Revised June 13, 2008

Non-Hybrid Seed Pack

Best Prices now sells a monster 1 pound package of non-hybrid, open pollinated seeds with a 1-2 week shipping time. We've seen nothing like it elsewhere.

Most companies sell pitiful #10 (that's Number 10, not 10 lb!) cans of seeds that contain envelopes of seeds (typically 16-20 varieties of vegetables) like you'd find in any garden store. You've got ONE chance to plant a thriving garden. If it doesn't make it, you'll get awfully hungry . . . . God forbid that you have a late freeze or an early drought.  One other thing:  Seeds are living things.  They need air to "breathe."  When they're vacuum packed in a can, they die!  We urge you NOT to buy canned seeds.

So, we went looking for a more realistic non-hybrid seed solution.             Seed Planting Guide
                                   Don't miss our Gardening Links Page!  

Maybe before I go any further, I should explain hybrid seeds. God made all seeds non-hybrid, originally. Man did the hybridizing, beginning with an Austrian Catholic monk, Gregor Mendel, in the mid-1800s, who crossed bean plant varieties to produce a better plant. A hybrid plant, ideally, takes on the "best" characteristics of its "parents". For example, by crossing a tomato plant that's resistant to fusarium wilt with one that produces fruit in extreme heat, you get the best of both: Disease and heat resistance. But it might be ugly as sin.

Not a bad idea. But, because most hybrids are produced for grocery store sales these days, foods have to be PRETTY, not just functional. They want foods that have eye appeal, so more of us spoiled Americans will buy them (instead of anything with a blemish. Strange, huh? A movie starlet looks better with a "beauty mark" [mole/blemish] on her face . . . but don't you dare let a mark be on a tomato I buy!). Producers, of course, want plants that produce more fruits/vegetables. So, the hybridizers work at crossing varieties that are pretty, productive and disease resistant.

When you plant hybrid seeds, you get a really nice, disease-resistant plant with beautiful fruits. The problem is that the seeds of the hybrid (unless seeds have been bred out, as in some varieties of watermelon, for example) will either not germinate at all, or will revert to produce the characteristics of the individual parent plants (one, perhaps, a scrawny, ugly plant with inedible fruit that'll live through anything, and the other, a plant producing gorgeous fruit that dies if you so much as sneeze near it.). So, storing hybrid (grocery store/garden shop/hardware store bought) seeds is risky. You have no idea if the harvested seeds will produce edible fruit/vegetables the following year.

Fortunately, select seed producers have continued to grow plants which produce non-hybrid seeds.

Our supplier provides enough seed to grow extra crops to feed those around you, or enough to give away to those in need whom you might wish to help, or enough to go into a share cropping business--an arrangement wherein you provide the seed in return for a percentage of the crop. There's enough seed for a crop failure due to gardening inexperience. You can give it another go.

Here's what's in the current 25 variety, 1 pound package:

01. Slenderette Beans
02. Golden Wax Beans
03. Green Arrow Peas
04. Golden Bantam Sweet Corn
05. Kentucky Wonder Pole Beans
06. Detroit Dark Red Beets
07. Nantes Coreless Carrots
08. Marketmore 76 Cucumber
09. Cherry Belle Radish
10. Bloomsdale Long Standing Spinach
11. Waltham 29 Broccoli
12. Copenhagen Market Early Cabbage
13. Hales Best Jumbo Cantaloupe
14. Green Flesh Honey Dew Melon
15. Iceberg Head Lettuce
16. Super Sioux Heirloom Tomato (or San Martine Roma Tomato)
17. Bonnie Best Tomato
18. Sugar Pie Pumpkin
19. Dark Green Zucchini Summer Squash
20. Crimson Sweet Watermelon.
21. Bouquet Dill
22. California Wonder Pepper
23. National Pickler Cucumber
24. Prizehead Lettuce
25. Ambrosia Sweet Corn

Total 25 varieties, gross weight 1 pound.                                    Go to our Seed Planting Guide
                                                                                  Don't miss our Gardening Links Page!

Package price: $55.99US $46.99 introductory price! plus shipping by UPS. (Please call for shipping or do a test order on our shopping cart.) Gross shipping weight is 2 pounds.

PRICES AND AVAILABILITY SUBJECT TO CHANGE WITHOUT NOTICE. Some substitutions may have to be made.

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