I would agree that a lot of "improved" hybrids pushed by larger plant developers and larger seed companies are probably nothing special for home gardeners. Home gardeners want better tasting food and probably are not that concerned about concerns like being 2 days earlier on average, better shelf life after picked, 5% better disease resistance in large plots, 5% better production by volume, novelty color... etc. Older types may be better to eat, better tasting, more tender.

Supermarket strains probably tend to be newer hybrids also though, they are developed for marketability and for where/how they are grown. The supermarket strains are probably not best for home gardeners either. You just need to figure out what type you like and does best in your area.

Not sure what the issue with onions, you just need to figure out what grows best in your climate and latitude.

Saved seed from a supermarket strain? Those supermarket strains are probably hybrids, so saved seed from them won't be true, and may be quite bizarre.

No, I've not noticed. Probably because a lot of what is available around here is the good 'ol tried and true. {shrug}

The vegetable seeds sold locally are usually varieties suited to the local climate, while supermarket vegetables are usually shipped in from other areas (or other countries). For the most part, those commercial varieties are seldom grown by gardeners, and their seed is unavailable retail. I agree with those who have pointed out that you are unlikely to get good results if you plant saved seed from commercial varieties.

IMO any vegetable grown at home, picked at the proper stage, and eaten while fresh will beat anything found in a supermarket... even if both were the same variety.

In my area, much of the seed being sold is the same tried & true varieties being sold for years. Some things, like beans, peas, and winter squash, seldom change. Only vegetables which are easily hybridized (tomatoes, summer squash, sweet corn) seem to change from year to year.

A few of our local stores sell heirloom tomatoes like Cherokee Purple, they look nice but still they are of low quality eating compared to homegrown.

Why is it:

The uglier the tomato; the better it tastes?

Nobody would grow an ugly tomato if it didn’t taste great.

Meh,I see this happen with everything, even outside the vegetable world. you name it, flowers, veg, etc, it happens. One of the major issues behind poor seed genetics is patent issues, another is the seed companies trying to introduce hybrids which often take precedent for novelty purposes and preform poorly and aren't tried and true strains, and often get weeded out in the years to come by the companies. You'll never find good genetics in a box store period.

Bottom line is that hybridizers and big farmers are usually 30 years ahead in the times to anything being sold as seed in stores that the little guy would get. I know this personally from my own hybridizing programs. With that said it just compounds things even worse with all the novelty crop seed being sold that would never hit a supermarket or farmers field.

I disagree pretty much entirely with your original post. Big box stores near me carry a wide assortment of varieties. Open pollinated, heirloom, and hybrid can all be found. I have bought packets off the rack many times and have been mostly satisfied.

As for growing things from grocery store discards, not my thing. I would rather know exactly what I am going to get if I am taking the time, effort, and expense to grow the plant(s). Not to mention that my garden space is too valuable to be wasting on something that may or may not grow true to type, like what you get with discards and grocery store saved seeds as these could be from hybrid plants to begin with or could have been cross pollinated at the farm. Plus I am into seed saving/collecting and seed trading so this is another reason for me to grow named varieties.

Your opinion about grocery store varieties tasting better is just that: your opinion. Many, many others, myself included, think otherwise.

I'm not even going to attempt to address your subsequent comment/rant.

Rodney

Ahh.. Grocery store produce Does not taste better then home grown vegetables and that wasn't my opinion..... Grocery store produce that tastes badly has more to do with harvest times and growing techniques and less to do with genetics as to why the produce doesn't taste as good, and you guys should know that :D. That's a whole other topic and not what I was getting at. I mean, I could take the best genetics in the world and make them taste like crap.

Look at Waltham Butternut. A truly wonderfully tasting squash with good yields, long storage time, squash borer resistant, and you save the seeds for next year. Somebody just had to come out with a hybrid. To do what?

Shorter vines, earlier days to maturity, smaller fruits, larger fruits, sweeter flesh, more disease resistance, larger yields, better storage qualities... Lots of reasons that plant breeders would continue developing butternut varieties. Waltham itself is an improvement on older varieties of butternut squash. There are always improvements that can be made.

Rodney

I've also noticed that my own home-saved seeds have much better germination than packets I've bought. Even the lettuce I saved 4 years ago has much more germination than the packet I bought this year.

Years ago I might have agreed with you, but now days I would tend to disagree with your comment about saving seeds from
grocery store varieties for lots of scientific reasons, not the least of which is many of the seeds are sterile.

If you want the old good tasting varieties that you are referring to, you may want to consider purchasing Heirloom varieties from companies that specialize in this such as Baker Creek. Their seeds are very inexpensive, and you will know precisely what variety you have planted. My germ rates with them have been excellent. I believe Burpee and other such companies have heirloom lines as well.

Old thread but OP here back and noticing the same trend again this year with the seeds on the shelves. This might be limited to a Canadian thing or even a local thing but here are some more examples.

Out of the 3-5 seed suppliers that are on our shelves there isn't 1 bulbing onion variety being sold. (also known as yellow onion) For sake of argument, lets say there was a variety of a yellow bulbing onion I could actually purchase. Well there's a lot of variables involved, long day or short day? Maybe there's a short day version on the shelf but I needed long day for them to actually bulb, or maybe the strain itself is just limited to a certain size and can only get so big. In other words, you aren't gonna grow big tomatoes with cherry tomato seeds.. I'd be hard pressed trying to get them to resemble anything that looked like a yellow onion from stores.

