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Create a Pollinator Paradise

Tuesday, June 18th, 2013

Most pollinators – approximately 200,000 species – are beneficial insects such as bees, flies, beetles, wasps, and butterflies. A small percentage of pollinators are vertebrates such as hummingbirds. Honey bees and native bees (bumble bees, carpenter bees, sweat bees, mining bees, mason bees, etc.) are critical to our food supply and are responsible for pollinating about one-third of the foods we enjoy.

Pollinators are critical to supplying about 1/3 of our foods (Photo: Debbie Roos)

Bees and other pollinators are also essential components of the habitats and ecosystems that many wild animals rely on for food and shelter. As natural areas are cleared for development, pollinator habitat is destroyed or fragmented, resulting in the loss of foraging and nesting sites. This can lead to a decline in pollinator populations.

Pollinators are essential components of the habitats and ecosystems (Photo: Debbie Roos)

One big way you can help pollinators is by planting forage habitat that provides nectar and pollen. Your main goal is to have plants flowering throughout the growing season, from early spring-late fall, with overlapping bloom periods.

Pollinator Paradise Garden (spring) (Photo: Debbie Roos)

Choose flowers with a diversity of bloom color, size, and shape to attract the greatest diversity of pollinators. Some pollinators have short tongues and can only feed from small, open flowers with easily accessible nectar. Other pollinators have long tongues and prefer more complex blooms. Emphasize native plants to provide the most benefits to the greatest number of pollinators.

Pollinator Paradise Garden (early summer) (Photo: Debbie Roos)

Some examples of native plants that will make your pollinators very happy from spring to fall: wild indigo, spiderwort, and beard tongue (spring); butterfly weed, mountain mint, Joe-pye weed, coneflower, anise hyssop, blanketflower, and St. John’s wort (summer); goldenrod, aster, spotted horsemint, and obedient plant (fall). Herbs such as lavender, thyme, oregano, calamint, basil, catmint, and rosemary also provide great resources for bees.

Pollinator Paradise Garden (late summer). (Photo: Debbie Roos)

Looking to find plants suited to your region? Check out the Pollinator Partnership planting guides.

Learn and Explore at Pollinator Paradise Garden

Want to learn more? You can visit North Carolina Cooperative Extension’s Pollinator Paradise Garden at Chatham Mills in Pittsboro, NC.

This public demonstration garden includes over 140 different plants, 85% which are native to the piedmont of North Carolina. For those of you outside North Carolina, the garden has its own website that includes a plant list, photos of what’s blooming every week, and much more. If you are not able to visit the garden in person, you can take a virtual tour here or shown below by viewing the slide show featuring 100 photos from the garden throughout the seasons!

Free garden tours are conducted every month, and the schedule is on the website. Just go to www.protectpollinators.org and click on the Pollinator Paradise Garden link.

I hope that you will consider creating some habitat that both you and our pollinators will enjoy for many seasons to come!

Debbie Roos
Agricultural Extension Agent with the Chatham County Center of North Carolina Cooperative Extension.

Tags: demonstration garden, National Pollinator Week, pollinators
Posted in Plants, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Growing Tomatoes in the Heat of the Low Desert

Friday, June 14th, 2013

While many gardeners are enjoying the zenith of tomato season in June and July, Southwestern gardeners, particularly Low Desert Arizona gardeners, have reached the end of tomato growing season.

Our spring season is short, 60-70 days for temperatures between 50 to 90 degrees, optimal for tomatoes. Short-season, medium, to small sized tomatoes do well here: Yellow Pear, Cherry, Sweet 100, Earlypak, Earlygirl, Small Fry, Patio, Champion, Earliana, and Sunripe, as described in Growing Tomatoes in the Desert.

Pear tomatoes grow during our short growing season

Small to medium sized tomatoes grow well in Arizona during our short tomato growing season.

Happening now in the Low Desert is Tomato Bloom Drop and a failure to set fruit, as described in Common Disorders of Tomatoes Under Desert Conditions. Hot air and dry temperatures cause the blooms to drop off and the pollen to dry up. The pollen of many vegetables, including tomatoes is not viable once the temperatures get over 90 degrees.

