I’ve been a small market gardener for way too many years, now that I’m retired it’s what I do for fun. I have about 5,000 square feet of permanent beds and 3,000 square feet of polytunnels, so it’s enoght to keep me busy in my old age. I’m also working hard on resilience, and one way I’m doing that is by purchasing several years worth of supplies, such as drip tape and fittings, row cover, irrigation pipe and replacement covers for my high tunnels, as well as fertilizers and micronutrients.
One thing in particular, I’d like to second your comments on hybrid varieties. There’s tons of bad info out there regrading hybrids but the bottom line to me is that most of the old open pollinated varieties have been allowed to deteriorate and the quality has gone downhill fast. Every season that seeds are grown there needs to be care and selection, picking out the best parents for the next generation. With open pollinated varieties there’s often little financial incentive for that work, so seed growers just plant a field with a variety and then harvest the crop and sell the seeds. It doesn’t take long for genetic variability to take its toll and you get reversion to the mean, lower quality. There are some small seed companies that do tend and care for open pollinated varieties these days, On the other had the big companies, anything you see in a big box store, etc, are just going for the cheapest seed they can get.
With some crops the open pollinated varieties are generally good, such as carrots, parsnips, leeks and tomatoes. Some, such as lettuce, there are no hybrid varieties. Others, there is usually a huge difference, none more so than sweet peppers, but broccoli, cauliflower and other coles, as well as eggplant and othes show a big advantage with hybrids. The difference in peppers can be striking, in terms of earliness, yield and better flavor.
Almost all hybrids will produce offspring if you save the seeds and plant them. They won’t be the same as the parents in most cases, but they will generally be similar, and in fact plant breeders have successfully “de-hybridized” quite a few hybrids by saving the seeds and selecting the offspring for a number of generations to end up with an open pollinated variety very similar to the original hybrid. Sungold tomatoes are one example where this has been done by several different breeders.
Finally, if you’re going to garden, buy decent seeds. When I think of all the time, work and money people put into gardens it’s shocking to me how many of them then go down to the local hardware store and buy the $.79 seed packs off the huge rack to plant. There are lots of good seed companies out there these days, for beginning home gardeners I often reccomend Fedco seeds in Maine as they have a good selection and you can buy anything from a tiny packet to pounds at good prices. Johnny’s sells high quality seeds but they tend to be expensiv and are more aimed at market gardeners for whom it’s worth paying $.50 per seed if it will make them an extra $5 per plant. Lately I’ve been getting almost all my seed from Osborne Seed, great varieties and good prices, but more aimed at larger purchasers. On the other hand, buy 2-3 years worth at a time and save a lot of money, almost all seed will keep that long.
It takes years of experience to be good at gardening and to build your soil and growing systems. I’m growing far more than I need at the moment, the reason is what I think of as “capacity building”. I’m adding new beds, improving my soil,practicing my growing techniques and testing new varieties. If I suddenly truly need my garden to live, it will be ready. In the mean time it’s feeding several families with great food.