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Create your own varieties

Sue Stickland recommends saving the seed from your crops and developing your own strain of vegetables which will, in time, produce crops best suited to your soil

I’ve always dreamt of having my name in the seed catalogues, along with Mr Bunyard and his ‘Bunyard’s Exhibition’ broad bean and Mr James and his ‘James Long Keeping’ onion. How about ‘Sue’s Shropshire’ scorzonera – it has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?

Sadly for me, although a century ago many new varieties coming onto the market were bred by gardeners, today this is rare. Recent introductions are almost all the results of professional plant breeding programmes – carried out by the large seed companies for commercial growers (where most of the money is), not for gardeners.

Nevertheless, there are exceptions. Some small independent seed companies, and even some amateur gardeners, are taking a stand and breeding garden vegetables for themselves. Look out for these in seed catalogues and through seed saving networks, and you could find some interesting and useful varieties to grow on your plot.

Finding the gaps

Modern commercial varieties have brought gardeners many benefits, but professional breeders have to concentrate on the crops that are most economically important. (You can see this by comparing, say, the number of carrot varieties in the catalogues with the number of varieties of Jerusalem artichoke).

Their priorities are also often different to ours. Commercial growers need crops that can all be harvested at once, for example, whereas gardeners usually want to pick them over a long period. We might be interested in a different part of the plant – a radish that gives tasty edible seed pods when it bolts, a French bean with large seeds for drying, or a courgette that has attractive ornamental foliage. None of these are commercial propositions.

So despite the large range of good vegetable varieties available from the catalogues, there are still gaps to be filled.

Local strains

Seed saving is the basis of plant breeding. Once you start saving seed of a particular variety year after year, you automatically become a plant breeder of sorts, whether you are trying to be or not.

Plants that do best in the conditions in your garden will contribute proportionately more to each seed harvest, and gradually you will get a strain adapted to your site. This can be of considerable advantage, especially if you have a garden that is cold or windswept or has difficult soil – conditions far different from the ideal ones
on commercial trial sites.

Because I’ve been saving seed of my scorzonera at home for the last 12 years, for example, it should have started to adapt to my light, dry soil and the cool Shropshire climate.

Local varieties used to be widely grown and marketed – the Brussels sprouts ‘Bedfordshire Fillbasket’ and ‘Evesham Special’ are two that have just about survived. These days, many new varieties in the catalogues have not even been bred in the UK.

If you want to try saving seed for yourself, start with easy crops such as peas, tomatoes and French beans. You will find plenty of helpful advice in books, on websites, and from seed saving networks (see panel).

Deliberate selections

Going from seed saving to deliberate plant breeding need not be a big step. Instead of saving seed from all the healthy plants, you can act positively and select plants which have a particular trait – choosing beetroot with attractive dark leaves, for example – with the aim of steering the variety this way in future generations.

Selection isn’t always simple, particularly with ‘outbreeding’ crops where cross-pollination may make it difficult to pin down both parents of the seeds. In addition, characteristics such as size and colour can be affected by growing conditions as well as genetics, and this has to be taken into account. Nevertheless it can give very successful results. Keen show exhibitors frequently select their own strains to please the judges – a bean with extra length or a pea with more seeds in a pod. For good examples, look in the seed catalogue compiled by veteran Chelsea exhibitor Medwyn Williams.

Choosing your stock

Before you can select plants for a particular trait, they must obviously show differences to start with. Such variability is more likely to be found in traditional varieties than in uniform commercial ones, and will usually also be more evident in minor crops (such as my scorzonera). You can get such varieties from seed catalogues that specialize in ‘open-pollinated’ (non-hybrid) varieties, or by joining Garden Organic’s Heritage Seed Library or a local seed-saving network.

Experiment with hybrids

Conventional advice cautions gardeners against saving seed from F1 hybrids because they do not ‘come true’. Every time seed companies want to produce stocks of F1 seed, they have to cross plants of the two uniform inbred ‘lines’ that form the parents, each of which has different desired characteristics. Thus, although seeds collected from F1 plants will usually germinate, they will give a mixed lot of progeny, showing various traits from the inbred grandparents all muddled up.

Nevertheless, it can be interesting to experiment with them. A tomato might give plants of varying habits or a range of fruit sizes, for example, but among them you might find ones that are reasonably true to the original F1 or are just as useful. Save seed from these, and over generations of selection you can go on to develop your own non-hybrid variety.
Tomatoes and peppers are two of the crops which gardeners most successfully ‘de-hybridise’, because they do not show what is called ‘inbreeding depression’ (a loss of vigour caused by breeding from too few plants). At present I am experimenting with seed saved from the F1 hybrid mini-plum tomato ‘Santa’ – an idea given to me by a Kitchen Garden reader, who got good results from seed taken out of his supermarket ‘Santa’ fruits!

Look out for surprises

Sometimes a plant with interesting characteristics just turns up by accident – perhaps it has different coloured leaves or pods, or is dramatically taller than the rest. This might be a chance mutation or ‘sport’ – a random mistake that occurs naturally when the genes of a plant replicate as the seed is formed.

Gardeners are well placed to notice such (sometimes exciting) genetic accidents, but can they be developed into useful new varieties? Sometimes they certainly can. Sugar snap peas, for example, are said to have been bred in the USA in the early 1970s from a chance mutation which gave a pea with a thick fleshy pod. Closer to our vegetable plots, the golden-leaved ‘Sun Bright’ runner bean was similarly developed from a ‘sport’, and so was Thompson & Morgan’s ‘Bunton’s Showstopper’ onion. Mr Bunton, a keen gardener and exhibitor at local shows, has even got his name in the seed catalogues – I am so jealous!

Deliberate crosses

A variety with desirable characteristics can be bred by deliberately crossing two appropriate parents. Each of the offspring will show different characteristics of the parents, as all the genes will have been shuffled around. From a red-fruited bush tomato crossed with a yellow-fruited tall one, for example, you will be likely to get some yellow-fruited bush plants. Saving seed from the best one of these over several years will eventually give you a new variety.

The Real Seed Company is developing a few varieties in this way, in order to plug gaps in the choice available to gardeners – a good non-hybrid yellow courgette is one of their present aims, for example. In a ‘Gardeners’ vegetable breeding project’, they are also offering seeds from initial crosses and selections that they have carried out so you can have a go at vegetable breeding yourself. Each seed will give a slightly different plant, so you can carry on choosing the best from each generation, and develop a variety that suits your personal taste.

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