Market Farming

[Darren Young <darren AT thegardenspace.com>]

I've always understood that "heirloom" is 30+ years.

It's also been my understanding than an F1 is produced year after year by the hybridizer as the next generation would be F2, the next F3 and so on.

On Sun, Feb 6, 2011 at 9:38 AM, Vern and Amy <vaspencer AT sisna.com> wrote:

Don,
  I have been struggling with understanding hybrid vs. heirloom/selection for a while.  I find it important so I can educate my customers.  They are concerned about what goes into their bodies, but sometimes don't understand that hybrids aren't necessarily going to kill them.  Sometimes they confuse hybrid with GM.
  Is a hybrid always done by man, or can you get a hybrid from natural causes?    Tell me if I have this straight, so I can keep it simple and accurate.  My understanding is that a hybrid is a cross between two strains or varieties of the same species, i.e. Mortgage Lifter and Brandywine.  The first generation of that cross would be an F1 hybrid.  As you select from subsequent generations of that original seed, it is not really hybrid, but you start getting to a stabilized hybrid by eliminating what you determine to be off-types that match what you got the first time.  After a long time, say 50 or 100 years (depending on your definition of how old an heirloom has to be), you have an "heirloom".  Am I right so far?
  If that is correct, I believe a simple way of putting it is "All heirlooms were at one time either a hybrid or a selection out of another variety."  Is this too simple to be accurate?

Vern

Selection and hybridizing are two very different things that would take too
long to go into here.  But that is a wrong use of terms, and is part of the
misunderstanding that prevails in the minds of consumer when it comes to
words like heirlooms, and open pollinated...

Zephyros Farm and Garden
Daphne Yannakakis and Don Lareau
11466 3725 Rd.
Paonia, Co. 81428
970-527-3636
www.zephyrosfarmandgarden.com
dlareau at tds.net <http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/market-farming>
 

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