Now that harvesting is well under way, I curious whether you have noticed many differences between your heirloom varieties and your hybrids. We always hear that heirlooms are more prone to disease. How they ever lasted this long is a wonder. But modern science is not without its merits and I'm sure there are some of you out there who have become very partial to modern hybrids. I would love to hear from any of you who have done comparisons.
A lot is made of hybrid vigor. A hybrid of two different plants is supposed to exhibit more vitality and positive traits than an OP variety. This is especially claimed in the case of corns, but other vegetables make the same claims. Whether this true or not would seem to me hard to prove. Each plant can be so particular about ideal conditions and sometimes you don't have a clue about the quality or age of the seed. However there are sure to be scientists out there doing trials and I would hope not all of them are biased. A lot of OP proponents think the idea of hybrid vigor was invented by seed companies as a marketing ploy, but according to Ben Watson's excellent article Hybrid or Open Pollinated Is one type of vegetable seed better?, "The term was coined by Charles Darwin in the 1800's." You might like to read this article for its definitions and differentiations of hybrid , open pollinated (OP) and "true-breeding hybrids. It's at the Gardener's Supply web site.
Sometimes the decision of what to plant comes down to taste preference. I am very fond of French fillet beans or haricot vert. These are never available in my local market, so I grow a great many and freeze some for the winter. I have tried the much praised heirloom Triomphe de Farcy and I have to admit I wasn't impressed. I tried them for two years, just in case it was simply a bad season, but I found they got stringy before they were long enough to want to pick and the bushes didn't produce for more than a week or two. I next tried Burpee's La France hybrid and this time I was very pleased. La France never got stringy or tough, I could hardy keep up with picking and the plants kept producing for about a month. Now I felt guilty. I'm always singing the praises of heirlooms and I've embraced a hybrid. So I thought I should
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