Now that June has arrived, we protect and shade our plants for our next season by tucking our plants under shade cloth and waiting out the 100+ degree temperatures. In the fall, we keep tomatoes under cover until night time temperatures drop and then prune tomatoes to promote new growth.

Tomato shade cloth

Fall demo garden

Does it get too hot to grow tomatoes during the summer where you live? What kind of tomato tips do you have for dealing with prolonged heat?

Eileen Kane,
Maricopa County Master Gardener
University of Arizona Cooperative Extension

Tags: tomato
Posted in Plants, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Wordless Wednesday: Tree Peonies

Wednesday, May 22nd, 2013

Tree Peony Photos by Shelby Snider, in Virginia, zone 7

Tree Peony Photos by Shelby Snider, Virginia (zone 7)

In answer to our question last week “What’s blooming in your garden?” Shelby Snider answered “Tree Peonies!” These ruffled beauties are long lived, sometimes over 100 years old. So what’s blooming in your garden today?

Tags: wordless wednesday
Posted in Plants, Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

Seed Saving 102: What and How to Save Your Favorite Veggie Seeds

Monday, May 20th, 2013

In a previous blog post you could think of as seed saving 101, we discussed the difference between heirlooms and hybrids in regards to seed saving. Now we take a look at specific vegetables and which are most easily saved and what planning and considerations are needed for saving seeds. Most home gardeners want to ensure that the seeds that they save will produce plants similar to, if not the same as, those from which they collected the seed.

The Genetics of Seed Saving

In order for us to discuss seed saving of specific vegetables, we first need to learn a little terminology and plant genetics. While you might think it is not the most interesting of subjects, there’s lots to be learned and it will ultimately make us better seed savers. You don’t have to delve to the level of the authors plant-geekdom (and study Mendelian genetics in radishes as your high school senior project), but a little basic knowledge will help.

A tomato flower is made to promote self-pollination. (Photo: Felagund commons.wikimedia.org

Self-pollinated plants are self-fertile, which make them prime candidates for saving seeds that are “true to variety,” which means that the resulting seeds will have most of the characteristics of the parent. Self-pollination is also referred to as natural inbreeding. In some cases, such as beans and tomatoes, pollination often occurs even before the flowers fully open and the flower’s shape discourages insect pollination.

Cross-pollination can also be referred to as natural outbreeding. Cross-pollinated plants require pollen from another individual plant for successful pollination. The most common modes of pollination are wind pollination and insect pollination. These plants are harder to save seed from, since they are less likely to produce “true to variety” offspring.

Some cross-pollinated plants are perfectly happy crossing with individuals of the same variety. However, some do exhibit inbreeding depression, which refers to reduced vigor and fitness in a population that arises from inbreeding. If a species with inbreeding suppression

Hybrid vigor refers to improved vigor and fitness of individuals that rise from the crossing, or hybridization, of two genetically diverse varieties.

So What Does All this Mean?

Basically, this means that some seeds are easier to save than others. In a nutshell, here are the take-away lessons:

Legumes (beans and peas) and solanaceous crops (tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants) are by far the easiest crops to save, since they
are self-pollinated. There is the potential for cross-pollinating if you have hungry pollinators (I’ve seen bumblebees rip open bean flowers). Peppers and eggplants also have the potential for cross-pollination, so if you want to maintain a specific variety they need to be separated by at least 500 feet or have flowers bagged. Lettuce is also relatively easy to save.

Most of the other common garden vegetables have a high hybrid vigor and are natural outbreeders, meaning that they cross- pollinate readily. Members of the Cucurbitaceae family (squash, pumpkins, melons, gourds), Apiaceae family (carrots, dill, fennel), Amaryllidaceae family (onions, chives, leeks), and some members of the Brassicaceae family like the cruciferous radish exhibit little inbreeding suppression, meaning that you can easily cross a variety with itself if you isolate it from other varieties. Corn (Poaceae) and cole crops like cabbage, broccoli, and kale (Brassica oleracea) have a higher level of inbreeding depression, meaning that crosses with members of the same variety result in seeds that are less vigorous.

How do you isolate plants?

