Kitchen Garden Forum

Hello All

I know that you shouldn't keep seeds from an F1 hybrid as the resulting plants are not always true to form but..... if you do, are the results okay to eat? Last year I grew 'patty pans' (yellow flying saucers) and kept the seeds from one of the fruits to see what would happen (I'm a bit of an experimental gardener which my neighbours are quite used to now!). I planted around five of the seeds, they came up and I put the plants on the allotment all in a row. They've all grown on and some of them are starting to fruit. The results are as follows:

One plant is a true to form yellow patty pan.
One yellow courgette plant
One normal courgette
One patty pan shaped but paleish green in colour
One I'm not sure of as no fruits have started to form yet.

Will these be okay to eat?

There should only be the normal considerations of wether or not it tastes good,depends on how tasty the parent plants were.There will be no nasty hidden genetic manipulations in an F1 Hybrid.I once grew on some self seeders and the resultant round green fruits were pretty nondescript for flavour.

Hi Diva,
Being a person who loves to experiment I appreciate what you have done. An F1 Hybrid only means that the parents of the Hybidizing are both know and were stable plants capable of replicating themselves truely.
There is absolutely no worries whatsoever on the safety aspect.
As Carole says it all revolves around the flavour and in due course I hope you will inform us.
Happy eating!

OK, off at a slight tangent here. I always thought that F1s were a specific cross at a specific time, so that once the seed ran out it couldn't be replicated exactly by the breeders. Maybe I'm wrong on that.
However, I recently read that the pepper Gypsy, which is supposedly an F1 hybrid, has been around for 25 years, and has just had its Award of Garden Merit reconfirmed by the RHS. I think I must have been growing it for most of that time myself and have always been very pleased with it. But can it be an F1 hybrid when it has been around for so long? I've read elsewhere that breeders sometimes claim their new introductions are F1 hybrids when they're not, because they can get a higher price for the seed. Not that I would allege for a moment, of course, that the breeders of Gypsy would stoop to such a trick!

an f1 hybrid is the result of crossing two known parents. as long as viable seeds of the two parents are available a plant breeder can grow them and cross fertilise them to give f1 seeds for the next year. if the f1 plants mature and set seeds all those seeds will not produce plants identical to the f1 plants, so if a particular f1 pepper was bred 50 years ago from two parent varieties it can still be bred now providing parent plants of the two origional varieties are still available. hope thats clear

Hi Ken,
F1 Hybrids are not quite as you thought.
As I said previously F1 means that the plants used in the hybridizing are both know and are stable plants that will breed true if regenerated.
The hybridizing is carried out every year for as long as there is a demand for the seed.
F1 means first crossing but actually stands for first Finnial. You can get as high as F5 but by then things have started to go haywire and with vegetables you are very unlikely to have anything other than an F1. You may find some F2 flower seeds but I have never seen anything for sale above F2.
As regards RHS they do not test a selection of everything every year so probably Gypsy F1 has been waiting all that time for the RHS to an AGM test on Peppers.

Thanks, Richard and Johnboy, for putting me right! And, just on a point of detail, Gypsy already had an AGM, but it has been reconfirmed in the latest trials. I don't know if any of you know it but it's a good one - smallish fruit, but prolific.

Yes, I grow Gypsy and like it a lot. Great cropper and nice taste. Stores well frozen.

These were some from last year:

Hi Jerry,
I looked at your wonderful Peppers and my mind went immediately into cooking mode. Peppers stuffed with Minced Lamb with a few breadcrumbs and Mint, Origanum, Sage and Brodleafed Thyme chopped fine with a Blue Chesse sauce (good old Shropshire Blue)and when you cannot eat everything you have cooked they are even wonderful cold the following day as a snack with home made bread and local Jersey Butter Oh...........

Note to self, revisit this thread in August to get those recipies.......

Drool..................

Note to JB, put it on the recipe site and we'll find it again in the Autumn.

One year my wife didn't know what to get me for my birthday, and so she signed me in for a course of Chinese cooking classes. (The benefits have lasted to this day.) One week the ingredients we had to take included peppers, so I took along some fresh Gypsies from the greenhouse. The instructor made it clear she thought they were pretty puny compared with the supermarket peppers other people had taken - that is, until she tasted how fresh, crisp and sweet they were. Well, that's why we grow our own, isn't it?

Hi to all,
Jerry those Gypsy peppers are first class, can you plesae tell me which seed company sells them.

Regards

Kevin

Hi Kevin,
Lifted from Sutton Seeds on Line.
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Capsicum (Sweet Pepper) F1 Gypsy

Early, and produces a good crop of slightly tapered fruits, yellowish green ripening to deep red. Grow in a cold or slightly heated greenhouse. Resistant to Tobacco Mosaic Virus (TMV). RHS 'Award of Garden Merit' winner.

Culture: Sow February-April under glass 18-21ºC (65-70ºF) for greenhouse culture.

Hints and Tips: Green peppers, used in various
dishes, are the coloured fruits before they ripen. Mature fruits have a sweeter, milder flavour. All are suitable for freezing. HEALTH BENEFITS: Both red and greenpeppers are high in vitamin C, with red very high in vitamin A too. CULINARY TIPS: Delicious for salads or cooking.

To add this item to your shopping basket, click on the 'select' button beneath.

Average Packet Content 20 seeds

Code: 156828

Price: £ 2.25
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Regards, Johnboy.

...and I get mine from Simpsons Seeds, who are particularly strong on peppers/chillies, and tomatoes.