I went yesterday and found a range of seeds for 35p a packet.
I bought Nastursiums, Spinach beet, carrots, and spring onions but they had loads of choice.
after buying some last year and seeing the germination results and resulting vegetables - I now understand why F1 seeds exist!
Quote from: glow777 on March 25, 2008, 07:33:34
after buying some last year and seeing the germination results and resulting vegetables - I now understand why F1 seeds exist!
ooh. Are they bad?
Quote from: Pookledo on March 25, 2008, 07:55:23
ooh. Are they bad?
as with most things in life - you get what you pay for (if you cant find it in a skip!)
Quote from: glow777 on March 26, 2008, 13:33:43
Quote from: Pookledo on March 25, 2008, 07:55:23
ooh. Are they bad?
as with most things in life - you get what you pay for (if you cant find it in a skip!)
Ah. Then they'll do for this year as I'm just learning and am bound to make mistakes (as well as buying some seeds from Aldi ;))
I tried their sunburst squash last year - diddly squat in terms of results, BUT, leeks great still harvesting very good taste and reasonable size and the yellow dwarf beans were delicious.
Not to mention they do my favourite radish (ostergruss rosa) which would otherwise cost 2.25 from suttons eden project collection! Some you win , some you lose!
F1 - a means to vastly inflate the profits of agrochemical companies, deprive the gardener of choice by ensuring everything is the same, feather the pockets of EEC bureaucrats, and make you poor by ensuring you have to buy new seed every year.
Yes to all that but what about Surfinias how good are they?
Surfinia petunias will only grow from cuttings, not seed. You can take cuttings in spring or at the end of August (for overwintering in a frost-free greenhouse).
The plants are male sterile - they don't produce any viable pollen. They can cross with other petunias but then obviously they won't be true Surfinias - a different flower colour and more open growth habit.
I believe that surfinas are protected by Plant Breeders Rights so they cannot be sold for profit.
You can buy F1 petunia seeds which are simila to surfinias but they are not the real thing.
So are Surfinias not F1 hybrids then. I thought they were.
Surfinias are a cross between an F1 hybrid petunia & a wild South American petunia.
Last year I bought Wilko's 49p a packet carrots and they were the best I have ever grown, flavour, germination etc. So much so two other plot holders have asked me to grow theirs this year, fingers crossed it wasn't a fluke.
Sinbad
So that makes them an F2 hybrid then presumably.
An F2 is what you get if you sow saved seed from F1 plants, each plant can be completely different & many will bear no resemblance to the F1 plant you saved the seeds from.
Surfinia is only grown from cuttings, never from seed. Its ancestry is different: Surfinias were developed by Suntory, a Japanese company with a wide range of interests including food & beverages, pharmaceuticals, restaurant operation, sports, music, films, resort development, publishing, biotechnology etc... They crossed wild South American species Petunias with cultivated varieties from seed for 8 years, until they developed the Surfinia. But the scientists at Suntory discovered that Surfinia from seed wasn't as vigorous or floriferous as Surfinia from cuttings, and so they never marketed the seed hence the reason you will only find Surfinia sold as plants.
I am not sure what Surfinias are actually classed as I know there was a milliflora category created in 1996 especially for 'Fantasy Petunias' which is where Surfinias fit in but that is primarily to do with the size & growth habits of the plants nothing to do with wether or not they are hybrids. If you want a definitive answer you would have to contact Suntory, I suspect it was the biotechnology department that created them as that is the department who created the worlds first blue rose which suggests they deal with any plant breeding the company does.
Thanks for that Baccy.