2022 Tomato Growouts and breeding experiments ideas

[William S.]

Up front a disclaimer. I'm about to finish a second degree to teach science. So I'll be looking for a teaching job for 2022. That could radically curtail or change my plans for the 2022 garden season.

However for now based on my 2021 seed harvested here are some possibilities for 2022.

1. Grow out "found it", "is that a tomato?", "persimmon" the best flavored 2021 orange bicolor with exserted open flowers from Josephs promiscuous interspecies cross project in isolation and see if that amazing flavor comes back!

2. Grow out either a large grow out of MMS x BH F1 or if my four basement plants do well the F2 selected for potato leaves in search of a PL, blue, exserted, bicolor.

3. Grow LA 1410 Galapagense surrounding an exserted potato leaf.

4. Grow LA 2329 habrochaites with any hybrids of it I capture from the 2021 seeds of plants I interspersed it with.

5. Grow out any hybrids found in potato leaf seeds as they may segregate in fun ways. Though the PL MMS plant in the LA2329 crossing block could have hybridized with LA2329 or some domestics or promiscuous project plants. Any obvious F1 hybrids with LA 2329 will be planted in a row next to LA 2329.

6. Maybe grow direct seeded exserted PL red found this year as a direct seeded row? It could go in with the domestic PL X RL hybirds.

7. Grow lots of fun tomatoes from various lines I've saved seed from plus any other people's tomatoes that are just for fun etc in a slushy garden where out crossing can be less controlled.

[Nicollas]

A lot of nice projects !

Integrate these in your science teachings

[William S.]

A lot of nice projects !

Integrate these in your science teachings

That reminds me I need to plant a few seeds of Aztek a yellow micro dwarf to cross with the MMS x BH for growing with the students!

[Garrett Schantz]

I am going to be growing my plants / starting seeds in a heated room in 2022. In the past my plants were stunted due to the temperatures.

1. Will be growing a bunch of Pimpinellifolium x Habrochaites F3 indoors to select for the most exserted flowers.

2. Will grow out F4 Pimpinellifolium x Habrochaites and surround a plants with: Neandermato - other habrochaites, Galapagos Wild Tomato Minor Type 2 (Solanum galapagense), Galapagos Island Tomato Type 3 (Solanum cheesmanii), Island Sunrise Tomato, Chmielewsky's Wild Tomato, Wild Gem, Polar Star, Lutescent, Reisetomate, Woolly Kate, Wildling Panamorous.

Mostly wanting a cold hardy, small fruited / seeded promiscuous group at some point in the future. This could help with crosses to Peruvianum or some other closely related species.

I also want to create a breeding base - at some point I want to try out embryo rescue, having interesting traits in a population could lead to some fun results.

New / good flavors are also desired, as are ornamental traits that do not weaken the plant (white / chartreuse variegation in leaves). Interesting traits could be: Large White Flowers - Orange Anther Cones - Large Flower Petals, Wild-Introduced Calyxes, Fruit markings.

Also wanting to see how certain genes will react with each other - Island Sunrise Tomato x Reisetomate for example could look interesting.

Island Sunrise Tomato - Interesting Fruit genetic (Along with disease resistances) 

Lutescent - White flowers

Galapagos tomatoes - could have insect resistant traits along with salinity resistant genes - offspring will be doused with different levels of "saltwater"

Neandermato / Habrochaites - Highly attractive to bees, cold resistant, disease resistant, nice flowers

Chmielewsky's Wild Tomato - Has an odd "fish taste" - could create some interesting flavors with diverse hybrids

Reisetomate - Large amount of fused flowers

Polar Star - Sets fruit at 40F, other planted varieties could have the gene as well

Wild Gem - Interesting foliage, same growth habit as habrochaites, somewhat exserted flowers, very blight resistant

Woolly Kate - Blue fuzzy fruit, fuzzy foliage

Wildling Panamorous - Will cross exserted Pimpinellifolium x Habrochaites F4 plants with exserted Wildlings, along with any plants that have interesting flavors


Any other interesting plants may be used in separate experiments.

Currently growing S. neorickii and S. chmielewskii - I may attempt to cross these if all goes well - they are apparently very closely related. I would then try for an F2 - F3, crossing the most interesting offspring into the previously mentioned group. The S. chmielewskii that I have is exserted.

[William S.]

One addition might be to grow Iron Lady in the F2 surrounding an exserted bicolor potato leaf.

Another might be:

4. Grow LA 2329 habrochaites with any hybrids of it I capture from the 2021 seeds of plants I interspersed it with AND or R18

[William S.]

