We Had Great Success,

with our tomatoes,

so we will be buying some more seeds the next time we go to the plant market, but I had a look at some on-line out of curiosity, and found out something that I never knew, well no surprises there then! it is a fact that some crops you can grow yourself from the seeds of the plant you have grown, that is known as open pollination, you plant the seed from the plant you have just grown and it grows an exact copy of itself, but alarmingly there is a ever increasing reliance on seed producing companies for some seeds that will not self-reproduce, 

take the staple that many of us have for breakfast, corn, it is a fact that since 1902, yes that is 115 years ago, if you took the seed from a corn cob, if it did grow it would not grow anything like the plant you had taken it from! here is a concise explanation from Green Haven,

“Open Pollinated” is a horticultural term meaning that the plant will produce seeds naturally. When these seeds are planted they will reliably reproduce the same plant as the parent. On the other hand, hybrid corn is the result of controlled pollination of inbred plants. These seeds are often sterile, and if they do germinate, will not reliably produce the same plant as the parent. This means the farmer has a perpetual reliance on the seed companies.

so every farmer that wants to grow corn for instance can not self-perpetuate his or her own crop, he or she has to go cap in hand to a seed company, where can I buy shares in a seed company please? but Green Haven seems a great way to stop some companies having it all their own way, and no I am not on commission, thank goodness seed companies do not put their heads together to form a cartel and rig the prices, if they did that they could be doing it to any chemicals and fertilisers that farmers need, imagine that.