Grr

As the seed and plant catalogs come in and I mourn the fact that I will not have a proper garden any time in the near future, I flip through the pages and make mental notations about checking into this or that, or asking my husband if he likes this lettuce or that corn. I have several that have been folded neatly in my mailbox in these past couple of days and am thrilled to see what new varieties there are for this season. Happily flipping through the pages, I was struck dumb by the huge amount of hybrids there are. Grrr.

It seems that the quick fix, prepackaged, uniformed color, size and numbers will always be spreading. Not that some hybrids aren't good. My father swears by the flavors and growing prowess of better boy and early girl tomatoes but he can't save those seeds and I have grown them myself but... the plants must be purchased every year. I'm trying to save money. I don't want to be a slave to the system why would I want to buy a hybrid?

So some of them have great flavor and some of them are resistant to whatever diseases plague their species, but I just can't bring myself to grow hybrids in my garden. I've recently come to this decision, too. It was this past spring while I was talking to my father and he was telling me that they were eagerly awaiting the next pay day to go out and buy more flats of tomatoes. That started me thinking of how he could have just saved seeds from last years crops, planted them himself and he wouldn't have to wait and he wouldn't have to fight to get the ones that aren't droopy or down right dehydrated with the danger of never fully recovering.

He could have saved just a ton of money by not having to purchase them at all. Buy the seeds, plant them, save the seeds. If your crop fails, you can buy more, but if it doesn't, you don't have to buy them again and leaves the door open to try new varieties. Not to mention you know where they came from, what they have been exposed to and you can make the choice on saving the seeds from the tastiest and best of the crop.

So with a smirk of annoyance in the trash goes the catalogs with all the hybrid varieties I really just don't want to buy and I pick up the phone to call my father to taunt him about his favorites and pick a fight about hybrids and seed saving. Wish me luck, I usually end up losing this argument with him. He usually puts his foot down and snaps "I don't like change, so I won't do it!"

Oy!