Seed Collecting Tips

Collecting seeds from your flowers and vegetables can be fun and rewarding. It can also be disappointing if you don't know a few things.

First of all it is best to collect seeds from "stabilized" or heirloom vegetable varieties. Seeds collected from heirloom vegetables may produce offspring almost identical to the parental plants if they haven't been cross pollinated. Cross pollination occurs when more than one variety is grown together or near by, usually within 100 feet or less. When cross pollination occurs between two stabilized varieties you get what is called a hybrid. The very first generation of offspring from are called F1 hybrids. If you interbreed this generation the offspring or seeds are called F2.

If you repeat the interbreeding process seeds collected from the consecutive generations are labeled, F3,F4,F5 and so on.  

The "F" stands for the Latin word filial which basically means family offspring. To a plant breeder it basically means inbred generation. The number behind the F refers to the actual consecutive generation indicating it's place in the breeding sequence.
It is commonly thought that cross pollinating two different varieties of the same species results in a hybrid. This is not totally true. What happens when you cross pollinate an F1 hybrid to another F1 hybrid results in a poly-hybrid. The offspring will likely be highly unstable. Maybe not so much in the first generation but the resulting generations after the original poly-hybrid cross will be extremely unstable. This means if you are trying to pin down certain traits it will be very difficult.

Lets go back to the beginning. When 2 stabile varieties are crossed we get an F1 hybrid. F1 hybrids often appear stable because the plants often look similar. The genes kind of "lock up" the same way in most plants resulting in very similar looking offspring. When we make and grow out the F2 generation we notice the offspring are not stable. Some look like one of the original parents, some look like the other parent and some look like various "mixes" of the original parents. This phenomenon is what we refer to as unstable. The F2 generation generally expresses the most variation and this is why.

Breeders usually look for plants expressing the most desirable traits from the F2 generation. Because this generation is so diverse breeders get the best chance to find offspring expressing these "desirable" traits. When you inbreed two plants expressing the same traits a high percentage of offspring will likely express those traits in the next generation. Interbreeding two F3 plants expressing the same traits will create an even higher percentage of of similar F4 plants. If done properly eventually all the offspring from consecutive generations will breed true. Breeding true means the offspring are almost identical. There is an art to doing this and it can take many generations to produce a true breeding line.

Note that it is important when inbreeding to use more than two plants per generation. Select many plants with the same desirable traits to help ensure you don't breed some kind of weakness into the line. I used the two parental plant explanation to make this a little easier to understand.
Why do breeders create hybrid plants? For many reasons actually. Vegetable breeders are constantly trying to produce strains that are resistant to disease or a harsh climate etc. Flower breeders are always trying to be the first to produce a flower in a species with a certain color nobody has yet been able to produce etc. It's human nature, our curiosity and drive to manipulate nature creates challenges. Humans love to take on challenges.

So when it comes to collecting seeds it really depends on your goals or interests. This will determine which plants to collect seeds from. Collecting seeds from hybrids can be fun if you want to try and stabilize your very own line. Collecting seeds from stabilized or heirloom varieties works out great because somebody already did the hard work for you. Stabilized strains also are great for creating your own F1 hybrid experiments. F1 hybrids are quite available and give the opportunity for breeders and hobbyists to create their own stable lines. You could also start with two stable lines, make an F1 hybrid and stabilize it by inbreeding consecutive generations.

The sky's the limit and you can see there are many reasons to collect seeds. You can simply inbreed stable lines to create a huge surplus of a certain flower variety. You may want to create your own unique squash, tomato, watermelon or who knows what. It all starts with a game plan and some seeds. I hope this page helped with any questions you may have had about collecting seeds and why to collect them.