Plants that easily cross can potentially cross with other varieties in the garden or the neighbors garden. Insect pollinated plants are typically pollinated by bees, which can have a travel range of two miles or more. Home gardeners would have trouble separating their varieties that far, so it would be easier to isolate individual flowers or plants. Covering a plant with fine mesh netting or bagging flowers are popular choices.

For cucurbits, flowers have only one gender, so this is easier. Before blossoms fully open, removing male flowers and using them to pollinate female flowers is the general practice. The female flower is then wrapped in a bag until the fruit begins to form. For other plants, using netting and hand pollinating may be the option.

Of interesting note is the case of some of the cucurbits and cole crops. All of the cole crops (broccoli, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, kale, cauliflower, etc.) are all the same species and will easily cross. There are instances of crosses of broccoli and kale, sprouts and flowering cabbage and others. Likewise, many members of the cucurbit family are the same species. It is not uncommon to get crosses of pumpkins and zucchini (a puccini, anyone?) and others.

Tags: hybrid, pollination, seed saving
Posted in Plants | No Comments »

Garden Journaling Phenology Events Can Help Grow a Garden

Tuesday, May 7th, 2013

I love looking out our kitchen window in April and seeing “thirty shades of green.” Everything is starting to look so lush and alive and it makes me feel better about the possibility of warm weather arriving at last. The hostas are unfurling their variegated leaves. Luckily, the nights have been cool enough that the slugs haven’t been very active yet, so the hosta have a head start.

A view from my kitchen window – April 15th (Photo: Carla Albright)

When spring arrives each year, I note the changes in my garden journal. I know I am not the only one who does this. In fact there is a whole science based on the relative changes in nature called phenology.

In formal terms, phenology is “the study of how the biological world and its naturally occurring events are timed with seasonal and annual variations taken into account.” But this is a longer way of saying its how natural things relate to each other and to the climate surrounding them.

Recording Changes in Plants Can Traced to the 8th Century!

When we stop to think about it, we know that throughout history people have been studying natural relationships. Ancient tribes of North America, for example, would schedule their crop plantings according to a variety of signs in nature, be it the phases of the moon or the leafing out of the maple trees. Other early cultures worldwide knew of the signs that indicated that the plants and animals were taking their cues from the local climate. Think of the cherry blossom festivals in ancient Japan and China whose dates can be traced to earlier than the 8^th century. Vintners in Europe have been keeping climate records for over 500 years, which gives them a nice, long baseline to work with.

The father of Modern Phenology is considered to be Englishman Robert Marsham when, in 1736, he started systematically and precisely recording the signs of spring on his estate in Norfolk. This tradition of meticulous record-keeping continued for generations in his family until 1958 when Martha Marsham died. As you can imagine, a long-time record that spans 200 years would be really helpful in a lot of crop plans.

Garden Journaling Helps Me Grow My Garden

Epimedium ‘Bandit” makes an appearance in the early spring garden. (Photo: Carla Albright).

In our current times of climate upheaval, a science like this would also be advantageous in noting specific changes.

In my own small way, I have been doing this for about 10 years in my garden journal. Ten years may seem like a drop in the bucket compared to the dedication of the Marsham family, but it has been useful to me just in my garden plantings as well as interesting to see the year-to-year progressions. I know when the Hellebores start to fade in March, the Epimediums will start to sprout and the hosta will poke through the soil.

What to record?

Traditionally, the three main factors in the study of phenology have been sunlight, temperature and precipitation, all of which – of course – are the basis of climate. These are the factors that work together in determining the timing of natural events. One example would be the bird migrations that base their flying times on the amount of daylight, leaving their wintering grounds as the days become longer. In a reverse order are the bloom times of poinsettias, which cue in to shorter days.

It helps me to record low and high temperatures in my journal as well as rainfall. This way, if in mid-summer certain plants aren’t doing well, I can look back and see what might be a factor in that failure to thrive. Perhaps it will even allow me some insight to correct for that factor next year.

Get Recording With Citizen Science Projects or Your Own Garden Journal

There is now an organization dedicated to phenology. It offers gardeners and amateur scientists an opportunity to record data and have it compiled with the data of other researchers. It is called the United States National Phenology Network and can be reached at www.usanpn.org/ . I kind of liked their description of phenology as being “Nature’s Calendar.” The website offers lots of ideas of keeping records and is looking for volunteer record-keepers from around the country so a larger cache of information can be gleaned. But even if you are not interested in joining other gardeners in keeping track of nature, keeping a record for your own use can be invaluable.

