Choice

[Teyman2425s]

It's that glorious time of the year again when produce plans are top of the allotmenteer's 'to do' list. Most years I try to grow something different from the previous year & use a different seed supplier for variety of choice. One choice this year is whether to grow hybrids or open pollinated seeds - does anyone here have a preference? I understand that the flavour of OP or Heritage produce is better but do they have the same resistance to diseases etc? What do you think?

[Two_Sheds]

People tend to choose OP if they want to save their own seed for future sowings - something you can't do with F1s

OP seeds & how to save your own

[Kristen]

I think a lot of F1 seed is expensive and lacking flavour. many of the F1's tend to be too uniform and thus all come ready at the same time - which suits commercial growers making a single-pass harvest, but for home-gardeners having the crop spread out a bit helps extend the harvest.

But ... all-female greenhouse cucumbers, Sweetcorn with very short season so it ripens reliably in the UK climate!, and a few varieties that I have found work SO much better for me - such as Cauliflower Candid Charm, and we like the flavour of Tomato Shirley. These are things that I think where F1 is a benefit.

But, apart from disease resistance, I have seen no benefit from F1 Leeks, Carrots, Aubergine (prefer Black Beauty) and I've tried lots of poncy, low yielding, small fruited F1 varieties of Melon - although Sweetheart (large, tasty, heavy yielding) is also an F1. All you get is fewer seeds that cost more!

[vicky]

I prefer to be able to save my own seeds, plus you can swop with others to get lots of interesting things and it saves a lot of money!

Like Kristen I buy F1's for some things - blight resistant tomatoes (Ferline/Legend), sweetcorn and sometimes cucumbers (at £1 per seed for some of them I'm trying to find a good open pollinated one)

[Kristen]

cucumbers (at £1 per seed for some of them I'm trying to find a good open pollinated one)

No help at this time of the year, but I buy most of my seed (not things that don't store well, like Parsnips) in the sale that Wyevale have in September - 50p-per-packet. I buy enough for a couple of years for any expensive packets that I think will keep - in case they have sold out next year before the sale starts!

[SarzWix]

With cucumbers I look at £1 a seed and think 'Better than £1 per fruit' I harvested over £50 worth of cucumbers last year from 3 plants, not a bad return

I had Sigmadew from HSL one year, and the cucumbers were gorgeous, but only got 3 off one plant and 2 off another, and never did get to grips with the 'male flowers or no male flowers' thing

Apart from cucs, I also grow F1 sweetcorn and F1 Sungold tomatoes. We grew Shirley for a few years til the seed ran out, won't bother to replace em.

[solway cropper]

at £1 per seed for some of them

There's several online seed suppliers who do packets of F1 cuke seeds for 99p with maybe 20 or 30 in the packet. You have to shop around a bit.

[Snadger]

The clubroot resistant F1 brassicas are a boon for anyone who's land is infested with this horrible fungus!
Not all F1's are bad but I still like a goodly proportion of open pollinated plants.

[Kristen]

at £1 per seed for some of them

There's several online seed suppliers who do packets of F1 cuke seeds for 99p with maybe 20 or 30 in the packet. You have to shop around a bit.

Depends a bit on variety perhaps?

One option would be to buy in bulk and share the cost with local friends / allotmenteers, or to carefully store for future year(s) - quite a lot of my veg seed packets have more seed than I need and get used up over two-to-three years

For example Moles Seeds prices (per seed) are:

F1 Femspot 32p (100 off)
F1 Burpless Tasty Green 3p (175 off)

Telegraph Improved 10p (100 off)
Marketmore 0.54p (350 off)

Lot of difference by variety, and some F1 cheaper than some O/P

Cucumber - Conventional vegetables - Moles Seeds

Marshalls by comparison (smaller packets) are:

F1 Burpless Tasty Green 13p (15 off)

Marketmore 6.75p (20 off)

Your search results for cucumber can be found below.- Marshalls Seeds

[coreopsis]

I much prefer open pollinated varieties to hybrids.My MIL grows tomatoes every year,just one variety(Shirley F1).They tasted alright to me but nothing special and split like b***ers.I gave her some Red Alert toms last year-now she's thinking about growing them
Cukes-last year I got 5 decent size cukes from 1 plant(Telegraph improved).If the seed cost 1£,it's not a big deal comparing to the outcome.

[solway cropper]

To get back to Teyman's original question rather than dwelling on the price of cucumber seeds I'd say go for both F1 and OP seeds. Most F1s offer better disease resistance and/orincreased yields but this is often at the expense of flavour. Having said that, Heritage doesn't always mean better flavour. Some varieties were dropped from the catalogues because they were rubbish.

You really need to experiment and see what works for you and which varieties you prefer. That's one of the nice things about growing...you have to be in it for the long haul and be prepared for some surprises. With all the different varieties out there to go at I'm going to run out of time long before I run out of veg to try.