Vegetables Gardening - Growing Organic Vegetables

Hi Mark and welcome to the wonderful world of seed catalog descriptions.
You are correct on the hybrid definition. Sometimes you will also see F1 or F2 as part of a hybrid description which refers to the generation of removal from the original parents and additional crosses. And you are correct seed from a hybrid will not be true to the plant it was saved from. That doesn't mean it won't be a good plant just not the same.

In my understanding, and someone please correct me if I am wrong, Open Pollinated refers to the fact that the plant is not a hybrid and that seed from that plant will be true to the parent plant. Yes, it is possible that there could be accidental cross pollination from nearby plants. That is how hybridization originally happened. And yes, unfortunately, GMO pollen can pollinate non-GMO plants. This has already happened in many cases especially in corn crops which are wind pollinated. I asked a similar question when investigating open pollinated heritage sweet corn varieties so I would be able to save seed. The answers I got were not encouraging. I live and garden surrounded by commercial ag fields of soy and field corn. All the corn and soy beans are GMO "round-up ready." Open pollinated corn if it tassels and silks at the same time as the surrounding corn will pollinate my corn. Unless I am growing a super sweet hybrid corn I don't have to worry about the taste of this years corn, but it will contaminate the corn and what I save for seed would have GMO markers if checked and I would be in violation of Monsanto's patents.

Solutions that I have been told will work, the crops must be separated by sufficient distance, this varies depending on how the crop is pollinated, corn is wind pollinated and did I mention it is very windy here. You can separate with a time separation between your crop and the nearby crops, they should not pollinate at the same time, 2 weeks is considered sufficient. You can also isolate some flowers and hand pollinate. So if I want to save corn seed, I need to bag the ears before the silk appears and before tasseling so that the unwanted pollen does not pollinate my corn. Then when my corn is tasseling I would take a tassel from the same corn and plant by plant spread the pollen around. There are various ways to isolate plants. Tomatoes usually self-pollinate when they flower and rarely cross with other tomato plants on their own. Peppers will cross pollinate and but you could build a frame with window screen and wood to surround and isolate the plant you want to save seed from. Then you would have to hand pollinate that plant. Usually you want to save seed from more than one plant to ensure genetic viability. Probably more info than you want but I hope it helps.
Tamie SW MN zone 4

--- In Organic_Gardening@yahoogroups.com, "Mark" <christianpatriot2003@...> wrote:
>
> I have already started looking for seeds for next year but am trying to be more particular this year about the seeds I use. As usual now I have more questions than answers about definitions.
> Hybrid – means that this seed came from two different "types" of the same plant. A Jalapeño hybrid, has Jalapeño A for a father and Jalapeño B for a mother, and what they are selling is Jalapeño C. This is desirable because the best traits of A + B show up in C. This is not desirable because if I save the seeds from C – it will produce either an A or a B but not a C. Is this correct?
> OP means open pollinated – meaning there is no telling what pollinated the fruit/vegetable so that the bee that pollinated that plant may have flown in from Botswana? If this is correct, then how can a seed be both organic and open pollinated? Since open pollination (I think) means there is no control over the vector that causes the pollination – then if there is any GMO seed crops within miles, the plant in question could be sold as open pollinated but actually now have GMO traits? Somebody please set me straight on this?
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