Because the world around us changes so quickly in April, it is the perfect time to begin record keeping. Birds are migrating, leaves and buds are swelling on the trees, perennial plants are poking through the soil, bees are out on warmer days, frogs are singing. Of course the first robin is a good climate indicator. But summer, fall and winter bring their own changes, with flowers blooming and leaves changing colors and eventually dropping.

Project Budburst, Project Feederwatch, or Frogwatch USA are also some good citizen scientist programs to check out. Find them through your online search engine. For a first-hand experience from other Master Gardeners, check out Edy and Pat’s story in their Nature’s Notebook and Master Gardener A Tool for All Seasons blog post from this past January at to see how valuable a notebook can be. Then get yourself a garden journal, make one from a 79 cent notebook, a three-ring binder, or keep records on your computer, and become an amateur phenologist.

Do you keep a garden journal? What kinds of things do you record?

Would you like to compare notes with other Master Gardeners this fall? It might be a fun way of creating our own MG phenology research guide for our own geographical areas.

My Garden Journal (Photo: Carla Albright)

~ Carla Albright, Tillamook County Oregon Master Gardener

Tags: citizen science, garden journaling, phenology
Posted in IPM, Partnerships, Plants | 2 Comments »

Creating an Eco-system in Your Own Backyard

Thursday, April 25th, 2013

In recognition of Earth Day (April 22nd), I wanted to share the opportunity to participate in the National Wildlife Federation’s Backyard Habitat program. In 2006

Shade garden in Connecticut (Photo credit Connie Schultz)

when I lived in Connecticut, I used to watch a program called Backyard Habitat with David Mizejewski, a program of the National Wildlife Federation. Dave would go to people’s homes and help them create backyard “habitats” that were creature friendly.

A habitat is defined as “the natural home or environment of an animal, plant, or other organism or a particular type of environment regarded as a home for organisms.”

An ecosystem is defined as “a community of living organisms (plants, animals and microbes) in conjunction with the non-living components of their environment (things like air, water and mineral soil), interacting as a system.”

It’s stunning to think of your backyard – your own little piece of earth – as an ecosystem. What are the possibilities for exploring this dimension of your little plot of land? What are the implications for impacting your surroundings?

In the program, Dave Mizejewski visited home owners to help them create habitats that reflected the varying sites and locations and the homeowner’s interests – habitats for butterflies, turtles, frogs, salamanders, birds, and many more. There were only four ingredients required:

1) Food

2) Water

3) Cover/protection/shelter

4) Home (a place to have their babies)

Sounded simple! So I got started!

Bog Garden Connecticut (Photo credit Connie Schultz)

Food: I wanted to attract pollinators and I already gardened organically to avoid the indiscriminate chemicals that kill both “friend and foe” and used a lot of flowering plants. Not just any flowering plants though, because it’s important to use as many native plants as possible since the insects and the creatures that feed on them (like birds) are adapted to feed on certain varieties of plants that are native to their home environment.

Water: Our well head always overflowed or seeped, so I used that water source to create a little “bog garden

habitat.” This drew butterflies as well as bees and other pollinators.

Cover: This simply meant leaving a little patch of undeveloped woods or shrubs, a pile of sticks (easy to come by in my garden), or a pile of rocks; places where creatures can take refuge if they need to escape a predator.

Home: This meant they need a place to make a nest and raise their young. For butterflies this meant growing not only nectar plants but host plants that they lay their eggs on. If I want to attract wonderful garden toads (they eat the insects that nibble my plants), I make sure they have a dark inviting places to sleep during the day because they’re nocturnal.

Certified Backyard Habitat (sign from National Wildlife Federation)

So in 2006 my yard became a certified Backyard Habitat.

Sara Stein says in her book Noah’s Garden (I highly recommend it) :

“We cannot in fairness rail against those who destroy the rain forest or threaten the spotted owl when we have made our own backyards uninhabitable (for creatures).”

