Will be trying the tomato Galina and its descendent Dwarf Galen's Yellow in 2022!
Tim Peters also bred Sweet Cherriette, Native Sun (I'll be trying in 2022), Forest Fire and a number of other tomatoes many of them early. Though I hadn't heard of Sweet Orange II.
I am trying Brad's atomic grape for 2022 Baker Creek lists it as 75 DTM though I got mine directly from Wild Boar Farms.
400 varieties are a lot though some tomato collectors have thousands. My recent excel spreadsheet has increased quite a bit recently but it has currently about 231 things I consider to be unique with some more expected from trades. I am not sure how many of the several thousand tomato varieties in existence are really important for a collection or even for preservation?! It would be nice to have some more information for some of them. I read recently it is hard to taste more than twenty varieties or so at a time in a taste test. I collected what seemed like a lot of early red tomatoes in 2017 and am not sure I want to keep them all. I did read in Craig LeHoullier's book that they keep well for up to about 14 years so maybe I shouldn't be too concerned about growing them out and regenerating them on a fast time schedule.
I've tried bloody butcher and silvery fir tree. One of the local seed growers grows seed for silvery fir tree and swears by it here for a determinate red tomato that ripens all its tomatoes. I am going to be trying Flamenco a silvery fir tree descendent according to the J & L gardens website of Lee Goodwin bred for heat tolerance. After the 2021 heat wave kind of playing haywire with some of my tomatoes I thought it might be a good idea to add something heat tolerant for 2022.
I agree that the DTM system is flawed. It matters how seedlings are grown, temperatures, light, potting medium, and transplanting schedule vs direct seeding vs season extension methods. Then climate and growing conditions matter for the adult plants. How frequently weeded, use of mulch, soil, and a lot of other factors. Then I wonder for instance if I got a variety from multiple sources would it vary within variety- because sometimes the variety has actually developed some variation within the same name either from mutations, mislabeling, or unintended crosses or what have you!
I've grown Sweet Cherriette now for five growing seasons. It is usually the first or tied with the first if grown under equal conditions even though I didn't list it for all years. In 2019 some of the segregating reds did produce fruit faster under the same growing conditions which was basically dry farmed direct seeding. However, to be true to its claim of 35 DTM I would say you need to grow Sweet Cherriette for eight weeks before transplant not six, and produce optimum large vigorous transplants grown with good light, soil medium, temperature, and proper watering. Then the growing season needs to be good after transplanting. Under the many suboptimal conditions, I exposed the variety to it varies. Crowding can slow it down, being shaded out by taller varieties isn't good, direct seeding is different- and dry farmed other genetics were faster. Also, notably under many conditions which I considered equal varieties that by their DTM numbers of around as much as 55 DTM like Sungold shouldn't have been competitive were and ended up producing ripe fruit at the same time. I consider it a standard against which to judge, and I don't think it has been dethroned yet from that perch in my garden, but the potential could be out there somewhere! I also haven't managed to make any certain crosses with it! I seem to make only a few crosses a year and even though it is on my to do list, it hasn't happened. I did notice some modest exsertion of the stigma in it for the first-time last year. I just planted some in hopes of making a cross maybe in March. It produces small amounts of pollen also and has fragile stigmas that seem to dry up if emasculated outside here. So an indoor early season cross is probably my best hope for it in 2022.