It will be really interesting looking for hybrids next year. I'll plant community flats of seedlings and look for the ones with regular leaves from potato leaf mothers. The ones with exceptional hybrid vigour, and the habrochaites looking ones if any will be successfully fathered by LA2329.

[Adrian]

I have found a plant of canestrino di lucca extremly resistant at the bads conditions.He has grow at shadow but he measured above 2 meters and he is not sick and he has big flowers!
I hope the tomato will be mature for recuperate the seeds!

[William S.]

Special Tomato Seeds from 2021:

Little pumpkin a promiscuous project plant that only set seed at the end but tasted awesome.

x4 packets The One, persimmon, tasted awesome, green seed gel, open and exserted flower. Might be obligate out crossing but not certain.

Blue Bicolor MMS x BH F1 already have four plants so the cross worked.

Reticulate mutation of earls jagodka

Iron lady f2

Exserted promiscuous bicolor salmon flesh no off taste not likely obligate

MMS stock seed

DS exserted potato leaf red- this might produce both F1 hybrids and PL plants to isolate and stabilize if desirable.

DS promiscuous project slightly Exserted orangish bicolor

x6 packets R18 G2

LA1410 Galapagense

LA2329 habrochaites

x14 seed packets from LA2329 crossing block. Including inserted stigma plants from promiscuous project, exserted stigma plant that seemed obligate and produced seed, exserted and open plant that produced seedless fruit till almost the end, barely inserted plant that produced only three fruits, fully domestic Big Hill, exserted tiger, and MMS which was potato leaf and barely exserted. Hope is to find both any domestic hybrids and any new LA2329 hybrids.

[William S.]

2017-2021 Past interesting seeds

Species tomatoes : Arcanum, Peruvianum, penellii, habrochaites, cheesemanii, galapagense, pimpinillifolium and a few others I haven't grown successfully but still have seed for.

Early generation 3 species hybrids with domestic, penellii, and habrochaite's

Early generation habrochaites hybrids

Early generation penellii hybrids

Some interesting peruvianum based material from Andrew

A grex of wild and wild hybrid material with many species

Many domestic segregates of interest that need advanced a generation- some of this could easily be combined into a all original grex.

Old grexes that may contain some inbred named material.

Lots of named inbred domestic material from others including both highly interesting varieties for future crosses and many that are boring and undistinguished from others in any important character. I normally grow a selection of my favorites of these. Such as Amethyst cream, coyote, and sweet cherriette.

Lots of the Lofthouse promiscuous project material that is similar and might be included amongst the interesting domestic segregates but is not one of my primary interests amongst it. XL is a prime example.

Exserted Tiger project: have stock seed, general seed, early generation seed, and yellow not exserted seed. Goal is ultimately an exserted yellow striped with blue blush. Advancing a generation could help as could potentially an outcross. 2021s saved seed is from the LA2329 crossing block and potentially out crossed to Big Hill, MMS, Promiscuous, and LA2329.

Exserted Orange project: I am getting bored with, but still would like to use for future breeding. It seems to be orange and exserted with regular leaves. 2021 stock seed might be used in part for crossing blocks.  Would be a good candidate for crossing with others.

Wondering if any of these others should be resurrected for 2022? Even if just in the slushy= anything goes garden where crossing could occasionally occur. I typically get lots of fresh seed from the slushy garden that I don't talk about much. In 2021 in my slushy garden I tried to advance some segregates a generation but with few plants (some weren't ad good as the F2s they came from) grew some for fancy tomatoes including some of the segregates, had a exserted scheme going I didn't make much use of, and just got fresh seed of a few things I hadn't grown in a while. Also had a similar direct seeded mix in 2021 and all I pulled from it was one potato leaved exserted red.

[Diane Whitehead]

Slushy?  the tomatoes, or the soil?

[William S.]

Slushy?  the tomatoes, or the soil?

The tomatoes, because they are not isolated so especially those prone to crossing may do so.

I've developed six tomato gardens or fields each separated by 150 feet of distance. So I can isolate my exserted strains or commercial growouts or one particular project.  Like for instance it might be good to isolate some of the wild species and their descendants or even some different accessions of the same tomato species from one another. However I always keep at least one free for anything goes and if not high enough priority and I grow it, it goes there. So that's the slushy field the anything goes field.

[Garrett Schantz]

Starting some tomatoes indoors solely for hybridization attempts / F1 seeds for the next growing season.

1. Woolly Kate - Want an F1 with Exserted Orange

2. Polar Star

3. Wild Gem

4. Purple Smudge - Want an F1 with Exserted Orange

5. Exserted Orange - Mainly using this as a base parent - donating exserted flowers to other varieties and mixing them along the way. Hopefully ending up with another base.