If you’d like to experience this wonderful journey into the life in your backyard, try watching this introductory video on becoming a backyard habitat and garden for life – wildlife! Garden for Wildlife!

Also enjoy this publication, Bringing Conservation From the Countryside to Your Backyard, a cooperative project from USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service, National Association of Conservation Districts, Wildlife Habitat Council, and the National Audubon Society.

Question: Do you have a certified Backyard Habitat? Please tell us about it! (Be sure to state your location.)

by Connie Schultz, Master Gardener/Composter (’95 Cornell) now volunteering in Johnston County, NC

Tags: Backyard Habitats, pollinators, wildlife
Posted in Partnerships, Places, Plants | 1 Comment »

Wordless Wednesday: Tiny Treasures

Wednesday, April 17th, 2013

Looking for the tiny hidden treasures in the garden…..

(Lft to Rt) Serissa foetida flower, moss fruiting bodies, Virginia Creeper pads or sticky fingers (Parthenocissus quinquefolia), tiny Testudinaria flowers. Photo Credit Sara Siegers and Connie Schultz

by Connie Schultz, Master Gardener/Composter (’95 Cornell Extension), now volunteering in Johnston County, NC

Tags: flowers, moss
Posted in Plants, Wordless Wednesday | No Comments »

Wordless Wednesday: Blooming Desert

Wednesday, April 10th, 2013

We’re in a severe drought, but these plants don’t act like they know. We usually have about 7-8 inches of precip. a year, but in the past year and a half, we’ve had almost 5 inches total.

Submitted by Sylvia Hacker
Doña Ana Co. Master Gardeners (On Facebook)
Texas Master Naturalist
Las Cruces, New Mexico

All blooming desert photos are courtesy of Benny Pol, Texas Master Naturalist

Echinocereus triglochidiatus or claret cup cactus
Dalea pulchra-Indigo bush
Rafinesquia neomexicana-Desert chicory
Hibiscus denudatus-Rock hibiscus
Fouquieria splendens-Ocotillo
Echinocereus Viridiflorus-Green pitaya/nylon hedgehog cactus

Tags: desert, flowers, native plants
Posted in Plants, Wordless Wednesday | 2 Comments »

Five Seed Saving Lessons from the Ground Up

Sunday, March 31st, 2013

Oh, what I’ve learned about saving seeds! Over the years I’ve had the opportunity to garden from zone 4 to 10; from frost shortened growing seasons to endless summers; from hot and dry, to cold and dry, to cool and damp. But when I moved to North Carolina I encountered “hot and humid” – a new “climate zone” for me although, per the hardiness zone map zone, only a zone 7/8 which I’ve lived in before.

Saved seeds

By the time we’d moved in and my husband prepared some raised beds for me, it was June and summer was in full swing, but I sowed all my unused/saved seeds from prior years anyway.

It’s better than wasting them and I’ve often been pleasantly surprised.

Lesson One – Know Your Seed’s Dormancy Requirements

The carrots and celery and several others didn’t come up and I just assumed that they were too old and hadn’t germinated. Then later in September I noticed some funny seedlings in my beds. They weren’t weeds but I couldn’t think what they could be – until I recognized the ferny foliage of carrots and feathery leaves of celery – then some cabbage popped up – they were the seeds I had sown in June and forgotten about when they didn’t come up. But their internal clock and thermostat were working and as days got shorter and cooler, they knew their time in the sun had arrived – a testimony to the ingenuity of seeds. Lesson on seed “stratification” learned!

Lesson Two – Where you grow is as important as what you grow…

Saying good bye to ‘old favorites’

I also enjoy growing unusual vegetable varieties. They’re like gourmet varieties because you can’t get them at the grocery store – they’re special, like lemon cucumbers. I also like to try new things like purple carrots or foot long green beans but I also have my old favorites like Early Girl tomatoes – not exotic but dependable and delicious. But here in North Carolina they just weren’t doing well. Some of my old standards, like Yolo Wonder bell peppers, weren’t as vigorous and didn’t produce well when temperatures soared over 95.

Saying hello to ‘new favorites’

Fortunately for me, I love going to the Farmer’s Market and there I can see what’s growing well for other people in my area.

