Know Your Seeds!

Many seed growers or retailers may not list or tell you what type or generation of seed they sell. They may not know or don't want you to know! Here at Texas Exotic Seed we believe that knowledge of what you are buying aids you in understanding what to expect come harvest time. Rest assured, we use only organic practices and or natural predators while growing our plants. Our Texas Exotic Seeds come from plants we have grown and are selected according to their characteristics or from trusted suppliers that stand behind their grading.All seeds sold by Texas Exotic Seed are Non-GMO and synthetic pesticide free.

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Below is a short course in grading of seeds.....

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Let us first talk about what this letter "F" stands for. The letter "F" represents filia – it’s a Latin word means daughter. So, the Hybrids seeds are of 3 types F1, F2, and F3. These are produced by crossbreeding of two stable plants with different genetics and the pollen from the male are used to fertilize the female. Imagine plants as people! So, the first generation daughters or seeds are simply F1 and F2 are grandchildren and F3 are great grandchildren.

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That means F2 are produced from F1's and F3 are produced from F2's. This is so simple so why are these numbers important in choosing the seeds when you visit a garden store or even purchase seeds online? If you purchase a packet of F1 seeds, you should get the exact qualities of the parents like flowering, growth potency and disease resistance and it should produce those picture perfect flowers or fruits that’s printed on the seed packet. If you can get F1 seeds, they are the best. But true F1 seeds are generally expensive. So always purchase them from a trusted seed company.

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F2 Hybrid seeds or second-generation seeds:

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When F1 plants produce flowers and when they self-pollinate or hand pollinated, then F2 seeds are produced. They are sometimes known as S2 – S stands for Self. So how is this important to us? F2 generation plants have a lot of genetic variations and are often less vigorous and may not always produce the original flowers as displayed in seed packets.  But many F2 seeds from good companies can also produce identical flowers, fruits or vegetables similar to the parents. F2 seeds are popular because they are very inexpensive and have some decent disease resistance as well.

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After F3, many traits start to stabilize if the parents are within the same reproductive cycle. At Texas Exotic Seed we use the F1-3 grading system as well as a “G” or generation indicator to identify the traits of our hand selected seeds. A “G-4 thru 12” seed is of the fourth (and so on) generation from the original parent and are sorted each harvest by flavor and sweetness or heat. We do this because our F1-F3 plants are open pollinated and we can’t talk our bee’s into only pollinating F1 only flowers. In our G4+ seed packets or grow kits we normally add quite a few extra seeds (not because they won't germinate, but because we cannot guaranty a +90% germination rate). We suggest double sowing your seeds and eliminating (thinning) one of the plants after their first or second set of true leaves appear.

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Open-pollinated plant cultivars are pollinated by natural pollinators like the insects, birds, wind, or any natural mechanisms or even if pollinated by hand in our greenhouse.

 

Heirloom seeds (H1) actually have a history of being passed down within a family for many generations like something similar to generational sharing of heirloom jewelry or furniture. Some seed companies even sell very old heirloom seeds (like cultivars that are more than 50 or even 100 years old). The Seed Savers Exchange defines heirlooms as cultivars that have been saved and shared by generations of home gardeners.