FAQ: New Cultivars

Recently we shared a list of some of our favorite new cultivars that have been entering the seed market. As we get ready to grow and sell these varieties, here are a few common questions we wanted to address.

Question: What is a new cultivar?

Answer: A cultivar is a plant that is specifically chosen and bred for desirable traits such as hardiness, stem length, vase life, petal shape/form, color, size, and disease resistance.

Question: How long does it take to create a new cultivar?

Answer: The process often takes years. First farmers select plants that are growing in their fields that have a desirable trait that they want to replicate. From there, the process might include isolating the desired plants to prevent cross breeding with undesirable plants, or selectively cross breeding to incorporate multiple desirable traits in one plant. Once the plant has been perfected, the farmer must harvest seeds (or tubers) and test them to ensure that the new line is stable. Finally, the breeder must keep growing the new variety over a few seasons until they have enough seed inventory to sell.

Question: Why are new cultivars hard to find?

Answer: Due to the years long process of creating a new cultivar, and the time it takes to build up a seed inventory, these are often sold in smaller quantities. Instead of receiving 200 or more seeds in a packet, these are often sold as packets of 25 or 50. Additionally, there is often a wait list to purchase these unique seeds and they sell out fast!

Question: Why are new cultivars so expensive compared to the more common varieties?

Answer: Part of the increased cost is simply due to supply and demand. While the demand for these new varieties is very high, there are much fewer seeds on the market. Other factors that contribute to the cost are the labor investment made in producing the seeds (many hours over years of time) and production costs such as patenting and royalty fees.

Question: What are some common plants that flower farmers are breeding?

Answer:  There are a few flowers that lend themselves to being bred more easily than others. Zinnias and dahlias are two of these. There are quite a few breeding programs for these flowers in the United States. And because both zinnias and dahlias are hard to ship, often florists can only find these from their local growers!

Ready to shop from our local growers? Become a buyer with the Collective today!