Quote:
Originally Posted by carolyn137
Please allow me to add to your post above,thank you. 
What you are talking about is dehybridizing an F1 variety. I've tried to dehybridize several F!'s and here's the problem.
If the original F1 had just two parents, and that was true for Better Boy and Big Boy and Ramapo, etc.,many of the eariest F1's, that might work, as it did with me for Ramapo.
But most F1's now have several parents and for those it does not work.I can go into this more when I have time if you want me too,or try to find that post I've made several times about how modern F1 hybrids are constructed.
Carolyn |
Sorry, I think my wording might have been misleading. I understand how dehybridizing/stabilizing works.. but I was referring to something different.
I wasn't talking about saving seeds from the clones/cuttings, I was just saying that if you only had a few of a particular hybrid seed (let's say 5), and wanted to plant out 5 plants, rather than plant all 5 seeds to get 5 plants, you just plant 1 seed, then as it grows, take some cuttings and propagate those until you have 5 plants (1 from seed, and 4 from the propagated suckers). This way, you've got 5 identical hybrid plants growing, and you still have 4 seeds left, so you can plant again next season.
Doing it this way, you could grow 5 plants each for 5 separate seasons. Heck, if they were good enough ( and lucky enough ), a person could even save a cutting from 1 plant and carry it over until the next season and start again.