VEGETABLE SEEDS Aubergines Beans Beetroot Broad Beans Broccoli & Rapini Brussels Sprouts Cabbage Cauliflower Carrots Celery Chilli Peppers Courgettes & Summer Squash Cucumbers, Gherkins & suchlike things Fennel Flowers Grains Herbs Kale Leaf Greens for Cooking Leeks Lettuces Melons & Watermelons Mustard Greens ( for cooking) Onions Oriental Greens for cooking & salads Parsnips Peas Pumpkins & Winter Squash Radishes (salad, & cooking types) Root Parsley NEW Salad Vegetables Sweet Corn Swedes Sweet Peppers Tomatoes : Bush Types Tomatoes : Vine Types Tomatoes : New Centiflor types Tomatilloes & Groundcherries Turnips Unusual Tubers: Oca & Ulluco Gift Seed-Collections Seed-Selection Lists NEW Useful Books Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties   SEEDSAVING Why Save Your Own Seed? How to Save Seed Start a Seed Circle! Seedsaving Book Threshing & Winnowing Processing Brassica Seed Drying your seed Isolation cage plans Seedsaving Courses   INFORMATION Read past Newsletters Give us Feedback Browse the Reference Section Tips for Beginners How long seed lasts Monthly Sowing Calendar Guide to Summer Sowing Guide to Autumn/Winter Sowing Why GMO vegetable seed is stupid   PAYMENT

Breed your Own Vegetables Have you ever wondered where all these great varieties of veg come from? A highly-trained scientist in a lab somewhere perhaps? WRONG! Historically, almost all our great vegetable varieties are the result of work of ordinary people saving the seed from their best plants. Ordinary people who were good at gardening perhaps, and who really cared about their veg, but with no particularly special training. People just like your grandfather and grandmother, the last generation that routinely kept their own seed. If you think about it, someone has to breed tomorrows heirlooms now. Why not you?   But how do you start out a new variety? To get a new variety of vegetable, you need some variation - something different to choose from. Usually this comes by crossing two different varieties that you like - either on purpose, or by accident. For example, you might have a small yellow tomato that was great, but a bit sour. So you could cross it with a bigger red one that was really sweet. The offspring - as with animals - will come out all different - they'll show all the characteristics of the parents all mixed up. And you can select the combinations that you want - in this case small yellow sweet ones. If you then breed from these, you'll eventually end up with a stable variety of your own. You'll need to give it a name, and pass it on to your friends. If its great, perhaps your great-grandchildren will still be growing it. And you can of course eat the less-good ones, so there's no great loss from the garden. Our Gardeners Vegetable Breeding Project What we have done is make the intial crosses for you, from parents that we know will go well together. So we know the offspring will - although varying - will all be interesting and good. Each seed in the packet is slightly different - and each person will end up breeding a different variety that suits their soil and personal tastes. OK - let's start! You don't need to know a great deal, but if you'd like to understand it further there's a book that is good. But you can just go on our basic instructions and you'll be fine Then, choose a variety from those below. Have fun! Oh, a final word about ethics. All the vegetables you and we eat these days are the end results of 11,000 (yes eleven thousand) years of seed-saving by ordinary people - each person building on the achievements of their ancestors. We see food plants as part of our common human heritage. And we do not think it is correct to patent them. So, we are doing this breeding work and releasing this material into the public realm for everyone. Thus, you may only request this seed if you agree to not patent, legally protect or apply for breeders rights over the resulting varieties. Nor will you in any way restrict anyone else saving seeds of your variety for their own home or farm use. These seeds should released and improved for the unrestricted benefit of all. Delicious Early Vine Tomato Project Tomatoes do cross occasionally, at a low level. A few years back, after growing our Latah (ToLA) and Irish Gardeners Delight (ToGi) next to each other, we noticed one plant of the next sowing of ToGi that had bigger fruit, and an amazing flavour. It had leaves like Latah, and was really early. We saved seed from it, and planted that; getting some vine plants and some bush plants, with varying flavours and fruit sizes. From these were have selected this breeding material, based mainly on taste and earliness. What you are aiming for: Amazingly-flavoured early red VINE tomatoes about the size of a golf-ball. Parents: Irish Gardeners Delight (vine, small sweet cherry) Latah (bush, very early, medium, rich flavour) We have already selected for: Excellent flavour Earliness Medium size fruit Vine habit We have already bred for: 3 years. (This is F3 seed) You will see variation in: Vine / Bush (expect >75% vine) Flavour (all amazing but distinctly different, like wines) Fruit size (but not much, pretty stable now) Each year, you should save seed from: Just 1 vine plant, with your favourite flavour. You will get a stable variety in: 3 - 5 years You will get useful yields in: fantastic tomatoes straight away Order ToXV - 20 seeds £1.95 Delicious Early Bush Tomato Project The other selection from our Latah - Irish Gardeners' Delight cross, this is a cherry BUSH variety, mostly variable only in truss shape. What you are aiming for: Amazingly-flavoured early red BUSH tomatoes about the size of a gobstopper. Parents: Irish Gardeners Delight (vine, small sweet cherry) Latah (bush, very early, medium, rich flavour) We have already selected for: Excellent flavour Earliness Medium size fruit Bush habit should be stable now. We have already bred for: 3 years. (This is F3 seed) You will see variation in: Flavour (all amazing but distinctly different, like wines) Fruit size (from small cherry to large gobstopper) Truss size (long trusses or short trusses) Leaf shape Each year, you should save seed from: Just 1 bush plant, with your favourite flavour, earliness and fruit/truss type. You will get a stable variety in: 3 - 5 years You will get useful yields in: straight away   Available NOW! Order ToXB - 20 seeds £1.95