Montana Tomato Project

[William Schlegel]

I planted eight fresh fermented but never dried seeds of this cross October 14th for a winter generation to try to get to F2 seed faster. I would like to get this segregated back to GWR anthocyanin striped asap for further crossing.

I have three germinated of the eight seeds I planted.

I also just took some little cuttings from the patio plants. Somehow they are still alive despite frosts so far. A fact that has me intrigued enough to take some cuttings.

[William Schlegel]

https://store.experimentalfarmnetwork.org/collections/new-for-2027/products/mission-mountain-ii-cherry-saladette-tomato-grex

[Tim DH]

Congratulations William, on getting some of your work 'Out There'.
The explanatory note is great. I'm sure you've told us all that before, but having it all together in one place helpful.
Incidentally, the link you posted says 'new for 2027'! Fortunately the page itself says new for 2026, so the world doesn't have to wait another year!!
Tim DH

[William Schlegel]

Also I've never been to Wisconsin!

[Tim DH]

Ha! That's funny. ...

[William Schlegel]

I have three germinated of the eight seeds I planted.

I also just took some little cuttings from the patio plants. Somehow they are still alive despite frosts so far. A fact that has me intrigued enough to take some cuttings.

I have one surviving tomato seedling. The cuttings grew and died. Not a great winter effort overall.

[Jade Arrowleaf]

Have got fruit formation on one, just 62 days from seed!  Mostly outdoors, still in a ~2gal. pot.
It is from a 2024 cross that appears successful:  Northern Light X Mission Mountain Grex

...

This offspring is potato-leaf and every flower so far exserted.  Just been manually self-crossing as it is a bit ahead of all the others.

Was quite pleased with this plant!  Fully-mature fruit from seed in 90 days with adverse conditions.  Antho shoulders, larger fruit(still fas) and appeared SI with every flower exserted.  Manual self and other crosses sown for this year.  Feels like progress toward a fast and productive line for the farmer's market adapted to my situation.

[William Schlegel]

I planted forty tomato lines today 4-10-2026 in a little flat with small cells. I think this will be it for transplants this year. I hope to transplant them into larger pots when they outgrow this flat though.

Beyond this I hope to do some direct seeding.

[William Schlegel]

Direct seeded some of my 50% and greater indigenous and wild tomatoes into cow pots today to try to tell them from volunteers. Double labeled them because the animals sometimes mess with the labels. Will see. Want to grow more of the lines in that category. Leaving the transplants in the greenhouse another week to get bigger and hopefully survive transplant better. Did some larger scale direct seeding of promiscuous and fancy domestic lines. Planted three hybrid tomatoes from the store for possible crossing and some early tomatoes, though suspect they will get sun bleached and possibly frosted: sungold, sunsugar, and bush early girl. Neighbor rototilled for me with a tractor.

[William Schlegel]

Planted my main group of transplants today. About 50 mainly clumps of plants but some singles. The three hybrids I planted a few weeks ago froze pretty hard. I planted a Galahad and another Sunsugar today. I also weeded on the oldest rows of direct seeded tomatoes. I think frost thinned those nicely. Newer ones aren't up. Presumably the friendly neighbor dogs weren't nice to my cow pot direct seeding experiment- but one pot did sprout and more may yet. Some got dog obliterated. I do have 26 cells of wild and indigenous germplasm lines at the cotyledon stage to add to them in a few weeks.

[William Schlegel]

I planted some more tomatoes. We are having quite the rain event, so I put out the small seedling clumps of the wild and indigenous tomatoes I got started late. They grew quite a lot in the greenhouse compared to the direct seeded tomatoes of approximately the same age that were out in the cold. This will be great though I think because everything will harden off nicely in the rain and get growing when the weather improves. There is too much perennial grass in the old, fenced garden where I planted everything. I replaced the Sungold I fed to the frost and added a Celebrity to replace the Bush Early Girl, but the latter is also resprouting from being frosted badly. I also bought and planted a Rose de Berne, a Black Cherry, and a Stupice. All varieties I have seed for but that I didn't grow myself- and which I would like to make crosses with if I get the chance!

[William Schlegel]

Last Monday's frost definitely did some damage but it looks like most of the transplants will pull through. Almost all tomatoes in my garden except for any very late germinating direct seeded individuals will have experienced frost this year.

[reed]

It's not all that uncommon here for very small volunteer sprouts to survive a frost. If they have managed to get two or three inches tall before the frost, none survive. I still haven't figured out what's up with that.

[William Schlegel]

That matches my experience. They often survive at an inch high. Large transplants often resprout from the base especially if plenty of stem got buried. Three inches does seem like it would be in the kill zone.

All the direct seeded patches are ok but of course need a first good weeding. I made some progress on that today- but have a fence to build tomorrow. So more weeding next weekend. I guess the ones I get weeded will produce. I'll weed the most important first. Like I weeded Joseph's self incompatible tomatoes already.

[William Schlegel]

Not enough time this weekend but we got the #339 the one x MM direct seeded garden weeded fairly well for a first go around. Found about five regular leaf crosses since I included seed from the one plant with good flavor in the mixed 2025 garden and weeded them out. I don't consider it to be very exserted but there is definitely still a small natural crossing rate which is good since it's nearly a finished variety. Though at only 12.5% wild I'll switch to its 56.25% descendant varieties soon. Though I plan to keep crossing it with various wild and indigenous breeding stock for now.