Saving seeds from hybrid cucumbers
Last summer, I set out to determine what I'd get if I saved seeds from a hybrid cucumber. Why? Because Harmonie
is the world's most prolific and tasty cucumber and resists whatever
blight tends to kill all other varieties on our farm in short
order. But the seeds of the hybrid are expensive, so I didn't want
to have to spend $12 on them each year. Thus the experiment to
see what would happen if I saved some seeds.
For those of you new to seed-saving,
it's generally a no-no to save seeds from a hybrid variety.
Heirloom vegetable varieties generally breed true (especially if you're
careful to isolate them from other varieties in the same species), but
hybrids will mate with themselves and still produce many different types
of offspring.
However, that's not
always the case. 95% of the cucumbers that I grew from my saved
seeds turned out to look and act just like their parents. The
plants that looked different were clearly that way because of
hybridization with Muncher, an heirloom variety I was also trialing last
year (but wasn't as impressed by). Sounds like, as long as I
stick to growing Harmonie cucumbers, I can safely save seeds from this
variety despite the fact that it's a hybrid. Success!
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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