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Experiment with Hybrid seeds

By geekgardener, on October 31st, 2009%

In my recent articles about seed saving, I had mentioned the consequences of saving seeds from a plant grown from hybrid seed. There was also some explanation on why saving such a seed will not produce the same type of yield that you got to begin with. While it is good to understand the concept theoretically we always need some visual proof as to what happens if we really save the seed from a hybrid plant. In this post, we are going to see just that.

Last year, I had purchased White brinjal seeds.By white I mean milk white. The moment I saw that brinjal seed I was taken away. It had glowing white color and it was priced at 50/- per packet. I didn’t bother too much about the fact it is hybrid or not. What went in my mind was, the packet has many seeds!..why should I bother about saving the seeds. I don’t even know if i can use all the seeds. Anyway, I bought those seeds and sowed them without any delay. I got a bountiful harvest whose pictures I posted in this blog here. One of those plants, had a huge brinjal which I left for seed. The white brinjal when ripe becomes yellow in color.

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After it reached the stage I can collect seeds, I did the obvious.I collected seeds and sowed most of them back. All of them germinated with in 3-4 days and I had lush green seedlings. I transplanted them into different pots. Things are fine so far. Due the difference in sizes of the pots, few started flowering early and few took their own time.

The first few flowers I saw were purple in color. The initial plant I grew from purchased seed was purple. You sow purple you get purple. Like the flower below, I was happy. I got the purple flower and the Brinjal was white as milk.

Purple flower and its fruit

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Well,  After couple of weeks, I had few more plants starting to flower and guess what the color is White. Initially I thought, may be thats a ‘sport’. More and more plants with white colored flower.

White flower and its fruit:

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It dawned on me then!.. I went back again to look at the seed packet and there you go! it has hybrid written on it in uppercase. Interestingly, the ones with the white flowers have fruits that are dull white more towards pale green and the ones with purple yield perfectly white brinjal. Also, the size of the fruit has come down drastically. These could be one of the parents that resulted in the Hybrid.

Now what If i wanted those original seeds  that gave me good yield and big veggies? I guess i will have go to the seed company to buy it again. May be not. If I carefully sow many seeds and select the plants based on their traits may be I can get the same variety again. But who can do that?. This is exactly why you don’t save seeds from a F1 hybrid plant.

6 comments   eggplant, gardening, seed saving, vegetables   , , ,  

Seed Saving Lettuce

By geekgardener, on October 20th, 2009%

Earlier I wrote about Seed starting Lettuce with many pictures of various steps involved. I couldn’t blog about the results actually. Anyway, it took almost 2 weeks for 50% of the lettuce to show up and the rest of the 50% never really showed up. I was really disappointed. I started questioning the way I started those seeds and did some tests by starting them in different ways. 1. Tried soaking them in water for few hours, a day. 2. Put them in moist tissue paper towel to see if i have luck there.. still the attempts were futile. The seeds were supposed to be “imported” and it didn’t expire either. So what went wrong?. While I was thinking just that, one of my friend gave me some seeds from France.  I immediately sowed them the same way I mentioned in my post. This time my expectation was low. After just 1.5 days I saw one of the seeds throwing out white small roots.. Wow. this is like Magic. The seeds were fresh and they germinated in no time. Many sources in the internet mention that the age of Lettuce seed is 2 years.

In those 50% seeds that germinated in my first batch, I let a few of them to flower. Lettuces were not very happy with Bangalore’s weather(they need much cooler temperatures around 20 C) and it was much hotter.They were happy to flower. When a plant is stressed, it starts to flower. It is very interesting actually. Plant thinks that it cannot live longer in that environment and prepares to continue its generation by flowering and seeding much quicker. Lettuce is no different in hot climates. It bolts quickly. Here in this post I will mention about saving lettuce seeds. Though it is advised not to save seeds from plants that flower prematurely.Vigorous plants should be selected and allowed to flower.  The process of seed saving remains the same.

Find a lettuce plant that is strong and vigorous and let it flower. In my case, the plant volunteered.

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The young flower that has just bloomed looked yellow in color for the variety I had. Once the flower matures, the seeds are formed. The seeds have a parachute like wing that helps it to fly. You can see that in the pic below.

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You can wait for the time where most of the flowers are burst open like the one above but not fallen off the plant, and then take the whole stalk of flower and collect individual flowers and separate the seeds out of them. MyGarden 706

I just collect few mature dry seeds from the plant daily as i water and keep adding to my seed packet. The above pic is dried seeds with their wings. I just gently rub them in palm and they become what looks like “Lettuce seeds!”

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And guess what, they germinated in two days!. Below is randomly sown lettuce seeds peeping in just two days!.

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Another reason why you should save your own seeds!.

gg

13 comments   gardening, lettuce, seed saving, vegetables   , , , , ,  
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