Another example I'm seeing right now is for green onion. I see a lot of verities that are bunching types that produce small tops and are more for bunching. Well, I didn't want those, I wanted a strain that can grow bigger tops. I'd be better off buying some grocery store green onions, eating the tops and growing the bulbs out which I've done in the past, or going to a local farmers market and buying their green onion sets., and gambling on those

Another example is patunia seeds. There's about 3 different strains being sold, all look like hybrids from the 80's lol, I couldn't imagine any greenhouse selling these things, they are so outdated! to make matters worse, it looks like there's about 10 patunia seeds in a pack for 3.99. Well, a person would be better off buying a newer better looking strain from the green house, flowering them out and saving the seeds from them, even if you were lucky to get 1 to germinate, they are still old and outdated strains, that would never match anything being sold on the market.

Interestingly enough, this was the first year where I seen a proper watermelon strain being sold. That wasn't a gimmicked shorter days to maturity miniature version.

Just to point out, (if I never did before) I wasn't saying you should save seeds from store bought produce. There's many reasons why that won't work in some cases. I was trying to make a point that the seed strains they sell (at least here) aren't the same strains being sold in the stores, which are often superior to the strains we can buy as seeds. Of course that doesn't apply to everything. I'm almost certain they don't sell the lettuce types that you see in the supermarkets, (iceberg/romaine) though that isn't necessarily a bad thing because there is still lots of good lettuce strains being sold as seeds. I'm also not against hybrids either. Providing that hybrid strain being sold is actually not some breakthrough gimmicked strain that does X but can't do Y.

"I've also noticed that my own home-saved seeds have much better
germination than packets I've bought. Even the lettuce I saved 4 years
ago has much more germination than the packet I bought this year."

A good observation, and my experience as well.

Commercially sold seed needs to meet certain germination standards... but those germination rates are only certified for the year sold. Seed can continue to be sold as long as it meets the standard, regardless of age. Germination for such seed may drop off rapidly in successive years, even if stored under good conditions. Store-bought or mail-order seed should not be assumed to be new unless so stated (and even then viewed with skepticism).

Furthermore, there is no telling what conditions commercial seed may have been exposed to prior to reaching the gardener's hands... whereas a gardener using good seed saving practices has total control from the year of harvest to the time of planting, year after year.

None of which matters, of course, if you intend to purchase new seed every year... but don't be surprised when your favorite variety suddenly disappears from the seed trade. It was just such a disappearance (of a favorite bean) which led me to begin seed saving.

My apologies in advance for the length & tardiness of this post.

" Out of the 3-5 seed suppliers that are on our shelves there isn't 1 bulbing onion variety being sold. (also known as yellow onion) For sake of argument, lets say there was a variety of a yellow bulbing onion I could actually purchase. Well there's a lot of variables involved, long day or short day? Maybe there's a short day version on the shelf but I needed long day for them to actually bulb, or maybe the strain itself is just limited to a certain size and can only get so big."

It surprises me that there is no onion seed available where you are. If you are in Canada, perhaps the seed suppliers locally decided that sets or plants - which you have access to - are better suited. Perhaps past seed sales were so low that the decision was made not to continue carrying onion seed. But if there was seed available, it is unlikely that they would sell something inappropriate for your area... such as short-day onions for high latitudes. The same could not be said of mail-order seed, where the company may offer seed adapted to different climates, and rely on the buyer to make the proper choices.

" Another example I'm seeing right now is for green onion. I see a lot of verities that are bunching types that produce small tops and are more for bunching. Well, I didn't want those, I wanted a strain that can grow bigger tops."

There are larger bunching onions, some very large... with stalks over 1" wide. Some are perennial in milder climates (I grow several of those here) and some are best suited for use as annuals. I'm not sure what size you are looking for, but I would be happy to send you seed for two of the perennial bunching onions that I grow, both of which are as large - or larger - than supermarket green onions. Send me a PM if interested.

I wonder if you have tried walking onions for scallions? They are very hardy perennials, multiply each year, and most (such as Catawissa or Egyptian) will produce green onions as large as those in supermarkets. Personally, I prefer their flavor to store-bought green onions. They are widely grown & often traded by other gardeners in the form of the bulbils which form on the flower stalks.

"This might be limited to a Canadian thing or even a local thing but here are some more examples."

Perhaps this is the missing context at the root of your OP. If you are in Canada, then chances are that the vegetables you see in stores, and the seeds being sold locally, are widely different. Just as it is here, much of your produce is brought in from warmer climates. There are a few parts of Canada that are warmer than here (in Wisconsin) but for most areas, short seasons would be the rule. That would explain why all you are able to find seed for are small, short-season hybrids for melons & watermelons. The larger watermelons are unlikely to mature there (I can't grow them here either). The same would apply to other long DTM vegetable varieties... I doubt you could find lima seed there either.

There is truth to the suspicion that some "tried and true" varieties are being pushed out by hybrids & patented seeds. That transition has been happening industry-wide, and no doubt profit does play a role... but there are other factors driving that as well. Some hybrid breeding programs are intended to improve a vegetable, to increase its disease resistance, shorten its DTM, or otherwise make a vegetable that gardeners could grow reliably in a wide range of conditions. So one of the reasons that so much hybrid seed is being sold is that gardeners, rightly or not, are asking for it. For those gardeners who march to the beat of a different drummer, we might eventually find what we are looking for... but it won't be in the seed racks. ;-)

some onion seeds here at the local chains are the wrong type.. for example I've seen Ferry Morse selling Red Burgundy onion seeds which is a short day onion. also see yellow onions such as Texas Grano and a few other short day onions in long day region.. kind of idiotic on their part if you ask me.