What is a Hybrid Tomato Plant? - What is an Heirloom Tomato Plant?

It probably doesn't surprise you, but I talk about gardening in my real life too. Somehow I have affected many of my friends, co-workers and neighbors enough that several of them are trying their hand at vegetable gardening this year. Some of these people ask me a lot of questions.

Probably the most asked question is "What type of tomatoes should I plant?" After they have looked at seed company websites or at plants from a garden center, they often have even more questions.

Some of these questions I have covered in recent posts, like "what do the letters IND or DET mean that are sometimes written after the names?" as well as "should I use tomato cages or stakes?"

The question I hear most often is "What is the difference between hybrid tomato plants and heirloom tomato plants, and which is better?"

The answer to that question can get complicated.

F1 or F2 Hybrid Tomatoes

A basic explanation of a hybrid tomato variety is a variety that has been purposely created by selectively cross breeding two or more different tomato varieties to take on positive traits of the parent tomato types. Hybrids are usually noted as "hybrid" or by "F1" or "F2". An F1 hybrid is a filial 1, first generation cross. An F2 or filial 2, is a cross of two F1 hybrid types. If you saved the seeds of most hybrid tomatoes and re-planted them, those seeds would not have the same characteristics as your first planting.

 

Heirloom or Open Pollinated Tomatoes

The terms Heirloom and Open Pollinated are sometimes used interchangeably. True
Heirloom tomatoes, just like family heirloom possessions, have been passed down from generation to generation. They have not been modified or crossed in any way and to the best of our knowledge, are the same as they were
50 or 100 years ago. When you save the seeds of Heirloom tomatoes and re-plant them, you will get the same tomato again - provided you didn't accidentally create your own hybrid by planting them next to other tomato varieties, thus allowing them to cross-pollinate. Plant breeders began creating hybrid tomato
varieties around 1960, so I don't consider a variety to be a true heirloom unless it can be dated back before 1960.

Open Pollinated varieties, often labeled OP,
are similar to heirlooms since they too will reproduce true to the parent plant if not
allowed to cross.

OP varieties are newer than heirloom varieties, and are technically hybrids that have stabilized to reproduce true.

 

So What Does All This Really Mean?

As a gardener, what does this mean? Which is better, hybrid tomatoes or heirloom tomatoes? That depends on what you are wanting. Many fantastic hybrid tomato cultivars have been created over the years, but many others have sacrificed flavor for traits like uniformity or long keeping.

Many heirlooms are incredibly flavorful and interesting, but are sometimes prone to disease or only produce a few tomato fruits per plant. When I first discovered how delicious heirlooms can be, I wrote a post called The Pros and Cons of Heirloom Tomatoes that goes into the differences in greater detail.

In my garden, I grow a mixture of choice hybrids and heirlooms and that is what I recommend for others.

First decide what you want from your tomatoes. You may be looking for huge beefsteaks, sweet cherries, the best flavor, low acid, early varieties, color varieties, tomatoes for sauce, uniform tomatoes or a number of other traits. Decide what you want and then look for the best tomato varieties that fulfill your criteria. Sometimes the best choice is an heirloom and sometimes a hybrid variety. When possible, I choose one or more of each and have fun discovering which works best in my garden.

Comments

[Kari]

What an interesting post. I stumbled across your site the other day and this post was so informative. I had a couple questions that I've always wondered and maybe you can answer?

First, I've read that if I save seeds from hybrids that the tomatoes won't grow true. But I'm wondering if I can save seeds anyway, plant them and just see what tomatoes I get? Would the next year's tomatoes still be edible? Or is there some reason they couldn't be eaten?

Also, you mentioned about accidentally creating your own hybrid. I didn't think tomato plants crossed that easily and I have several different heirloom varieties planted right next to each other. How likely is it that they would cross? Will I just have to wait until next year to find out if they did?

Thanks for your great post!

[Marc]

Hi Kari, thanks for the great comment.

Saving tomato seed is definitely a worthwhile thing but a bit unpredictable if you grow more than one kind of tomato.

As for hybrids not reproducing true to their parent plant the following year, that is true. But they will still grow tomatoes the next year. Its just that if that variety is bred for something special, your new plants may not have those special traits. Your new plants will likely revert back to only one of the original hybrid's parent plants. The easiest example would be if you raised Early Girl this year and saved the seed, next year your new "Early Girl" tomatoes may not ripen early. Likewise, if a hybrid is known for large size, uniformity, being crack resistant or disease resistant and you save those seeds, your next generation tomatoes might not be big or uniform, may have cracks or be disease prone - whatever the individual case may be. You just don't know what you'll get.

Saving heirloom or OP seed on the other hand, you know the daughter plants will be the same - UNLESS they cross-pollinated. Tomatoes do cross pollinate as insects carry pollen from one type of plant to another. The plant breeders often keep each variety secluded and sometimes even screen them to keep insects out and hand pollinate them. Again, you don't know for sure what you will get when saving these seeds.

I don't write all of this to be negative. I know some gardeners who enjoy planting crossed seed. Its a grab bag mentality and sometimes you can get superior tomatoes the next year. I suppose that is how some of our popular varieties now marketed originally came to be.

[Kari]

Thanks for the answer. I don't mind the grab bag mentality. To me it's just fun to experiment and see what I get.

I do have tulle netting covering my tomato plants to keep out the stinkbugs and hornworms so maybe that will lessen the crossing, but I will be interested to see next year if I created my own hybrid since I planted the all right next to each other. How fun, though. Thanks for the info. Great blog!