Gardening season is in full swing! I can’t remember the last time I didn’t plant seeds for a little vegetable garden. Plus, who can forget about all the pretty flowers?
This year, I planted my usual in the raised beds: a few tomato varieties, peppers, and green beans. The cucumbers and zucchini have their own special place, since they need a trellis to climb. I also planted plenty of seeds for my two favorite flowers, marigolds and sunflowers. Can’t forget the flowers for pollinators!
With the tomatoes in particular, though, the seed packets feature two different labels: they are either marked heirloom or hybrid. If you have ever planted tomatoes, cucumbers, beans, or other vegetables, you may have noticed these terms printed on the package.
Both heirloom and hybrid varieties are great additions to any garden. I have planted plenty of both over the years. In fact, my garden this year features hybrid and heirloom plants. Most of my peppers are hybrids, while I planted both heirloom and hybrid tomatoes.
But if picking out seeds and planting your garden has left you wondering what these terms really mean, look no further. Let’s talk about what they are, and how they differ.
What Are Hybrid Vegetable Seeds?
Hybrid vegetables are produced by intentionally crossbreeding compatible types of plants. To be compatible, they have to be able to cross-pollinate. During hybridization, pollination is carefully controlled. This is done in an effort to produce plants that feature desirable features not found in the parent (or original) plants.
Many modern plants are the result of this type of breeding. With tomatoes especially, many popular varieties are actually hybrids. Cherry tomatoes, Early Girl, Better Boy, and Grape are all hybrids that were created by crossing two different varieties together. This year, I have planted Sweet 100, which is also a hybrid tomato.
Related: Top Tips for Growing Great Tomatoes
Most hybrid vegetable plants will feature desirable characteristics, such as better disease resistance, higher yield, faster or earlier maturity, improved flavor, or larger vegetables.
While these varieties may eventually stabilize, seeds from hybridized plants might produce a different plant. They can revert back to the characteristics of the parent plants that were crossbred to develop the hybrid variety. This means that you can save seeds, of course, but they likely won’t produce the exact vegetable you had the year before. It’s like gambling, but with plants!
Is This the Same as GMOs?
Before we get into heirloom seeds, we need to touch on genetically modified organisms, or GMOs. Don’t confuse hybrids, which are intentionally, but naturally, crossbred from different plants of the same species. GMOs are altered using molecular genetics techniques.
They are engineered by modifying genes in a laboratory, which means they can use unrelated species to produce GMO seeds. One specific gene or a set of genes within one plant family can be transferred to a different species. It can be used to introduce resistance to pests or diseases, alter the nutritional properties (like making it higher in a particular vitamin), or even to produce plants that are unaffected by a particular herbicide.
In some cases, these GMOs have been used for good, like increasing food supplies. However, there are certainly concerns over other GMOS, such as crops being infused with pesticides. And yes, that really is a thing. There is GMO corn that has the pesticide Bt engineered into its genetic makeup!
As a home gardener, you likely will never grow GMO seeds. These are sold to farmers, and not available for the general public. But it is important to clear up the difference.
What Are Heirloom Vegetable Seeds?
Okay, on to the heirlooms! As the name suggests, these are varieties that have been passed down for generations.
How heirlooms are defined can vary, but typically it means that the variety is at least fifty years old. You’ll find that many of them are older than that. Some may have been developed by a university in the early days of commercial breeding. But, they are often seeds that were grown in a particular region and hand-selected by people for a special trait. They were then handed down for generations, and grown year after year.
All heirlooms are open-pollinated, which means they don’t need human intervention to produce. They have this in common with hybrid plants. Unlike hybrids, though, these varieties are stable. That means that they will feature the same characteristics each year. If you like saving seeds, heirlooms are definitely the best for it. The seeds will produce a plant just like the one you got it from.
Heirloom varieties don’t always look like the vegetables you find in a grocery store. However, they are generally known to boast better flavors. That’s because these vegetable plants were generally saved from year to year for consumption, in a time before stores wanted “pretty” produce. Gardeners were preserving the best-tasting veggies!
Some heirloom varieties are also known to have higher nutritional value than their hybrid (and GMO) counterparts. While this isn’t true 100% of the time, it’s almost always the case. That’s because many hybrids are made with the purpose of yielding more vegetables at a time, which can result in lower nutritional value in the vegetables themselves.
So, Should I Plant Heirlooms or Hybrids?
The decision to plant heirlooms or hybrids is a choice that every gardener has to decide. Which one you choose will depend on what you hope to achieve. Sorry, I don’t have a one-size-fits-all answer!
However, I can provide a few reasons why gardeners choose one or the other, to help you make a decision. They both have their own advantages and benefits. And if you’re like me, you might choose to grow both hybrids and heirlooms. Hey, I like a little variety!
Related: Raised Garden Mistakes You Might Be Making
Reasons to Choose Hybrid Vegetable Plants
While many gardeners choose to only plant heirlooms, there are plenty of good reasons to choose hybrids, too. In fact, you may be already planting hybrids because of these advantages.
For starters, hybrid vegetable plants tend to have better resistance to disease and pests. These things can quickly do a lot of damage to your garden – sometimes resulting in having no plants left to harvest. Hybrids are often developed to ward off these issues, leaving you with healthier plants with less work.
Speaking of less work, some hybrids are developed to produce more vegetables. They are usually described with words like “abundant” and “prolific.” That means you can tend to fewer plants to get the same yield.
You may also live somewhere with a climate that is less than ideal for growing your favorite vegetables. Hybrids of many different kinds of plants have been developed to fit into a variety of climates. For instance, people in really hot locations might look for heat-tolerant plants. Someone gardening further north may need cold-tolerant plants, or something with a shorter growing season.
Reasons to Choose Heirloom Vegetable Plants
For many gardeners, choosing heirloom seeds is a no-brainer. Like I mentioned, these varieties tend to feature better flavors and higher nutritional content. This is usually the number one reason why gardeners stick to heirloom varieties. When hybrids are bred for other qualities, such as yield or appearance, the flavor and nutritional content aren’t a top priority. With heirloom plants, though, we want the best-tasting veggies on the block!
Choosing heirloom plants is also a way to connect with history and cultural identity. With each heirloom seed you plant, you are connecting yourself to stories of the past. Maybe you’re growing the same tomatoes your great-grandma always grew, and you’re carrying on her tradition. Or, perhaps you are preserving the old varieties that were brought here by other cultures or were cultivated by your ancestors. Through our gardens – and the resulting foods we cook from them – we can preserve and connect.
If you can find heirlooms from your specific region, it’s worth noting that these plants will be locally-adapted. They may not completely ward off common pests and diseases, but they may be better than, say, a variety that was just recently introduced. They will also likely do better in your soil and your climate, because they have adapted to grow there.
The biggest perk that heirlooms have that hybrids don’t? You can save your seeds! Seeds saved from heirloom vegetable plants will produce plants that are true to type. This can also help you adapt your own garden to your location. By selecting and saving those that did well, you will wind up with your own locally-adapted variety.
On a deeper level, saving your seeds is also a great way to ensure food security. It protects the ability of home gardeners and small farmers to grow food without having to purchase seeds each year. In a time when conglomerates are actually patenting their seeds and trying to force farmers into continually purchasing seeds, saving heirlooms is an act of revolution! Heirloom seeds are a way of providing security, and a way to contribute to sustainable food systems.
