Kitchen gardening - Hybird, heirloom and OP varieties

A hybrid vegetable is result of cross-pollination between two genetically different parent plants. Plant breeders develop hybrids to increase disease resistance, to improve yield, or to select for special fruit traits such as color, aroma, taste, or shipping quality. Whenever you see F1 or F2 with a seed, this is hybrid.

If you grow a vegetable/fruit grown from a hybrid seed then the seed obtained from the crop can not be re-used, you must buy the seeds again. This is the reason most commercial sellers sell hybrid vegetable seeds so that gardeners come to buy again and again. If you sow the seed from a hybrid crop, the resultant plant will never be as good as the parent.

Heirloom vegetables are cultivated forms of crops that have been perpetuated by gardeners who save seed (or propagate by some other means such as taking cuttings) from year to year. Some heirloom vegetable varieties have been around for more than a century! Gardeners have kept these varieties growing for generations because the crops performed well in a particular area or because they have outstanding flavor, unusual color, or other appealing characteristics.

OP stands for open-pollinated, meaning that wind, bees, or other insects, rather than plant breeders, transferred the pollen to fertilize the flowers. While all heirloom vegetables are open-pollinated, not all OP vegetables are heirlooms, since most seed companies offer modern-day varieties of vegetables that have been pollinated by wind or other means.

Seeds from the crop of Heirloom/OP vegetables are true to their parent. So you do not need to buy the seeds again and again.

DHA Flower show 2012, Lahore

The sixth annual DHA flower competition will held from March 15-17, 2012 at Sheeba Park near McDonalds Y-Block DHA Lahore.

Flowers of Murree hills - Pipeline track

This is the last post in this series of posts "Flowers of murree hills". This last post was delayed because i was unable to identify some flowers. Still there are some flowers i can not identify and any help in this regard would be highly appreciated.

This is Oenothera rosea, evening primrose. Blooming happily in the crack of a steep hill. In fact it was growing on a hilly slope, no soil visible at all. Location was nathiagali.


This is the first from the un-identified flowers. Seems like a Ranunculus but not sure which species.




This one is another unknown flower. Blooming in the mountain crack of pipeline track at Donga gali.


This is also a very common bush on the pipeline track. Fragrant white starry flowers. I thought of wax flower, hoya but hoyas do not thrive in this cold area. Maybe an Abelia.



This one is again i could not identify. It is a small tree and few flowers were there. May be a robinia. i captured it in Nathia gali main road.


This one seems to be Hypochaeris radicata, dendelion.


Another unknown flower on the pipeline track.


The last of the unknown flowers, it was not fragrant.


I will try to put a post on butterflies of Bhurban and Nathiagali next.

Butterflies of lahore - Pioneer white butterfly

This post is another one in the series of "Butterflies of Lahore". You can see previous posts on butterflies in the menu of this website.
Pioneer white butterfly(Belenois aurota) is also a common butterfly of lahore. It is mostly seen in lahore in winter and spring. You can see it often in the Chyrsanthemum flower show flowers.
It is often found on flowers instead of foliage or in open sun. Most of the times it is in gardens but i have seen it on my terrace as well. Like all butterflies it is always found in full sun. All these pictures of pioneer white butterfly are from Lawrence gardens lahore



Because it is a common butterfly in lahore, i guess it is also found in other parts of Pakistan. Probably it migrates from higher mountains to lower plains in winter.

Apart from "Butterflies of lahore", there will be a post on "Butterflies of Murree hills" soon.