Many things we buy in the store to eat are seeds.
The other day I sprouted black mustard seeds.
Black mustard isn't kin to regular mustard.
Today I'm seeing if the coriander I bought will sprout.
If it does I'll plant some because coriander is the seed from cilantro.

Doss, Happy seed-starting. Wishing you a successful 2023 season.

A lot of seeds from the stores, sold as spices, will sprout, but some will not, and I figured (though just guessing) that some are irradiated, to kill many things, before exporting them to here. As for coriander seeds, most of those you buy are grown for producing the spice, not the herbs, so they will be different, though maybe still good. Years ago I tried sprouting both Thai (a smaller, reddish coriander) and Indian coriander (a yellowish, oval shaped seed) and none would sprout, until I got some Indian coriander from an online spice store, and they sprouted! More recently, BC carried the Indian types. I never got much from either, as far as seeds or herbs.

I have eleven little pepper plants coming on, that were seed from a commercial 'snack' pepper. One thing I don't know, is whether the seeds are crossed with something else. The bag of peppers had red, yellow and orange peppers of similar shape and size. So I kind of hope that they may have crossed with the other colors and I might get all 3.
Most of the typical seed herbs are not too well suited to the short season with random frosts. But TBH I have never tried a lot of them. Cilantro we sure do get seed from them in a reasonable year. The green seed, if they don't make it to ripe, are an underappreciated spice IMO, with more of a cilantro leaf flavo in the mix, that dries down easily unlike the leaf.

@pepperhead212
If memory serves me the Texas ruby red grapefruit came from irradiated trees known as mutation breeding by one form of radiation or another.
The treatment changed the genes of the trees and produce what we now know as red grapefruits.
It says a single mutation from a tree was found.
That's true but they don't explain why that mutation occurred or better yet how they made it stay around.
The original faded out so they bombarded it with thermal neutrons.

The advertisements from the sellers of these grapefruits don't mention it for obvious reasons.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source= ... Zl8QJUeOgi

Many of the exotic beans they sell in some stores are basically heirlooms and not hybrids.
One of which the name escapes me comes from south America.
Well actually several.
Others have several names for the same bean.
One I can't find to save my life on line but was at the feiesta market in Austin.
My neighbor frome Chilie knew of it.
Dark red rounded and a little hard even after cooked.
The bean I call mayocoba has several names alone.
Canary Puerano Peruvian and so on.
The same with cranberry beans as well.
I would highly suspect the Anasazi bean would definitely come true to seed.

Like Bower I am planting seeds from the small, sweet, multicolored snack peppers just to see what happens. Most are red, yellow and orange; hoping for a result.

I think I’ve tried every seed in our spice cupboard including from dried chilies with sometimes surprising results. Just had some cumin sprout a couple weeks ago.

Ditto with the snack peppers. I didn’t expect any crossing, and didn’t have any, assuming they were originally grown in big fields of one type. The orange were the most productive followed by yellow and red in that order.

My experience was like @DriftlessRoots. I have grown mini peppers from both Target and Aldi's shelves, and in all cases the colors and sizes have come true in the first regrown generation. For some reason, the reds never seemed as easy and hardy to germinate and also less productive when they did produce. I also found orange to be the best, though maybe I am slightly prejudiced for that color anyway!

ddsack wrote: ↑Mon Feb 06, 2023 10:49 am My experience was like @DriftlessRoots. I have grown mini peppers from both Target and Aldi's shelves, and in all cases the colors and sizes have come true in the first regrown generation. For some reason, the reds never seemed as easy and hardy to germinate and also less productive when they did produce. I also found orange to be the best, though maybe I am slightly prejudiced for that color anyway!

Last year I grew one red, one yellow, and one orange from a bag of snack peppers purchased at Giant Food. Each produced the color and shape expected, but they all were only about half-size (meaning, half the size of the peppers I took the seeds from) and with thinner walls. That may have been due to growing conditions and soil -- they were planted much later than my other peppers, in a non-prime part of the garden. I had the same experience as @DriftlessRoots and @ddsack as far as productivity and plant health -- orange the best, red the worst. I probably wouldn't grow the red again because I got only a very few from the plant.

This year I've saved some seeds from a multi-colored/striped red/yellow grocery store snack pepper to try, plus I purchased seeds for a few orange snack pepper varieties.

Hybrids usually dont come "true" do they?

I’m growing a bell pepper plant from seeds I
Saved from this yellow and red striped one That I really loved the color, so it’s a great looking plant and got my first baby pepper so we will see how it turns out

rusty wrote: ↑Wed Feb 08, 2023 6:46 pm Hybrids usually dont come "true" do they?

Yeah, I was actually expecting some variation to play around with. If there was any it was subtle. I only grew two plants of each.

No action yet with the coriander seeds.
House might be to cold not time yet or won't ever sprout.
I think I might go with an avocado those are easy and I can cook with the leaves.

worth1 wrote: ↑Thu Feb 09, 2023 12:09 pm I think I might go with an avocado those are easy and I can cook with the leaves.

Eerie synchronicity. I was just coming here to ask if anyone knew if the Haas/Hass pits could be used to grow my own leaves for cooking. We buy the dried ones at the tienda but I didn't know if they were the same species and safe. Got two going right now on the windowsill.

We get coriander every year as our cilantro ages. I have grown cilantro as an herb for many years and work hard to keep it from bolting but as the year gets hotter and drier we get coriander whether we like it or not. Our cilantro has been growing in a half whiskey barrel and it has re-seeded itself for at least fifteen years from the coriander seeds that drop into the soil in the pot and germinates.

DriftlessRoots wrote: ↑Fri Feb 10, 2023 8:45 am

worth1 wrote: ↑Thu Feb 09, 2023 12:09 pm I think I might go with an avocado those are easy and I can cook with the leaves.

Eerie synchronicity. I was just coming here to ask if anyone knew if the Haas/Hass pits could be used to grow my own leaves for cooking. We buy the dried ones at the tienda but I didn't know if they were the same species and safe. Got two going right now on the windowsill.

I've read the hass isn't usable but its the darn internet and you'll have to look and be careful.
Persea americana var. drymifolia) is supposed to the the real Mexican one.

The coriander seeds just started to sprout them I got busy and let them dry out.
But they did start to put on root tails.

I saw at Walmart the other day tiny butternut squash so I decided to save the seeds there drying now and I’m gonna try and start them next month as see what comes of them I never grew butternut before and have always wanted to!! Anyone else try this ??

I grow butternuts every year, because all I can grow are moschata squash, since anything else here gets SVBs. Not sure if that small one will breed true from those seeds - it might be a hybrid.