F1 Seed

I buy all my seed (bar anything that has very short storage life, like Parsnips) in the Wyevale 50p-a-packet sale - so I get £3.50 packets of F1 Squash the same price as a giant packet of Lettuce seeds!

I too have no wish to grow F1 that are bred purely to "all come at once"; although I can see the benefit of that to commercial growers I wonder how often that is the reason for F1 being offered to amateur gardeners? (rather than disease resistance or some other characteristic?)

Just looking through next year's seed packets to see which are F1:

Cucumber (greenhouse) - F1 for all-female - no seeds - no bitter fruit - no need to remove male flowers £4.80 for 4 seeds

Squash Cobnut. Grew these last year for the first time. They all came different shapes and sizes like Gourds - so no idea what happened to the "F1" part - but they were deliciously sweet. I shall be interested to see what shapes I get next year. £3.99 / 12 seeds

Cantaloupe melon F1 Sweetheart. Had great success with these for several seasons now, lovely flavour, thus trying them again. £2.55 / 15 seeds

Sweet corn Swift F1 - very fast growing, beautifully sweet (but often only one cob per plant)  £1.85 / 35 seeds

Errmmm ... that's about it. I have old packets of F1 seed that were a disappointment, or no better than the non-F1 seed I grew:

Purple coloured Kohl Rabi
Several varieties of Carrot - Bangor, Nelson
Various other Melons that I have tried over the years
Leek F1 Carlton - grew very strong and fat, but not many of those that germinated originally survived to be transplanted (might have been me, of course, but the Mussleburgh right alongside them did just fine)
Sweetcorn Minipop F1 - far too difficult to harvest them "small enough" IME, and a waste of the cropping space where I could have grown full-sized Sweetcorn which the kids would be just as happy to eat

This got me thinking..which f1s do I grow?

Picolino Cucumber, small all female, so no faffing about,
Parthenon courgette, also all female so no pollination worries,
Sweetcorn Lark, a tendersweet shorter variety,
Cabbage Minicole, perfect size autumn cabbage for a small family and stands for months,
   "           Hispi, started under cover in January it fills the hungry gap
    "           Tundra superb tasting winter cabbage which is totally winter hardy, stands till spring.
Cauliflower Clapton, clubroot resistant, can also be started undercover in Jan for early crop.

New to me for next year is Parsnip Gladiator..........it came highly recommended
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