Price of Veg seeds getting expensive.

Is it me or are the prices of veg seeds a lot more expensive than last year? l ordered my last lot of seeds last December ( l save my cashback money all yr to cash out to pay for my veg seeds ) and iv just had a look on my usual sites l buy from and i'm sure the seeds are a lot more expensive than last yr..im sure many are as much as a £1 more added on :( lv been buying veg seeds for some years now and iv not seen the price go up this much :(

 

I would agree, and the number of seeds per packet has been substantially reduced. A lot of tomato seeds have started being sold in packets of 5 seeds.

 

Supply and demand at work. Since Brexit there are additional costs to importing seed for sale in the UK so a lot more is home grown, sorted and packed and that's an added cost in terms of labour, materials, energy.

Still cheaper than buying all your fruit and veg and more interesting varieties too.

 

I find you need to shop around. Also newer varieties tend to be more expensive than older ones and F1 varieties in particular.
I have some tomato seeds that cost about £2.00 with 50 seeds in the packet. F1 varieties of tomato for between £2.00 and £3.00 typically have 10 seeds or less in the packet.

 

Just bought 2 packets of tomato seed, fi hybrid £7, only 8 seed in each packet.

Ridiculous price but how else do you get hold of them.

 

BB3 had once asked this question before and I also had that in mind: squeeze a tomato or two in a sunny place in your garden/greenhouse, leave it as it is, start watering in February, and the seeds will germinate when the temperature is right (here in March).
I can’t judge the quality as I have never grown them, but you get as many plants as seeds germinated.

I kept one of the chillies, dried it, and will use the seeds in January. This works fine.

 

l did that this year with supermarket cherry toms and sweet baby peppers..l had loads of seedling come up but very poor fruiting. Only my bought Tom seeds did well. Last yr 2024 we had a bumper crop of tomatoes of loads of diff ones ie buy l pk get another pk half price .l cant find that company any more so l guess they have closed down and thats why sold stock off. I'm trying to learn more about seed saving..l do save my own runner beans seeds and potatoes...and we get a lot of self seedlings from kale, parsley, mustards, red vein sorrel. l think i'm going to have to save my own seeds more if the prices keep rising as much as they are :(

 

I don't ever grow FI veggies. I like heritage varieties for flavour and coming true if I save seed.

 

I've got a cherry tomato that self seeded in my garden this year, showed itself around June.
I left it and its fruiting now and has been for about 6 weeks, its identical to a variety called Honeycomb which I grew last year.
Its an F1 but still tastes like last years and is cropping pretty well.

I'm even growing sweet peppers from supermarket fruit seeds and the results are pretty good IMO, never had the same germination rate from those dried out packets they sell at stupid prices.

Not saying you will get away with everything that are F1 hybrids, but most of this stuff is probably self pollinated anyway.

I'd be wary of growing them on for more than a couple of years before investing in fresh seed.

 

I don't think there is much point in using tomato seeds from a bought tomato unless the flavour suits - I find most on offer to be very bland.
I do save seed from the bought Palermo peppers and find they do well.
Agree about the price of seeds - seems to be going the same way as some food products with an increase in price along with a decrease in weight or numbers.

 

Not that I grow food plants but many of the veggies and salads we eat have or develop seeds. I thought it’s only about how to dry them properly.
I mean, our ancestors had no seed shop, and still managed to have harvests year by year.
@Philippa as Obelix said, buy a heritage tomato and dry its seeds, which should last 3 to 4 years if properly stored.

The reason why I don’t grow veggies is simply that I don’t want to end up eating the same for months. I still remember 2018, 26c and no rain for 3 months. My tomato plants produced half a kilogram (a pound) a day. I had run out of ideas what to do with it after two months. Or my Marrows grown 5 years in a row. I was busy with eating 6 marrows over two months. My neighbours no longer opened the door when I knocked with a marrow.
The only veggies I grow are salads. They don’t mind to have a break.

 

@simone_in_wiltshire I have already grown various heritage seeds - if I like them, I grow them but I don't have the space to keep trying different varieties so I stick with what I know, like and which produce well.
It really is a case of growing what veg/fruit you like, what space you have available, and what does in your particular site/climate. Cost comes into it as well - if you have a locally grown supply , then little point in doing it yourself.

 

I grew melons the first year we were here but the results were not impressive - huge amount of effort for not a lot of fruit so now I leave those to the local professionals. I can't find cavolo nero or PSB here so grow my own and get great flavour and freshness.

@simone_in_wiltshire I deliberately grow far more tomatoes than we could ever want to eat fresh but I cook the surplus down into a concentrate like passata and use that thru the winter for soups and pasta sauces and I semi dry some of the cherry types to make "sun dried" toms in herbt oilve oil for brsuchetta.

 

I'd prefer to grow heritage and open pointed veg all round but many are not looked after well by the commercial growers and some f1s far exceed any OP varieties. Brussels sprouts being one in particular. Can't do without the sungolds either, still not found an OP variety that competes with that
Not that I've grown many different varieties of cherry tomato

Others are different, I don't think any F1 parsnip has been better than the OP varieties, I'm sure there's plenty of veg like that

 

I grew Sungold a couple of years ago @Hanglow and was underwhelmed.

There's a heritage tomato grower who sells seedlings at a local plant fair in spring and I always buy some plants there. Little black Crimea toms, tho brown, are far tastier than Sungold and this year he had a variety that has blue shoulders and ripens to red and has superb flavour. Label lost now but I'll keep a few seeds of that one.