Heirloom, Hybrid, Landrace, True-to-Type Seeds & Varieties
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Heirloom, Hybrid, Landrace, True-to-Type Seeds & Varieties
There are a few main categories of seeds or seed-saving, “Landrace” and “True-to-Type” are major overall groupings. True-to-Type is the most typical and anyone buying seeds from a typical seed supplier such as Territorial or Adaptive Seeds will be True-to-Type. In essence it means that if the seed succeeds to a full-sized plant, we will get what is expected and detailed on the packet.
Landrace gardening is well described here in Mother Earth News “Landrace gardening is a traditional method of growing food in which the seeds to be planted next year result from the survival of the fittest in a particular garden in previous years. Landrace varieties become attached to a region, and thrive in that region. Landrace varieties are genetically variable so that as conditions change from year to year the population can adapt to the changes.”
When we think of the typical seed-exchange event, it is more challenging to be sure of True-to-Type and some seeds are much more apt to cross-pollinate than others. Two particular ones, Corn and Squash (two of the Three Sisters) cross-pollinate very easily. Cross pollination means that we cannot rely on seeds which are from cross-pollinated plants to produce exactly the same plants which we saved seeds from. However, this does not necessarily mean that the resulting plant would be bad or inedible. One classic places where preventing cross-pollination between plants is difficult, is community gardens.
Joseph Lofthouse is well known in the Landrace gardening community. Here are a number of videos from Joseph Lofthouse https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHB08XQID6U&list=PLn4Cv25D_z9ZAabsyqV-SIU8ONabs7fuW
This is a good article from Great Lakes Staple Seeds on this and also has some good tips https://greatlakesstapleseeds.com/pages/saving-true-to-type-seeds-in-your-garden
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