What is F 1 Seed

F1 seeds are the result of crossing two pure lines to create the desired result. If one plant has good habit and poor flower and another has good flower and poor habit they can be cross fertilised so that resulting seed may produce plants with good habit and good flowers (the opposite may be true with all the worst features but they are weeded out in the F1 process). A pure strain of each parent is first selected by pollinating the best examples with themselves. When a good pure strain is achieved the resulting plants will be cross fertilized by hand to produce F1 seed. This is one reason F1 seed is more expensive than other hybrids.

Benefits of F1

• Breeding programs have made it possible to bring out the outstanding qualities of the parent plants
• Qualities have been enhanced and new desirable characteristics added to the resultant hybrid plants
• Vigor, trueness to type, heavy yields, selected fragrance and colour are all potential benefits of F1
• Uniformity are other characteristics of hybrid plants
• Good disease resistance can be built in by appropriate selection

Other F1 Issues

• Seed is expensive and a packet probably contains a lower number of seeds as they are expensive and time consuming to create and grow
• Saving seed from F1 will not produce the same plants the following year. Only seed from the cross of pure lines will be F1.
• Vegetables are a good use of F1 as crops are larger and the extra cost is probably worth the effort
• I have just sown F1 Wallflower Treasure Mix to test it against other wallflowers

Try F1 Vegetables where the extra investment pays dividends with better and larger crops.