Tomato Journal

[William Schlegel]

There are some of the promiscuous project x LA2329 plants that are coming out small. Possible sign of interspecies hybridization? Time will tell.

Edit: the leaf blade of the cotyledon is shorter and wider, and the stem is shorter all consistent with the LA2329 Solanum habrochaites germinates.

[William Schlegel]

LA2329 vs two pots of possible promiscuous project crosses. I would say about 5 hybrids in the central pot, one hybrid on the right, and five habrochaites in the LA2329 pot. Though it is too early and true leaves and vigour will be telling.

Weird that all seedlings in the central pot look hybrid. That is from my favorite plant a special packet that I was careful not to loose the smallest seeds from. Hmm it was the plant between Arcanum and Habrochaites. An Arcanum hybrid would be amazing. Though if I really have 5 habrochaites hybrids already wow! I still have lots of packets of seed from this crossing block.

My third promiscuous project x LA2329 pot is a dud. I guess I did harvest those too soon. The plant only formed three fruits quite late and I picked them and let them ripen. Thought I would get some germination though!

There is one cheesemanii type 2 sprouting. Still no sprouts in a pot that should have had cheesemanii from some older seed. Probably a dud.

[Greenie DeS]

Well, turns out I might be moving midway through the summer to an entirely different climate, or, the same temperature but only a couple months of slight frost; high humidity; and probably a lot of disease pressure. That lends some urgency and limitation to any crosses I'm making this year since if it's not done by midsummer I probably don't move it (though I guess I could move with a bunch of cuttings and stick them in soil when I got there, that does seem ridiculous)

My breeding plants are on their first set of true leaves, current plan is to keep them in semi-restrictive pots to speed flowering and fruiting, and let me do any crosses on my deck with a morning cup of tea:

Bloody butcher
Carbon
Carbon Copy
Carbon copy
Grocery store green cherry
KARMA miracle
KARMA miracle
KARMA purple
Lime green salad
Lucinda
Mikado black
Minsk early
Native sun
Promiscuous bicolour which needs a working name --- the several seedlings are looking very uniform except for one that's having trouble shedding its seed coat
Promiscuous firm green berry also needs a working name & looks pretty heterogenous so hopefully has some good flower architecture
Silvery fir tree
Sweet baby jade
Sweet cheriette
Taiga
Uralskiy Ranniy

Hardin's mini
Pygmy

Fat Frog & Moment are flowering like mad, I cloned them and stuck the cuttings in some hydroponics to see what would happen. They did not even blink, just kept growing and flowering.

I do have a couple micros on order including Blaue zimmertomate, gold pearl, farthest north (ok, so not really a micro), and tarzantomate

I'm refocusing a little on deliberate crosses and micros this year rather than variety trialling, trying to keep projects I know I can finish. I'll put a bunch of my promiscuous seed out to see if it finishes early enough for me to bring any with me, and to see how much variability it has. I'll also keep a bunch back, put my new tomato varieties from this year into dry storage, and plan a more proper variety trial next year.

[William Schlegel]

I could end up moving too depending on where I find work with my new degree.

I grew Gold Pearl last year and it isn't a rugose dwarf so some other mechanism at play, I guess. Kind of a fun small plant with some anthocyanin. I would like to cross it to something someday.

Golden Currant has sent up its first germinate.

[Greenie DeS]

Ooof. Similar climate, or no idea yet? You've put a lot of years into playing in that sandbox from what I know.

The little micros do not seem very pleasant to cross. I've been enjoying how easy peppers are to work on.

Tentatively I am super excited by a possible KARMA miracle cross-pollination in my saved seed from last year, potentially with Jory or Moravsky Div or even Minsk Early. The PL seedlings mostly came up PL but one pair is standard leaf. I *may* have got a lime green salad fruit in with the KARMA miracles fruits at harvest somehow, in which case this will shortly start to show dwarf traits and reveal itself. There's also always a chance of a stray seed from some other variety somehow? If not, well, this was one of my favourite tomatoes last year, that breeder's work tends to have relatively open flowers, and if it's one of the early tomatoes it's a cross I was planning on making anyhow. Puts me a year ahead and certainly keeps me interested.

Fingers and toes crossed and braided, this could be some fun parts early.

[William Schlegel]

Uncertain, will just have to see where job applying leads and what happens. Maybe we will get to stay here. Definitely need to get serious about work again now that I have finished the degree!

I can't wait to plant all the seeds I saved from the potentially crossed exserted potato leaf plants. There are bound to be some fun hybrids in there. Or not!

I am waiting though until closer to out-planting time, so I don't end up with too many plants too soon.

[William Schlegel]

HR seeds hairy galapagense type one is up as is Peru Currant. Still waiting for white currant and type three cheesemanii and of course the Fuyu Persimmon promiscuous project seeds I planted. Also still have a dud cheesemanii and a dud from the crossing block with LA2329. No matter. I would say the successful promiscuous bicolor x LA2329 count is preliminarily given cotyledon features alone at least 8 with 11 likely domestics and 5 tbd. Honestly a row of 8 of those hybrid vigour monsters is probably adequate but I have so much more seed from the crossing block. I also really want to know if Big Hill, MMS, or Exserted Tiger crossed with LA2329.