6. Wildling Panamorous - from Forgotten Heirlooms: From Joseph Lofthouse, a cross between a domesticated tomato and 2 wild tomato species. Good stock for breeding projects. Smaller beefsteak with a nice sweet/acid tomato flavor. Unsure of what this is exactly, the Wildling Panamorous from The Experimental Farm Network are a hybrid population. This appears to be more stable? Can't say for sure, could have been a mistake.

7. Neandermato

8. Joseph's Peruvianum - Growing a few of these to help out the "Odd Peruvianum" which didn't have any purpling on the fruit - granted the offspring may already have purple fruits.

9. Odd Peruvianum - Odd type that I grew, had a lot of traits that I liked. Grew better than all of the other Peruvianums in the cold basement - I posted a bunch of images elsewhere.


Exserted Orange should be interesting to grow indoors! Probably going to trim it a bunch like I did with Pimpinellifolium x Habrochaites.

Some of these are quite early, could try for F2 seed if all goes well.


"Odd Peruvianum" came from one of Experimental Farm Network's Peruvianums. Posting a seed comparison with Joseph's mix. Plastic bags make comparing seeds easier.

[William S.]

Fascinated by all the potential future exserted orange crosses. I need to use it more myself. I have four gangly plants of MMS x Big Hill. Two still tiny Aztek microdwarf, and a new cotyledon of S. Galapagense LA1410 with good fuzzy fruit. Would like to make crosses between the three over the winter.

That wilding panamorous you got sounds like someone saved seed from one plant. Which is fine but it's a misunderstanding of the plant material. Probably shouldn't use that same name for something so different. Though I would still expect some segregation and or crossing depending on a few characters. If it was crossing with something else in the growers collection it may or may not be interesting.

One thing that is likely to happen is boring inserted reds from natural outcrossing. When I grew out the exserted blue ambrosia I found and identified hybrids many of them were with unknown inserted reds from my garden. Results were mostly boring. I probably still have some seed. There were probably more interesting crosses if they'd been deliberate and I'd known the pollen parent. The Amurski Tiger segregated back to striped in the F2. Otherwise I wouldn't have known.

Though the Golden Tresette cross I found amongst the original seed I got segregated in amazing ways in the F2.

[Garrett Schantz]

That wilding panamorous you got sounds like someone saved seed from one plant. Which is fine but it's a misunderstanding of the plant material. Probably shouldn't use that same name for something so different. Though I would still expect some segregation and or crossing depending on a few characters. If it was crossing with something else in the growers collection it may or may not be interesting.

One thing that is likely to happen is boring inserted reds from natural outcrossing. When I grew out the exserted blue ambrosia I found and identified hybrids many of them were with unknown inserted reds from my garden. Results were mostly boring. I probably still have some seed. There were probably more interesting crosses if they'd been deliberate and I'd known the pollen parent. The Amurski Tiger segregated back to striped in the F2. Otherwise I wouldn't have known.

Though the Golden Tresette cross I found amongst the original seed I got segregated in amazing ways in the F2.

Yeah, I kind of figured it's most likely a misunderstanding. Mostly growing it to see what comes out.

Purple smudge is orange, should be easy to select for the antho splotching.

[William S.]

I'll be interested to hear if anything unexpected occurs in the hybridization of that exserted orange x purple smudge. I wouldn't be surprised if there is more than one mutation responsible for orange in tomatoes. Though also wouldn't be surprised if there is only one. Orange has shown up ~independently in exserted orange and the promiscuous project both from unknown or maybe habrochaites genes and both with big hill ancestry.

My 2021 flavor favorite (fuyu persimmon comparison) is a promiscuous potential replacement for exserted orange in my breeding. It's an orange bicolor a trait combo that sometimes shows up in exserted orange as well. If it isn't obligate or even if it segregates to both obligate and selfing it had both the open flower trait from penellii and the exserted stigma. It thus on three counts (flavor, exserted, open) gets an isolation garden all to itself in 2022.  It produced rather late but when it did had seed. It is possible the early flowers aborted but wasn't observed closely enough to know. If it outcrossed which given its flower structure is likely it's just a question of how much; flavor will be variable as could all important traits. It was close to bicolors I selected from the project in 2020, and Josephs S35,36,37 mix (of which this is a likely descendant) and Josephs R18. No plants of wild species or non-project plants were allowed in the same block this year. R18 G2 had flavors I didn't much care for this year but amazing flowers.