Heirloom seeds advice

Great Vegetable Seeds from The Real Seed Catalogue

This is a fantastic site Samuel. Not only do they sell heritage and heirloom seeds they give you detailed advice on growing them and saving your own seeds. All the answers you will ever need.

'Normal' seeds = named varieties which can be grown and the offspring will come true to the parent variety (some types of veg plant need to be kept isolated so they don't cross fertilise e.g. broad bean). Tend to be cheap.

F1 seeds = named varieties which have been bred for a particular desirable characteristic (e.g. supersweet sweetcorn varieties). The seed from these will not come true to the parent plant, so you have to buy new seed next year of the same variety. Tend to be expensive.

Heritage/Heirloom seeds = named varieties which are not registered on the European seed register and cannot therefore be sold. They can be swapped, but not sold.

If you want to save seed for next year, I wouldn't bother for 'normal seeds' which need special isolation (e.g. lettuce, runner beans) as the seeds are so cheap anyway (29p for little gem lettuce seeds in Aldi at the mo), and you get a zillion seeds in a packet which can be kept year to year.

You can't save F1 seeds so they come true, so if you like a particular F1 variety you are going to have to buy new seeds when you run out of the packet. I had a packet of F1 cucumber once which cost about £3 and had eight seeds in it

You can join the Heritage Seed Library for an annual fee for which you are entitled to a number of seed packets of heritage varieties. You can save seeds from all of these with a little care. I have an extensive collection of french beans and peas which originated from the HSL.

Then there is the Virtual Seed Parcel curated by the lovely VC in which there are an array of allsorts of see varieties which you would be welcome to participate in (assuming that you meet the VSP criteria of membership on here)

For suppliers of unusual seeds, and all round advice on seed saving, Real Seeds are great.

could have saved myself a lot of typing there - great link, RL.

Actually Hazel I think this is as yet a proposed law. Don't think it's in force yet.

I thought that was the whole point of the HSL being a membership club rather than just producing a seed catalogue of unusual/rare/endangered varieties for sale? Quite happy to be wrong on that though.

According to the EU site, the draft regulation was adopted by the European Commission in May 2013. It says here:

So I guess it's not enforceable yet but it's only a matter of time.

It makes sense that the HSL would want to make sure it is outside the scope of all this stuff. Again, from the EU site:

I haven't read all the details but all this stuff makes me deeply uncomfortable. I guess it's because of the principle of "follow the money": who is it that will benefit financially from all this? All I know for certain is that it ain't me.

Also the general principle seems to be that if you give people power:

- they will use it ... and not always for the purpose that you gave them the power;
- they will forget that it was you who gave them the power;
- you won't be able to take the power away from them again.

But now I'm straying into politics so I'll stop before I get into a rant.

1. F1 seeds are so expensive due to the costs of producing them. Controlled environments to cross particular parent plants before nature does it for you.
2. There are no issues with growing F1 and open pollinated plants together provided you follow good seed saving practice's. I only really save tomato seeds as you don't need to worry about isolation so they're easy. But chilli's and courgettes for example you just need to be on the ball to do the pollinating yourself at the right time.
3. As part of seed saving storage conditions are key to the seed retaining its viability as long as possible. Different seeds vary in how long they last but generally they need to be kept as dry as possible and cool but not freezing, and dark.

Oops my finger just slipped onto Rustylady's link and I 'accidentally' bought 4 packets of seeds

Seconded. This concerns me as well which is one of the reasons I would like to get my hands on some seeds which I can save the seeds from the plant for the next season

So what makes these Heirloom seeds not fit for people/companies to sell? So technically Heirloom seeds are just 'normal as would work in nature' seeds?

I would guess that the theory behind the European list is a quality/standardisation thing. Many varieties have local names, and a register of names to genetic variety means that when you buy something called x, you are getting standard seeds of x.

The downside is that if a variety doesn't have someone (normally a seed company) to pay to register it, it may well die out. This might be for a good reason, per se (if, for example a variety is poor in terms of yield/taste/disease resistance), except once a seed variety becomes extinct that's it and it is gone forever, and we may find in future that - for example - that variety works as a great cross with another variety to produce something brilliant.

I used the term 'heritage/heirloom' as in HSL, as in 'varieties of seed which have not been registered on the European list'. I suspect that 'heirloom' is one of those wishy washy terms that seed companies put on their packets to make you think you are getting something special.

To me Heirloom/Heritage means varieties that are open-pollinated, old, and not commonly grown commercially.

The HSL ones are endangered as well as being heritage

Many companies sell Heirloom, as in old (some very old) varieties that are registered - Thomas Etty for example.
Thomas Etty Esq. - Heritage Vegetable & Flower Seeds