I've been buying sungold transplants for 2 years now and next year I am definitely going to start from seed.

The nursery I buy transplants from sells burpee sungold transplants. Burpee seeds are quite expensive. Are all sungold seeds created equal? Where do you buy your sungold seeds from?

Where do you think Burpees get their seeds from ?!?

Few years ago, I grew some cherry from grocery store bought. Believe it or not , they were much better than the HYBRIDS that I am growing now.
Right now I am fermenting some HERLOOM that I bought from store. I think it is called "Mr. Stripy".

I suggest you go to Pinetree seeds and buy a pack, Less seeds than in the standard 25-30 seeds per pack, but thus also much cheaper.

The cost of Sungold F1 seeds in Europe is really outrageous,so I buy the seeds from Pinetree and send them across the pond.

Carolyn, who gave up on Burpee manymany years ago

In my opinion, tomato seeds are so easy to save from homegrown or tomatoes bought at the market, I doubt I'll ever pay for tomato seeds in my life.

Sungold Select I
Sungold Select II
Big Sungold Select I
Big Sungold Select II, from something sent to Manfred Hahm, a friend of Reinhard's, which turned out not to be stable, fruits of different colors, as determined by seeds I distributred in my annual seed offer, and also Reinhard sent some to Brad Gates of Wild Boar Farms, and same thing

But none of the OP versions are the exact same as the F1 hybrid.

Probably the closest are the first two.

And when I spoke above about sending F1 Sungold seeds to Europe it was to Reinhard that I've sent them.

Carolyn
,

Glenn

Also thanks for the Pine tree recommendation! That is a much better price! I may be able to justify buying one OP and one F1 (well I can justify a lot in my own mind :) )

Seeds that are stored well will germinate for many years. I plant very few hybrids, but Sun Gold is one I will plant nearly every year. The first few years I grew them, I planted a lot of the seeds and gave away or sold extras. So when I was running low on the packet of seeds I bought initially, I bought 250 seeds from Johnny's so that if they quit producing them, I'd still have seeds for a long time to come since these days I usually only start about 3-5 seeds of a variety and still have many extra plants.

Betsy

Two answers cross my mind:
1) they have a stock pile of seeds from from their first crossed tomatoes: !!

2) Every year they keep crossing the same parents( A and B) to produce (C) and collect seeds.from it ? !!
(How they could be sure that this year/crossing "C" will be identical to last year's "C" ?)

Now , what can happen if I collect seeds from (C) and plant them?

== I might get A
== I might get B
== I might get C
== I might get C'
== I might get C''
== I might get C''', ....

It will all depend on which of the "A" and "B" is more dominant, Which one is the father, which one is the mother. Then there is a statistical coin tossing probability.

And there are far more than two parents, I've explained how modern F1 varieties are bred in another thread here quite recently., Actually with two breeding lines and up to 4 parental inputs in each of those breeding lines.

THey don't store F1 seed, they produce more F1 seed when needed,which is true for Tokita and all the other major commercial breeders of F1 seeds for many varieties.

Using male steriles makes F1 seed production much easier these days as opposed to all the hand labor that used to be necessary when removing the male pollen bearing anthers so that no self pollenization could occur.,

Carolyn

I know with human cells, telomere length is a limiting factor on immortality. But cancer cells can achieve immortality in a petri dish, see link below.

I am not sure if there is such a limit on plants. Considering 2000+ year old trees here and there perhaps there is not a fundamental limit, and plant clones could be kept alive forever.

As for OP vs. hybrid, I'll gladly take the adaptability, resilience and independence from seed co's that OP offers, over whatever gains might be obtained by buying hybrid seed. I want seeds that are adapted to my climate, my garden, my pests and my habits as a gardener. My plan is to just keep chucking tomato seeds out there to see what thrives and produces. My aims are different than a lot of gardeners, for me it's more about resilient gardening than gourmet gardening. I'm happier with the 'wild arugula' that reseeds itself perpetually than with some named variety of arugula that I would have to resow every year.

I am a member of a local seed library, $10 lifetime membership, and I have access to way more veggie seeds than I could ever grow, with the caveat that I return extra saved seed when possible. With those seeds, I follow stricter seed saving protocols, because there is an obligation to keep the varieties true.