Does Hybrid Mean Sterile?
By Amelia Tucker
When planting hybrid tomatoes, are you safe from escape plants for the next season? No!
Hybrid tomatoes are a combination of varieties making a third plant with the desired qualities of the first two plants in it.
When you save the seeds from a hybrid tomato, you have no idea what variety will grow the following year.
You could end up with something that simply won’t grow in your area, soil ph or watering conditions by itself. Imagine all the wasted effort from saving seeds to nurturing seedlings to hardening off and finally planting, only to see the plants die off no matter what you try.
If you are going to go through the time and effort of carefully saving your seeds, like anything, only save the best samples you can. This means knowing the variety and not just saving any seed you can salvage.
June 17th, 2008 at 9:16 am
There are plenty of growers who like to try to dehybridise hybrids just for the challenge and curiosity. It takes years, growing space, and plenty of patience. The first generation (from the saved hybrid seed) usually produces something that looks like the parent. It’s the next (second) generation in which the mixed gene pool starts to bubble, throwing up all sorts of variations. It’s highly unlikely, though, that the first generation plants are going to have any more problems with soil, pH, watering, etc, than the parent plant did.