[Greenie DeS]

Catching up on threads of various resistances folks are breeding for I am suddenly so grateful for my cold winters. Early/cool tolerance seems much easier to breed for than fungal or insect resistance.

Potting up tomatoes tonight I'm noticing that Silvery Fir Tree is much leggier than Lucinda (which is Wagner's Silvery Fir x Green Zebra cross), that Karen Olivier's varieties, especially Taiga and Sweet Jade, seem to be having issues with my low humidity where everything else is fine, and that the micro Bunny Hop (which is impossible to search for because of Bunny Hop seeds) has abysmal germination (1/6) but is extremely furry

I have some "heirloom cherry" tomatoes that came with my aerogarden; when multiple seeds germinated in a plug I put them in soil. The hydroponic plants are growing and flowering tremendously faster than their soil counterparts. I wonder if this is a way to speed up production of breeding plants/micros? I know flavour and assessment of soil growth traits would suffer.

[William Schlegel]

I don't really need the resistances here. I am just fascinated by breeding for them. Based on its reaction to my parent's deck tomato garden in 2021 I think my MMS line is terribly non-resistant to powdery mildew. Would probably curl up and die in many of the gardens of our colleagues here.

Edit: just went downstairs and noted the beginnings of germination on The One! Fuyu persimmon flavored tomato. Just two stems poking out no cotyledons yet. My goal for these eatliest plants of it it would be to try to get it crossed before I plant it out this spring. They'll be about ten weeks old at tranaplant. Makes me glad the seed is good.

Also added some fertilizer for the first time in maybe three weeks or more to both my older and new tomatoes. Saw a spot of yellow on the MMS x BH F1.

[William Schlegel]

Cheesemanii type 3 from HR sprouted.

The special awesome tasting one from last year unfurled some cotyledons.

[Steph S]

Started tomato seeds today.  I'm doing starts for my friend's farm as well, and we decided to go for early crop this year, pot up in the cold greenhouses and let the toughies do their thing.
I'm not terribly excited for tomatoes this year.    Even though I expect Skipper Pink will be stable, it's not  "excitement" that I feel (had the faux excitement for that last year).
But basically I'm growing out stuff that is the same as last year - the Skipper, Rodney F6, Fruity Finch F5, couple Lemon Squeeze.   And i have the F2 of Oaxaca Jewel cross which has to be selected for determinate.  This is tricky in terms of space, also a slim chance of getting both determinate AND bicolor in the same season with only a dozen plants.  And I have no plans for crosses this year.  No tomatoes to cross, this time.
I don't feel confident that the weather will be at all good in the first weeks of July, which is the time that 'extra' tomatoes have got to get out of the greenhouse so that all plants can receive their light needs and not grow weedy tall.  Had too many plants last year, in spite of moving the dozen out, and do not want to repeat the overcrowding effects.  So this year I've only started about 20 plants more than I could possibly accomodate. 

[William Schlegel]

I made a bold decision today and moved the seedlings from one of the Promiscuous x LA2329 pots today that I did not believe to be hybrids. Leaving the three hybrids behind. I reused the dud pot from the project for the putative domestics. They should be fine. There are two with longer leaves still in the "favorite" pot I assume those to be domestic-ish. In total there are ten seedlings I currently assume to be Promiscuous x LA2329. That could make for quite the garden row!

Then I also am sharing a photo of my little half flat of early started tomatoes.

[William Schlegel]

https://www.nativeseeds.org/blogs/blog-news/a-tomatos-life-story-revealed

Just got an NSS email about this and read the blog post. Not sure if any Arizonans frequent this forum but Prescott tomato seems like a nice Arizona bred heirloom then.

Sort of like Bison and Yellow Bison for ND, Payette and the other Idaho bred tomatoes for Idaho. My personal take is that Montana needs some MT bred tomatoes to sort of get into this crowd! I wonder if there are any MT bred varieties I just don't know about.

Edit: yes, there are: or are there?

https://www.snakeriverseeds.com/products/tomato-northern-ruby-paste-1

https://annapolisseeds.com/products/mountain-roma-tomato

Some of the tidbits on the internet when I look these up individually suggest maybe not a new variety but a renamed variety after years of growing. That doesn't sound like a new tomato to me.

[William Schlegel]

Just planted seeds of Peruvianum, arcanum, cheesemaniae, galapagense, and pimpinillifolium.

Also planted all the seeds from the MMS plant in the LA2329 crossing block. Any regular leaf seedling is a hybrid with LA2329, Big Hill, exserted tiger, or promiscuous.

I think the true leaves on the putative LA2329 hybrids look like LA2329 and those on the ones I thought weren't do look domestic.

My (MMS x BH F1) × Aztek cross is looking good but no blue on the tomatoes which is odd since I am pretty sure I saved the only plant that made blue tomatoes.

[William Schlegel]

Planted the rest of my LA2329 Solanum habrochaites crossing block seeds. Specifically, not the hab but everything I hoped would cross. Except for some inserted mothers from the promiscuous project that I saved seed from just because and two packets of LA2329 seed I saved.

This took, temporarily, four flats of space. I plan to only save a few select seedlings that seem like either wild cross or domestic hybrids. Problematic though because next weekend is tomato planting time. I will need to move my big tomato plant with its three large developing tomatoes in order to plant four flats next weekend.