F1 plants

[anthonyjb]

Is it best to buy f1 chilli and peppers seeds and plants'


Thanks

Anthonyjb

[Scarlet]

I don't buy F1 because the seeds don't come true. (Though I do with cucumbers!) I like varieties that I can save my seed from and can carry on growing them for years without buying again.
What chilli varieties are you looking at?

[sparrow100]

It depends what you want. F1s are created for certain characteristics, including vigour. One of my favourite chillies is chenzo, which is an F1, but most of the things I grow are open pollinated as I like saving seeds.

You can save the seeds from F1 plants, but because this is a specific cross, you most likely won't get the same plant from those seeds (then called an F2 generation), whereas you should from the open pollinated varieties if you look up how to save seeds from that particular plant. Not getting the same plant as an F2 isn't necessarily a bad thing, but be prepared for potential disappointment if it is.

Of 15 F2 chenzos I grew last year I had only one come true with fruity tasting chillies. One of the others was nice, but smaller, more peppery and the fruit was purple, not red. The others were properly pants.

[Scarlet]

Of 15 F2 chenzos I grew last year I had only one come true with fruity tasting chillies. One of the others was nice, but smaller, more peppery and the fruit was purple, not red. The others were properly pants.

That's why I can never be bothered with F1, I hate wasting my time and effort for a cr@p harvest. I love the word pants!

[Thelma Sanders]

If- like me- you only grow a few chillis each year, you usually get a couple of years from a packet, and if there is a certain variety that you like, then IMO it's worth buying that f1 variety ;

[Kristen]

Is it best to buy f1 chilli and peppers seeds and plants'

Depends. I think at times the Marketing Departments over-hype The Latest Brand New Thing ...

I grow for best flavour, that's it. Some people will no doubt grow for Yield, but if I can't improve on supermarket taste I'm not really interested in growing it (although I do also want the provenance of knowing what chemicals have been used on the crop [in my case None!!]), and picked fresh from the veg patch even hum-drum veg taste really good.

I don't save seed, I buy it in the end of season sales instead (e.g. the 50p-a-packet sale now on at The Garden Centre Group), but if you want to save seed you pretty much want to avoid F1 varieties, as has been said.

Some F1 seed is bred for the benefit of commercial growers. They can be focused on things like the whole crop coming all at once - so they can harvest it mechanically / cost effectively. That can be a downside to the home grower - who wants to spread the harvest over several weeks. This isn't an issue with Chillies, but it would be with things like Cauliflowers (although as a home grower I spread the seed sowing little-and-often to have a succession of cropping)

My personal experience with Sweet Peppers is that the F1 varieties have had bigger fruit, and more of it, starting cropping when the plants are younger, compared to open-pollinated / heirloom varieties, so I tend to grow F1 Sweet Peppers. The Chillies I grow are not F1

So my suggestion would be to choose which Chillies you want for flavour / suitable size plants for the space you can grow them in / ease-or-otherwise of growing etc. and then grow those varieties. Maybe, over time, also grow a few of the "latest best thing" varieties each year, or "the one a mate said was amazing" and perhaps over time you will adopt a few of those. Of the trial varieties we grow each year very few ever replace the family's favourites.