That’s where I found some peppers called Cubanelles. They were delicious, so I bought some plants. While my standard variety struggled, the Cubanelles passed them by like they were standing still! I only bought three plants but I was giving peppers away and still freezing the leftovers. It dawned on me that some of my old favorites didn’t like the heat and humidity of the southeast while other plants were utterly unfazed by it!

I decided to experiment more with some of the vegetables the south is famous for like sweet potatoes. They were a super, trouble-free crop. They were not only unfazed by heat and humidity but had the added advantage of not being bothered by bugs or periods of drought. So as the light of understanding dawned, I realized that most of the seed catalogs I favored were produced in northern latitudes. I needed to find some southern sources to expand my variety of choices and also to experiment with seeds from other hot/humid locales. Valuable lesson learned!

Lesson Three – Citizen Science Opportunity

If you want to experiment and learn more about vegetables that might grow well in your area, you might be interested in participating in Cornell’s Citizen Science: Vegetable Varieties for Gardeners. It’s a web-based program that compiles information from gardeners from all over the US on what will grow well in different climates. The information collected can also help determine breeding efforts and seed availability.

Lesson Four – Saving & Sharing Seed

After getting better acquainted with our new surroundings, one of our neighbors brought over some okra seed that his wife’s grandmother had grown.

Okra seeds (photo credit Connie Schultz)

Like the Cubanelles, they were unfazed by heat or bugs or humidity and grew 5 or 6 feet tall. The pods didn’t seem to get as tough as they grew larger either.

As gardeners we love to share our favorites or our new discoveries but, in order to share these treasures, the plants and their seeds need to be non-hybrid varieties (heirlooms fall in this category). Non-hybrid seedlings reliably reproduce the traits of the parent plants, the traits that made them desirable in the first place. For more information, see John Porter’s post Seed Saving: Knowing the Difference Between Hybrids, Heirlooms, and Open-Pollinated Plants

Hybrids are bred for certain traits like a short time to harvest for short season locations or for resistance to a virus or fungus but their seeds will not reliably reproduce these traits. So in order to share my new discoveries, I need to have non-hybrid seeds, something to consider when I’m buying seeds or plants. I’ve learned how saving heirloom vegetable seeds can help protect the bio-diversity of our food supply and help assure resilient plants and seeds. Another important principal learned!

Lesson Five – Finding Seeds through Organizations

Chive seeds (Photo credit Sara Siegers)

One of the things I like best about gardening is that I’m always learning new things.

If you’re interested learning more about saving seeds to share or saving seeds to preserve old unnamed varieties like the okra I was given, you might want to join the Seed Savers Organization , a non-profit organization dedicated to saving and sharing heirloom seeds. If you want to get involved, they have a program they established in 2011 called the Member-Grower-Evaluation Network that evaluates the performance of heirlooms all over the world and helps build a larger base of information on each variety.

If you already save seed, perhaps you would like to help start a seed-saver program at your local library? Seed libraries are sprouting all over the US in local libraries. You can learn more about this new phenomenon by clicking the links in this paragraph.

Do you have seed lessons you’ve learned that you’d like to share?

By Connie Schultz, Master Gardener/Composter (’95) Cornell, now serving in Johnston County, NC

Tags: citizen science, gardening, seed saving, seeds, vegetables
Posted in Plants | 1 Comment »

Seed Saving: Knowing the Difference Between Hybrids, Heirlooms, and Open-Pollinated Plants

Thursday, March 21st, 2013

Lots of home gardeners and small farmers are interested in saving seeds. Aside from saving money, saving seeds helps to preserve interesting varieties, diversify crop genetics and preserve cultural identity and heritage. The question I hear the most from folks wanting to save seeds is – “What can I save?” The next question is “How do I save them?” In reality, the biggest decisions actually come in selecting seeds and how to plant them, and not in actual saving and storing of the seeds. The first discussion when starting seed saving is:

Hybrid vs Open Pollinated vs Heirloom – What’s the difference?

The offspring from a hybrid can have many different traits.

