HSBA anyone?

I'm just wondering if there is an Heirloom Seed Buyers Anonymous (HSBA) out there. If so, I might have to consider joining....

Thanks to MatthiasJ from over at Kentucky Preppers Network, who left the following comment on my last post, where I made clear the fact that I didn't understand the designation "organic" when it came to buying seeds:

"Heirloom seeds are specific breeds of plants that have been passed down that are good quality. Non-hybrid means you can reuse the plant's seeds to grow more plants. Organic seeds have to come from organically grown crops to be certified organic. "

I do not recall ever having bought seeds of the organic variety, but it's good to know. I thought that heirloom seeds and non-hybrid seeds were the same thing, so that I could use seeds from the resulting plants for future planting. Still hoping that's true, since on Saturday I found a veritable jackpot of heirloom seeds at a hardware store. So why the talk of an HSBA? Well, the seeds, for the most part, were kinds I probably wouldn't have bought except that I was on an heirloom seed buying spree...

For example, previously I would not have looked twice at this particular variety of cucumber:

I do not recall ever having seen yellow cucumbers before, or even knowing that they existed. Cucumbers in my experience are long and green. But like I said, these are heirloom seeds...

I did get some heirloom seeds for corn, but I also got the following seeds for planting crops I had not even thought about, like this:



and this:



Mostly I wouldn't have thought about these particular kinds of seeds for various reasons, such as the fact that I know that some of them aren't that kid-friendly (speaking for my children only...ahem, cough, cough, pepppersss, cough) or I'm just not familiar with cooking with them (rhymes with begchant) or the aforementioned factor that I didn't know that they existed. (Mentioned the round yellow cucumbers to my best source (Mom) and she said something like, "Oh, yeah, those are good." Makes you wish knowledge was hereditary...) Doesn't mean that I can't use them and learn all of these things. I may try some of these this year. Or save them for later to add to my garden variety...

Thing is, we already have enough seeds for this year, but as Carl from Wisconsin mentioned in his comment on my last post, heirloom and non-hybrid seeds can be hard to find and/or really expensive. Good luck on your quest to find the seeds you need/want, and if buying heirloom seeds is an addiction, I'm sure my husband thinks I'm a candidate for HSBA.... :)