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Why I Choose to Plant Heirloom Seeds
Here in Northern California, gardeners are filling the local nurseries in search of seeds and seedlings to plant in their gardens. Many choose vegetables like tomatoes. The options are either hybrid and heirloom types.
Hybrid seed has been bred for higher yields and to be more disease resistant. Heirlooms are seeds that have been around for generations and are still popular because they perform well. Heirlooms have not been hybridized or genetically modified (non GMO).
Last year, I planted some heirloom yellow Brandywine cherry tomatoes. The pretty leaves looked more like potato than tomato leaves. The fruit was delicious and the plants were super productive.
The rains came before I got composting done on that bed. Winter arrived and then spring again. The seeds leftover from the previous summer garden sprouted and gave me hundreds of new yellow tomatoes for this year’s garden.
I love working with heirloom seeds. Because you can harvest seeds (or enjoy some plants that re-seed), you save money. You can collect seeds from you best specimens for a future garden. Hybrid seeds are often patented and more expensive. The seed company owns the right to those seeds.
Heirlooms are open pollinated and offer an incredible diversity in color and size of produce. These open-pollinated plants are often attractive to Earth’s pollinators like bees and butterflies. Pollinators boost production in the garden. Heirlooms are our great-great grandparents’ seeds and have stood the test of time for flavor, production reliability, and growth dependability. You have a choice. Why not try heirlooms this year?
If you enjoy reading about gardening and country life, check out my Henny Penny Farmette series of cozy mysteries, including A BEELINE TO MURDER, THE MURDER OF A QUEEN BEE, and A HIVE OF HOMICIDES. These cozy mystery novels and the more than two dozen health and wellness books I’ve written are available online and everywhere books are sold.
See, https://www.amazon.com/Meera-Lester/e/B001JP835E%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share