Hybrid plants are the result of a controlled breeding process, developed through a series of crosses where the parent plants impart the offspring with desirable traits. The breeding process can be long and involved, especially since the process is so controlled. The benefit to newer hybrids is that there has been a focus on disease resistance, where the plants usually have fewer diseases and thus requires fewer pest control inputs. Hybrids also benefit from what is called “hybrid vigor,” where the plants exhibit stronger, more vital growth, higher yields and even higher survival from the seedling stage.

The big drawback with hybrids, especially for those who are interested in saving seeds, is that you really can’t do so with most hybrids. Due to the long, involved process in developing the hybrid, the genetics of the hybrid aren’t stable enough to allow the seeds to be self-sustaining. This means that instead of traits of the parent plant, you end up with a random mix of traits from the grandparent plants and earlier generations.

Common Misconceptions: Hybrids and GMOs are Not the Same

One misconception that I’ve seen is that folks think that hybrids are genetically modified organisms. This isn’t true-they are developed from many generations of natural breeding that is directed by human hands. The fact of the matter is that there are currently no genetically modified seeds or plants available to the general public. Genetically modified organisms are developed through direct genetic modification in a lab, usually using DNA insertion or deletion. Currently, you will only find these seeds in commodity crops, such as field corn, soy, cotton, etc. For more information, see this discussion Are GMO Seeds Available for Purchase?

Beans are a commmonly saved crop, since their self-pollination results in little crossing with other varieties. (Photo: Flickr, Jason Anfineson)

Open-pollinated plants are those who have stable genetics, where seeds can be saved with a promise that the offspring will be similar. Due to the variability of the natural pollination process, though, there may be variations from individual to individual. In order to save seeds, though, it is often necessary to isolate the plants to ensure that there is no cross pollination from other varieties in the garden, in the neighbors garden and sometimes as far as miles away. (I hope to discuss this topic in a follow-up article.)

Heirlooms are simply open-pollinated varieties that have developed outside of the commercial plant trade and have a historical or cultural significance (a “backstory”). However, not all open-pollinated seeds are heirlooms. There is no hard and fast definition of “heirloom” as some also consider age a determining factor in the “heirloom” designation. The common age is usually 50 years. The seeds have been passed from generation-to-generation and often have a local or even familial significance. Several smaller seed companies have found a niche in the market by exclusively selling heirloom seeds, and even large commercial seed companies are following suit.

For more information on heirloom resources, see this past blog post on Cooperative Extension heirloom vegetable resources.

You may also wish to find more information on heirlooms and hybrids at the following sources:

Hybrids & Heirlooms – University of Illinois Extension
How are Hybrid and Open-Pollinated Vegetables Different? – Oregon State University Extension
Heirloom vs Hybrid Seeds – Backyard Gardener

A Local Case Study:

The WV ’63 tomato was a hit! (Photo courtesy: West Virginia University)

Consider the WV ’63 tomato. It was developed and released from my institution, WVU, 50 years ago in celebration of the state centennial. It was developed through several generations of breeding, but it is an open-pollinated variety. It was a breakthrough, since it was one of the first tomatoes developed with late blight resistance. Since its release, it has mainly been maintained by growing it at the university farm for seeds and plants sold from the campus greenhouse and by a few small producers in the state and by local seed savers. It is not common in general garden catalogs, though it is available through one that sells heirloom varieties.

This year, to celebrate the state’s sesquicentennial and the tomato’s 50^th birthday, WVU Extension had a massive giveaway program, where an attractive “collector” seed packet was developed and citizens (and others) could request free tomato seeds. Well over 20,000 requests were made and no more are available. But the question that I often get is “is it an heirloom?” What do you think? Is it an heirloom? You can read more about the WV ’63 here and as well as watch a wonderful video from the man who developed it here.

John Porter

Extension Agent, WVU Extension Service

Charleston, WV

@WVUgardenguru

You can win your very own packet of WV ’63 Tomato seeds, as well as a selection of other heirlooms by answering the following questions on the blog page or as a Facebook comment (one lucky winner will be chosen at random from those who answer the questions):

1) Do you think that the WV ’63 an heirloom?

2) What is your favorite variety, heirloom or hybrid, to grow?

Tags: heirloom, hybrid, seed saving, tomato
Posted in Plants | 6 Comments »

Extension Master Gardener