Heirloom vs Hybrids

[sonjab314]

I am seriously considering planting only heirloom seeds next year for my vegetable garden so that I can keep the seeds and the next generation will be true to the parents. But I am curious about how these treasures hold up against the hybrids? Were the hybrids developed because they are better than the heirlooms or is it so the companies can make more money selling new seeds every year?

 

[the lemon tree]

In my experience, hybrids are more prolific, can accept a broader range of weather/stress conditions, have longer "counter" life than heirlooms, and are also more disease resistant. These attributes make them very good for market. I grow only heirlooms as I love their unique appearance and tomato-ey depth of flavor. To me, they're a little harder to grow but the taste is worth it.

 

[hoodat]

In my experience heirlooms are far superior to hybrids in taste. There is a reason they have withstood the test of time.
The best reason of all though to grow heirlooms is your ability to save your own seed. If you save the seeds from your best performing plants every year you are developing a strain that is right for your particular garden.

 

[Whitewater]

In my opinion I don't think that hybrids are 'better' than heirlooms, or vice versa (except in the matter of taste, when it comes to certain veggies. My tomatoes and my zucchini are heirlooms because they taste SO MUCH BETTER, for example ).

They both have their pros and their cons. I suspect it all boils down to what you want out of your garden and what's most important to you. If you live in a disease infested area, you may want a disease-resistant hybrid. Similarly, if you live in a hot climate, a hybrid tomato bred to do well in heat might be a wise choice.

On the other hand, if you're like me and you absolutely cannot stand the soul-less, tasteless, frankenseed nature (not to mention chemical-laden and dubious nutritional quality) of most everyday, ordinary grocery store produce, heirlooms (even though they are tougher to grow and less prolific, in general, though we can hardly keep up with the heirloom zucchini . . .) would be a better choice for you.

Other factors may be the time you have to spend on a garden, how much sun you get, whether or not you garden in containers (in my experience heirloom veggies tend to sprawl more than their hybrid counterparts!), and whether or not you want to save seeds.

In the end, I'd suggest doing your homework and figuring out what's most important to you and going from there.

The primary motivator for me in making my garden mostly heirloom is that I wanted to get back to REAL food, food that hasn't had all the nutrition and character and stuff bred out of it. I wanted a tomato that looks and tastes and feels like a tomato -- not a red tennis ball. I wanted a strawberry that was juicy and flavorful and looks and acts like a *strawberry*, not a crunchy, woody, sugar-sweet strawberry-shaped piece of candy.

So, I'm growing my own. Yes, I am *that* dissatisfied with what my grocery store can give me. I wanted other options -- but the only way to get what I wanted was to do it myself.

So far, suits me just fine


Whitewater (YMMV, of course!)

 

[beavis]

I grow both.

Hybrids= yield

heirlooms = taste. quality

I wouldn't dare can a heirloom, those are for orgasmic consumption, but the hybrids are my workhorse....much better than those refrigerated rocks in the grocery store.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I grow both. I'm still experimenting with a few every year to keep looking for the ones that will do best here, both heirloom and hybrid, but I have my favorites. They all have their own characteristics; looks, taste, how prolific they are, how easy to work with, how big the plants grow, early, mid, late or all season, disease resistance to my local conditions, susceptibility to blossom end rot or splitting. And I take the full season to evaluate a variety, usually two seasons because the conditions vary every year. I have been very disappointed in some varieties in early August but by the end of the season I decide to plant them again. They really produce well late in the season and handle the late season heat pretty well. All gardening is local. How something produces for me might not be how it produces for you.

None of my sauces taste the same. I've got different components of different varieties in each one. Sometimes that difference is subtle and sometimes it is fairly pronounced. They even look different. My next batch will be lighter and mellower than a later batch. Certain determinate yellows are coming on pretty good but the indeterminate blacks are not there yet.

For me, the hybrids tend to produce more volume and tend to produce tomatoes that are easier to work with. They tend to be pretty and round and firm-textured while some of the heirlooms can be pretty knobby, weird-shaped, and a little harder to slice and make pretty. This is not true of all of them, but I do see a trend. They all have their own flavors. I enjoy the taste of some hybrids more than some heirlooms, but my overall favorites are certain heirlooms.

As has been suggested, I recommend you decide what is important to you and try different varieties until you find what suits you. Your growing conditions are going to be different from any of us. What you want out of a tomato and how you use it is going to be different than us. If whether a variety is heirloom or hybrid is important to you, that is your business and nobody else's. We've all got our own criteria.

 

[ninnymary]

Last year I planted only heirlooms and they did poorly. So I didn't have any tomatoes to give to my friends. This year I planted both heirlooms and went back to my tried and true early girls. I have always been very successful with them. This way I would still have a crop of tomatoes if my heirlooms didn't do well. So far, they are not doing so great. But since I LOVE heirlooms I will always keep trying to grow them.

Mary

 

[patandchickens]

I don't think it makes sense to try to generalize.

Depends on what KIND of veg you're talking about, and WHERE you live, and HOW you garden.

In some situations, you will really get a whole lot more satisfactory harvest out of hybrids than out of any o/p varieties that are available.

In other situations, there will be o/p varieties that do as well as, or even beat the pants offa, any hybrid varieties.

One biggie is, can you get o/p (heirloom) varieties from someone who has grown them for a long time in your region under conditions similar to your garden's conditions. Or are you ordering blind from a catalog. The first is much more likely to produce extremely-satisfactory results than the latter (by no means am I disencouraging ordering from catalogs of course, just that if you can GET locally-tested locally-adapted o/p strains, they are usually the best)

Admittedly my experience growing hybrid varieties has mainly been with hybrid varieties meant for the small home gardener, not ones developed with commercial qualities first on the priority list -- but, that said, it has NOT been my experience that hybrid varieties of most veggies are inferior in taste or texture to o/p varieties, when grown in the same garden. (As opposed to when grown industrially, or when grown elsewhere and shipped and not eaten til they much time and adventures have passed)

But it really depends on the particular vegetable (the situation with corn varieties is SO different than with any other veg, for instance) and the particular cultivars you're comparing, and what you want out of them (like, your feelings on trading off quantity vs quality vs foolproofness-of-growth)

JMHO,

Pat

 

[obsessed]

All my experiences with herilooms is that they can be fickle. Where as a hybrid usually will put up with my poor treatment better. But remember that a hybrid of today is an heirloom of tomarrow. All the tomaotos today were crossed and crossed again until the variety became stable enough to name. So are you most interested in something that has been grown for some time and has developed a following or a new cross just recently developed.

I grow both. They each taste different but all taste good.

 

[ducks4you]

(I'm just happy that we can still get seeds to grow from all of them--the BIG MONSTER seed companies haven't sterilized everything...YET!!!)
I'm still reading this thread.