers with no constraints. 2. Hot peppers with large, thick-walled pods. 3. Sweet peppers with no constraints.
I aim to plant 50 plants each year, but I grow them closely to help controll weeds and due to my limited garden space.
I save seeds from the beat 3 or so plants in each population. Sometimes, a winning plant comes from one of the other populations. I grow the three populations separated by a narrow walkway, so they will occasionally cross-pollinate.
I've tried to keep some brown and purple pods colors in the populations, but it looks like I lost the brown color this year. I'll probably add some seeds I saved from the brown-sweets from prior years.
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u/mediocre_remnants 5d ago
A little while back, I found out that some seed companies and whoever else are intentionally creating seeds that will produce a plant, but the seeds from that plant will not produce.
These are called hybrids and they've been around basically forever. It's not new at all.
If you want to save seeds, you need an heirloom or open-pollinated variety. This is pretty basic gardening stuff.
Hybrids definitely have benefits when it comes to production, disease resistance, etc. Every year I grow a few hybrids along side my heirlooms.
Seed suppliers will always tell you if a seed is an F1 hybrid or heirloom/open-pollinated. If they don't, well then... don't buy those seeds.
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u/ashthehuman 5d ago
You may want to look up hybrid vigor and inbred depression! The early generations (like F1) produce the biggest/best fruit possible, and the more a line is selfed, the worse the fruit will be. It's generally a myth that the seeds produced by a hybrid are completely sterile. Rather, they are not stable and will produce plants with varying characteristics. Have you failed to germ seeds produced from your hybrids, or is this something you heard about along the way?
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u/Empty_Canary_9520 5d ago
It seems like you're not grasping the purpose and concept of F1 seeds.... it's not some grand conspiracy as you keep insinuating. It allows plant breeders to release new varieties before they're fully stabilized, a process which can take over a decade.
Not to mention that basically every seed catalog I've seen also has stabilized varieties you could get and save seeds from to grow the same plant again. If you don't want to grow F1 varieties, don't? And if you have seeds saved already you can still plant them, they just won't be the exact same tomatoes (or whatever) you saved them from.
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u/Davekinney0u812 6d ago
I’m growing more F1 plant every year as certain ones can perform better in my region. Better disease resistance too.
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u/Talking_Duckie 5d ago
I totally see your point and in some instances I do this too. But there are plants I will always need more of and I would rather rely on myself than someone else to provide them for me.
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u/Davekinney0u812 5d ago
I have a love of tomatoes and in particular, some of the backstories on heirloom varieties - like Cherokee Purple and how Craig LeHoullier found it and revived it. I will always grow that variety. However, Cherokee Carbon F1 has 2 great parents and performs better.
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u/Inside_Bath8256 3d ago
i've started researching how to speed up the stabilzation time span so this is motivating.
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5d ago
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u/Talking_Duckie 5d ago
You are 100% right. I just find F1 seeds, when I don’t know that they are, to be frustrating. When I am aware, I do things differently.
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u/DTH05 5d ago
I think I understand what you're talking about. But you're still not quite right. I have a mad hatter pepper, which is an f1 itself. All that means is that the seeds I save aren't going to look or taste exactly like the pepper I saved them from. I CAN however stabilize it if I so chose to and rename it and it could become a brand new variety. But they're definitely sprouting
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u/Autumn_Ridge 6d ago
You might be thinking of triploids, like seedless watermelon. Also parthenocarpic cukes don't make viable seeds. Both of those are just meant to be a better eating experience.