Heirloom, open-pollinated, and heirloom plants are terms you need to know if you are serious about gardening. Fortunately, they’re simple concepts.
Heirloom
Heirloom plants are plants that stay basically the same year after year even if cross pollinated with other plants. Heirlooms must be 50 years or older and have remained essentially the same.
Heirlooms are open-pollinated.
Open-Pollinated
Open pollinated plants are those plants that can be pollinated around other similar plants without creating a new type of fruit or vegetable. Effectively, open-pollinated plants won’t change year after year.
Hybrid
Hybrid plants can cross-pollinate with another plant resulting in a new fruit or vegetable. For example, if you cross pollinate a jalapeno pepper and a cayenne pepper, you could end up with a hybrid pepper. Tomatoes and peppers have a lot of species that are hybrid.
Hybrid plants only exist when cross-pollinating two different plants. However, if you selectively breed the same plant to create a new plant, that’s not a hybrid. For example, broccoli is not a hybrid. However, broccoli is weird.
Often, people create hybrid plants to get higher yield or disease resistant varieties. Cherry tomatoes are hybrid. German Johnson are heirlooms.
Something cannot be heirloom and hybrid. However, a plant can be heirloom and open-pollinated.
Why Does This Matter?
In my novice opinion, open-pollinated plants and heirlooms are the best choice for home gardening. I believe this because you know what you’ll get when your plant produces food.
Some people love hybrid plants. I suppose if you want to make your own plant, go for it!
You can typically use Heirloom and open-pollinated seeds year after year. However, often times your resulting hybrid seeds just won’t grow next year.
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