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Does Richters Sell Non-Hybrid Seeds?

Asked by:

Derry Bresee

Posted at:

January 27, 2025

We have a small garden out in back of our house here in Las Vegas, Nevada. All the seed catalogs we have seen in the stores here or on the web are mostly all hybrid which we definitely don't want, especially since I've harvested seed from our herbs last season.
Right now I'm in the middle of harvesting our winter garden, which is producing snow peas, and spinach which I planted in Nov, and I'm cutting my lavender flowers which are blooming so I can hang them in bunches downward from a hat rack here in the house. I use all fresh herbs from my garden in my kitchen. I've been busy sorting and drying herbs when they reach maturity & then crush the dry herbs straight off our dehydrator and put these herbs in bottles for use the rest of the year. I have lots of fresh flat leaf parsley I planted last spring I use every day in cooking or to juice with carrots etc. The more I cut the more prolific my parsley becomes, it's about 2-3 ft high in a patch about 4 x 4 ft in size.
In looking over the seeds we have right now I notice most of them say hybrid and I'm looking for among other things, non-hybrid Japanese eggplant. Does this only come as a hybrid?
Most of our seeds are open-pollinated, non-hybrid strains. In the case of the Japanese eggplant we sell the open pollinated variety 'Kurume Long Purple'. It will produce fertile seeds, but probably is not as uniform from plant to plant as the often sterile hybrid varieties available elsewhere. However open pollinated varieties will vary in their susceptibility to diseases and insects and therefore will not all be wiped out by some environmental condition combined with some bug or disease.