2020 tomato plans

[William S.]

Found my 2017 packet of Hamsonita tomato today. Was looking for a packet of Dwarf Hirsutum Cross, but it looks like that's deeper down in the seed stash.

My tomato plans keep getting more complicated.

One growout for a small contract. Want to grow out Big Hill, want to grow out F3 of exserted orange and F3 of exserted tiger. The cool blue bicolor I found last year would like to cross with big hill since the stigmas turned out dissapointingly short, would like to cross dehybridizing lizzano with an exserted, have a new habrochaites accession with known arthropod resistance to grow and would like to cross it with existing hybrids, want to plant a Peruvianum with some penellii, and grow out arcanum to see if it crossed with peruvianum and to put an exserted domestic in its midst, want to grow out just a few plants of some stable hab derived varieties from J & L gardens "wild child", and "weight in gold" got the dwarf hirsutum cross a few years back. It's a nice red potato leaf but with very closed flowers, but deep green leaves, looks healthy.

Wouldn't mind growing Hamsonita, but it may need to wait for 2021 if I am isolating it. Normally I dont isolate anything because hybrids are great but if I am in variety preservation mode I will. I may pick a spot, backyard or one of the gardens where I grow small numbers of things and don't worry about contamination.

However my main tomato project will still be a big grow out of the next generation of habrochaites and penellii hybrids.

I think my methodology for crosses will be one exserted plant surrounded by pollen donors. Will probably manually transfer some pollen onto the exposed stigmas as well. I think I'll plant these crossing blocks close together in whichever garden I choose for odds and ends. If errant crossing happens I'll just welcome the oddballs and enjoy them. It might just be adjacent to the big grow out of F2 Big Hill x W_, unless I make a space in the backyard for odds and ends.

Note: Redid my google earth map (attached) and it looks like I can make room for isolated Hamsonita.

[William S.]

Found my original packet Big Hill, only 10 seeds left in it. I have thousands of saved seeds but all from close interplantings with the hope of hybrids. I could probably launch a Big Hill mothered grex with those. 2018's Big Hill seed should maybe be crossed primarily with Blue Ambrosia. I'm hoping for more wild crosses from 2019's saved Big Hill seed. If so those will go into my Big Hill x Wild field. Talked to Joseph though and he will send more original Big Hill before spring.

Also found dwarf hirsutum cross saved seed but it has super inserted flowers so I doubt it will produce any crosses. I think also I would be happy with one plant of that. I think I just want to grow a plant or so of Wild Child, Dwarf Hirsutum Cross, and Weight in Gold basically for comparative purposes between the three and with our high percentage habrochaites projects. They are all stabilized high percentage habrochaites red domestic types from Lee Goodwin's J and L gardens. Do they have any particularly useful traits for our purposes? I have a curiosity about that. The domestic tomato genome is very narrow. So maybe any available material is of interest. There are also some heirlooms with introgression. It's just hard to know how much. Also with crossing over something that seems pretty high percentage on paper can be selected for a much lower percentage when selecting for domestic traits. Still crossing back to something known to already have some wild tomato in it seems a safer bet than crossing back to pure domestics. So it might be interesting material. Worth three square feet of garden space to me anyway.

[William S.]

A probably incomplete listing of my favorite breeding material at the moment and what I would hope to grow out of it in 2020:

Big Hill x Wild4 F2 seed should segregate out all kinds of interesting things. Some of them may even taste good. This will be my main growout in 2020
7 seeds I got from a Hab cross last year that was ok tasting, a little larger fruited and had very interesting colors, will plant these with the above
Any wild hybrids I find in a packet of Blue Ambrosia I wiped pollen onto the stigmas of the parent
Any wild hybrids I find in a packet of Big Hill I wiped pollen onto the stigmas of the parent and it was growing next to wilds, 3/4 wilds, and half wilds
- the above four I will grow together any obvious hybrids I prick out of the bottom two packets plus the top two. Plus any and all new seed Joseph may send. This should be a lot of plants I have maybe ~600 seeds, if half germinate that's 300 plants plus any hybrids I prick out etc. I plan to plant at least part of this block on a three foot spacing. If I end up with too many plants I will go down to a 1 foot spacing on as much of the block as necessary.

Blue Ambrosia (exserted stigmas, yellow, with blue skin)(1 plant)
Big Hill (exserted stigmas, bicolor)(100 plants isolation block)
Blue Skinned Short Season Bicolor F2 Seed I saved might segregate to potato leaved, want to cross with Big Hill to get exsertion (crossing block)
Exserted Tiger Tomato F2- have submitted paper work to OSSI pledge this as a breeding pop, planning to grow out F3 in 2020 (100 plants isolation block)
Exserted Orange Hill F2- have submitted paper work to OSSI pledge this as a breeding pop, planning to grow out F3 in 2020 (100 plants isolation block)
Lizzano F2/F3 (for PH2 PH3 Blight Resistance and is short season small plant red cherry)(Crossing block)
Coyote (yellow, tastes good, short season)(1 plant)
Galapagos Yellow short season thing tastes good- Andrew sent, not pure Galapagos (short season and flavor)(1 plant)
An exserted pimpinillifolium type Andrew sent me last year (1 plant)
Golden Tressette an exserted yellow cherry Alan Kapuler bred (1 plant)
A blue skinned segregate of Golden Tressette I found in the clump I grew (1 plant)
Forest Fire (very short season red and productive) (0 plants)
42 Days (42 DTM)(0 plants)
Sweet Cherriette (cherry 35 DTM, indeterminate dwarf)(1 plant)
Solanum arcanum and any peruvianum? crosses that segregate from it in 2020- hoping it will bridge peruvianum complex to domestics (one flat of plants crossing block with exserted domestics)
Solanum peruvianum- extremely difficult to cross, but highly interesting wild species (1 plant)
Solanum penellii and crosses (drought resistance, interesting flavors, salt tolerance)(crossing block with the 1 peruvianum plant)
Amethyst Cream (Flavor, blue skin)(1 plant)
Dwarf Hirsutum Cross (Habrochaites content, potato leaves, looks healthy, dwarf)(1 plant)
Wild Child (habrochaites content, dwarf, cold tolerance, blight tolerance) this will be my first year trying it (1 plant)
Weight in Gold (habrochaites content, frost tolerance) this will be my first year trying it (1 plant)
Three way hybrid I had between penellii, habrochaites, and domestic, but planning to wait for another year (0 plants unless include with other penellii)
Solanum habrochaites accession resistant to arthropods (growing this first time this year)(1 plant)
Wild Species in general including galapagense and cheesemanii (maybe 1 plant/clump each)
I have thousands of seeds from interplanted Big Hill and Blue Ambrosia that are likely to yield Big Hill x Blue Ambrosia hybrids if grown out from 2018 (0 plants)

I may not bother to grow even a single plant of some of the above in 2020- I added my estimated number of plants in brackets, its too much to work with in a single year. If I do grow them all, it will be one plant, or one clump of each. So the Big Hill x Wild4 will get the big grow out this year. I might have a few little crossing blocks on the edge of the field with a pollen donor and one Big Hill in the center of each block. If I get it done, that will be where the arthropod resistant hab is grown as hab x exserted domestic and hab x Big HillxW4 and the lizzano x big hill block and a F3 Blue skinned bicolor x Big Hill block, and the Penellii x Peruvianum block, and a Arcanum x exserted domestic block. Then I will do five isolation patches for some I'm growing for seeds at least 150 feet apart from each other and the big field.

All of the above is subject to prioritization as I'm sure reality will catch up to me. Writing it all out makes it seem like too much.