What are Open Pollinated and Heirloom Variety Vegetable Seeds?

Over the past few years there has been a large movement towards growing your own fruits, vegetables and herbs from seeds. The top three reasons people gave in a recent study conducted by the National Gardening Association, were to put fresh produce on the table, save some money and to know that what they were growing was safe.

Who can argue about all three reasons? Can there be anything in the store that is fresher than walking out of your back door, picking a tomato off the vine and then eating it right at that moment? I don’t believe so. As for saving money, the cost of a single vegetable seed is less than a hundredth of a penny. Yes that is one, one hundredth of a penny. Now of course you still need to water and tend to the plant, but in a recent USDA study, one tomato seed can produce over $50 worth of tomatoes. That’s a pretty good return.

When it comes to the safety of your vegetables, growing your own puts you in control of it. Unlike produce in stores, that are harvested in places you didn’t even know existed, you get control what goes into your soil and whether or not you want to treat your plants with a fertilizer. In other words, you make all of the decisions. That’s freedom to me.

This surge, and for these reasons, has lead to another push toward something. A variety of seeds that make vegetable gardeners feel safe when they plant them. They are open pollinated and heirloom varieties. Most of the time they can go hand in hand, but that is not always the case.

Open pollinated seeds are ones that have pollinated naturally. This type of pollination occurs when something helps pollinate the plants without “human” intervention. For example, the wind could be a source of pollination (this is also called Abiotic pollination), or some organism, such as a bee (Biotic pollination). The fruit of seeds that have been open pollinated will vary in size and shape. Unlike what you see in the store, all of your tomatoes won’t be the same bright red color or shape, but the ones from your garden will taste a heck of a lot better. A huge benefit of using seeds that are open pollinated is that you can save seeds from the fruit of the plants that you grow and get the same plant variety the following season (after you have dried out the seeds). That leads us to heirloom.

A great book to read on the subject is The Complete Idiot`s Guide to Heirloom Vegetables by author Chris McLaughlin. In there she talks about what an heirloom is, a little history on various heirloom varieties and importantly, a list of what types of heirloom seeds you can find today. As the name heirloom implies, it is simply a variety that has been passed down from one generation to the next. As you can see, open pollinated and heirloom can go hand in hand, however there are times when many gardeners hand pollinate their plants if it seems that natural open methods simply aren’t working. That doesn’t mean you can’t pass down the seeds from your heirlooms, it just means they weren’t open pollinated.

As a side note there are two terms that get thrown in this mix that many new vegetable gardeners misunderstand. Open pollinated heirloom variety does not equate to organic. For a seed to be organic it has to meet the criteria of the USDA’s National Organic Program guidelines. Furthermore, a hybrid vegetable does not mean that a plant has been genetically modified. A hybrid is a cross between two plants to produce an offspring that has characteristics of both the parent plants. However the seeds of a hybrid child (referred to as F1) will not necessarily produce the same exact plant from which it came.

I hope this clears up some of the terminology.

About the Author

Mike Podlesny is the author of Vegetable Gardening for the Average Person: A Guide to Vegetable Gardening for the rest of us, the moderator for the largest vegetable gardening page on Facebook and creator of the Seeds Club.

Watch the video below to learn more about Mike`s Seeds of the Month Club:

The Pollination Process in your Vegetable Garden

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Recently I have written some vegetable gardening articles that have taken a turn towards more of a scientific approach, albeit entry level plant science as opposed to advanced horticulture, but very important, I believe, none the less. I wanted to touch on the process of pollination and what this process means for your vegetable garden.

As you may remember from science classes past, pollination is the process by which pollen is transferred, which then enables the fertilization process. Pollen is a fine yet coarse powder, which in essence, contains the male portion of what is needed during the pollination process.

Pollination occurs when pollen lands on a compatible pistil or female cone. The pistil or cone will then germinate and produce a pollen tube which then allows the transfer of the male portion to the ovule.

There are two types of pollination processes, Abiotic and Biotic. Abiotic pollination is when the pollination process occurs due to a non-living organism, such as wind. This is more common in grasses, most conifers and trees. According to the US Forest Department, roughly 10% of flowering plants are pollinated without the assistance of animals (and other living creatures). Which brings us to the next type of pollination, Biotic.

Biotic is the most common form of pollination and requires pollinators, i.e., some living thing to carry the pollen from one plant to the next. From birds, bees, and bats to moths and butterflies, they all play an important and crucial part to make this process happen.

Pollination can be accomplished either through self-pollination or cross-pollination. As you can imagine self-pollination occurs when pollen from one flower pollinates the same flower or other flowers of the same individual. Cross-pollination occurs when pollen is delivered to a flower from a different plant.

Now that you know how pollination works, you can then gather it is an important part of your vegetable garden. Most vegetable gardeners rarely think about the pollination process, that is unless, their zucchini plants produce flowers and then nothing happens, meaning pollination is not occurring. A good trick would be to manually “do” the pollination process yourself by using a cotton swab or small brush (as shown in the photo). Of course, planting flowers nearby that attract bees or butterflies would help as well.

Tomatoes self pollinate rather easily which is why they are far and way the number one item grown in the home vegetable garden in America. They require very little maintenance. Corn, however, cross pollinates, and can be difficult if not done properly, producing very little yield.

Most home vegetable gardeners want to plant seeds and forget about it. That is fine, but you should learn some of the basics about plant science so that if a problem arises, you can diagnose it and come up with a solution.

About the Author

Mike Podlesny is the author of Vegetable Gardening for the Average Person: A Guide to Vegetable Gardening for the rest of us, the moderator for the largest vegetable gardening page on Facebook and creator of the Seeds Club.

Watch the video below to learn more about Mike`s Seeds of the Month Club: