Montana Tomato Project

[William Schlegel]

I believe I just put an adequate supply of #651 seed in to ferment in order to get a really decent population size in 2027. 651 is LA0410 x 294. The fruits have half strength anthocyanin, faint striping, and are red and of a good size. Most remarkably they have superior flavor in the F1!

I think the F2 will be a lot of fun. Not quite as exciting as the Mission Mountain Morning x Brad's Atomic Grape F2 that led to 294 but I think I can expect some excellent flavor, color, and fruit variations.

[William Schlegel]

Saved Seed 08-30-2026

298
F3?
Small
Ok
Is a blue bicolor MMM X PZ X MMM X PH5

523
F2
Large Packet
More
294 GWR Antho Stripes x PI 129143

533
F2
Medium
Ok
EO X ET x LA0410

544
F2
Medium
Ok
310 Yellow Bicolor Good Flavor X 129143

550
F2
Large
Ok
321 Sunviva X X LA 1385

551
F2
Medium
Ok
321 (Sunviva X) X 129143

569
F2
Large Packet
More
339 Blue Bicolor Dwarf from Promiscuous Project Cross Best Flavor x LA1385

570
F2
Medium
Ok
339 mild x 129143

583
F2
Large
Ok
365 Blue Yellow Heart Reed Collaboration with some Purple Zebra x 129143

587
F2
Medium
Ok
4-124 x 129143

610
F2
Small
Ok
499 (Dwarf Moby's x 303) Yellow Antho x LA0410

623
F2
Large
Ok
501 Blue Bicolor x LA0410

635
F2
Small
Ok
515 (358 (Payette x MMM x Sweet Cherriette)X 319(MMM x Galapagense X X MMM X LA2329))Antho Bicolor x PI 129143

636
F2
Small
Ok
5-66 orange? X 129143

643
F2
Medium
Ok
Fisher's (Benewah x Beefmaster) x EO X PI 129143

649
F2
Large Packet
Ok
LA0410 x 284 gonna be red

650
F2
Small
Ok
LA0410 X 286

651
F2
Medium
More
LA0410 X 294 has light stripes and antho and excellent flavor

654
F2
Small
Ok
LA0410 x 339

655
F2
Medium
Ok
LA0410 x 366 Dwarf

659
F2
Small
Ok
100%

662
F2
Medium
Ok
Marchenengel x LA1385

663
F2
Medium
Ok
Matt's Wild x 314

664
F2
Medium
Ok
129143 x 283

665
F2
Medium
Ok
129143 x 303

669
F2
Small
Ok
SH13 X LA 1385

Sunsugar
F2
Small
Ok

[William Schlegel]

https://victoryseeds.com/products/dwarf-eagle-smiley-tomato?srsltid=AfmBOoqLVjpXxoK-dSaOlwKFlYFMeeN1yxVzsA_Y4ayOGsJ2VEtkjOtE

I was wondering how my crosses between my green when ripe 294 line and red wild and indigenous tomatoes might segregate next year. I was also wondering about a larger question of which tomato crosses might result in maximum morphological diversity. So I searched for examples from the dwarf tomato project.

Dwarf Eagle Smiley is Summertime Green x Mexico midget. So likely I can add yellow to the array of expected segregants I'll see next year.

[William Schlegel]

Cross takes 2026

294 RL round x Punta Banda large
294 x 390717 very small
294 x 128445 large
294 x 158164 very small
129129 x 303 small
Andrew's pimp x 303 small
PH5 x 303 large
Chiapas x 303 large
Galahad x 129143 large
Stupice x LA1385 small
Black Cherry x LA1385 small
Texas wild cherry x 303 medium
294 PL plum x Punta Banda large
298 x Lyc859
298 x 390714
576 x 303 large
523 x 303 large
569 x 303 medium
550 x 303 large
662 x 303 large
669 x 303 large & small
655 x 303 large
587 x 303 large
635 x 303 large
667 x 303 large
Galx x 303 large
656 x 303 medium
650 x 303 small

Hopefully frost waits for these cross takes

It's supposed to freeze tonight. I picked green about 16 of these crosses. They may yet ripen and have viable seeds. Or some of them may. It's also possible I lost some out in the garden. They are close to 6 weeks old.

[William Schlegel]

I asked AI Copilot what fruit morphologies I might be missing in my program for a step after next. It suggested I had most possible morphologies already but that Brandywine, San Marzano, and L. Piriforma (pear shape) all already in my collection would complete things. It also suggested Geranium Kiss and microdwarfs but I think those are for plant morphologies. I would substitute BrandyFred for Brandywine though as it is already an OSSI dwarf. I am not entirely sure about said AI advice vs. an analysis I could make myself or advice from others. I agree that I need some kind of pear. Though I also want to breed in some of the traveler's tomato type at some point.

On another note, I am interested in using more of the varieties I've obtained from Triple Divide Seed Coop and curious if I should get packets of the few that I don't have. I've already made crosses with a few. They carry Stupice so I made three crosses last year with Home Stoop an OSSI tomato descended from Stupice. I've made a past cross with Idagold- though it might be extinct. I've also made past crosses with Glacier and with Flamenco itself a Silvery Fir Tree cross. I have but still need to make crosses with Mandarin Mini, Pink Princess, Golden Princess, Ararat Flame, Northern Ruby Paste, Tigerella, Black Cherry, and Juanne Flamme. I have yet to obtain Black Russian, Peace Vine, or Raspberry Lyanna. Though I do have a considerable back log and seem to be running lower on time and energy for big tomato gardens. Still future goals!

[William Schlegel]

Finally saving seed for correctly colored #303 tomatoes a antho blue bicolor. Not a cherry tomato its surprisingly about the same size as 339. Fun thing, it seems to have some parthenocarpic fruits.

[Carol Deppe]

Congratulations!
I like tomatoes that are the right size to eat out of hand. Not cherry tomatoes.
OSU vegetable breeder Jim Baggett bred parthenocarpic tomato varieties to get earliness. However, there are varieties that are earlier than his that are not parthenocarpic. I suspect that the earliness-limiting factor(s) in tomatoes is/are not fruit set. So the main thing parthenocarpy gets you is more difficulty saving or producing seed. In Willamette Valley we can save seeds of parthenocarpic Baggett varieties by just planting late. That may not be an option in Montana.

[William Schlegel]

Thank you, I suspect this was heat induced parthenocarpy from our long 2026 heat wave. I hadn't previously noted any parthenocarpy in it or it's parents. Though I suppose there is always the possibility of a undetected cross with a related line. We have noted parthenocarpy before in Joseph Lofthouse's promiscuous project descendants including individuals of #339 which shares most all of the same domestic parents including the tomato Joseph calls Brad, Jagodka, and Hillbilly. In my lines domestic parents also include Blue Gold. #339 is interesting because it's a rugose dwarf but apparently arising independently. The wild parents of #339 are Joseph's crosses with habrochaites and the penellii cross Andrew Barney introduced into the project.

Jim Myers came out to a field day of the Triple Divide Seed coop once that I attended. One of the growers was trying to grow the OSU parthenocarpic cherry Gold Nugget and its seed content was abysmal for seed production.

In recent years Triple Divide has adopted the OSSI pledged Pink Princess and a yellow segregate from it they are calling I think Golden Princess. There are a couple other varieties from the same Sunsugar F1 dehybridization project. I attended a recent field day and one of the growers was asking me about the parthenocarpy in it they had noted. Concerned about seed production. It's an incredibly sweet cherry tomato. It's also interesting that parthenocarpy can come from Sunsugar F1. I attempted some Sunsugar crosses this year and ended up with a oddly shaped dropped fruit with two seeds that may be a cross with one of the indigenous tomatoes from Native Seed Search named Punta Banda. Not sure if I'll be able to tell if the seedlings that result are hybrids for sure though. Though the odd shape of the fruit and it containing only two seeds make me think it was a cross as those sorts of things occasionally happen when hand crossing- also it looked kind of familiar.

When I took Jim Myer's online organic plant breeding course a couple of winters ago he incouraged me to make some crosses with Jim Baggett's parthenocarpic tomatoes because of the shortness of season here and I've intended to I just haven't yet managed one. So it's interesting to see the trait kind of pop up on its own. Though the tomato I've been most impressed by of those, that I've tried, is Siletz because it sets large tomatoes early. I'm not sold on parthenocarpy but I'm not seeing a need to exclude it entirely from my breeding program. Though the fact that I've used #303 and it's domestic parents in perhaps most of my breeding lines could mean that if it shows up in 303 it could show up in lots of its descendant and part sibling lines at some future point.

[William Schlegel]

I just picked a Sunsugar x Mexican Midget cross off the same Sunsugar plant previously mentioned with the possible Punta Banda cross. The garden in the backyard has yet to freeze. It is still green but I think it will ripen with the other crosses. Given that Pink Princess is parthenocarpic and a Sunsugar Dehybridization it may also have that trait amongst its offspring.

[William Schlegel]

Couple of photos of my 294 domestic line as I finish seed saving it. Green when ripe with fabulous flavor. It's ancestry is Mission Mountain Morning x Brad's Atomic Grape.

MMM is Mission Mountain Sunrise (OSSI)x HX-9 Big Hill (OSSI) where MMS is Brad x Blue Gold and HX-9 is Joseph's Jagodka x Hillbilly.

I consider it to be one wild or indigenous cross away from a finished variety and will be devoting most of my garden to F2 growouts of its offspring next year. I think I have two new crosses with it ripening in my seed saving pile.

Note: one tomato had a different color interior. Maybe purple or chocolate?

[William Schlegel]

I've gotten seed saved now with two new crosses with 294. One of those is 294 x Punta Banda from Native Seed Search. Given that Brad Gate's tomatoes are from California and that Punta Banda is from Baja California that makes this new F1 have quite a strong California connection. Though it also has a strong Utah and Montana connection given that I bred it here in MT with material I direct seeded from short season genetics Joseph Lofthouse trialed in Utah.

If I'm successful in getting 294 morphology and flavor back next year in the large F2 growouts with the first two crosses I'll cross those with these new crosses to get the morphology back in a small growout. Though my larger scheme is to cross the morphology into as many 50% and greater wild and indigenous lines as possible of which there are about 75. Alternating with the blue bicolor morphology from 303 should give me around a half dozen or more varied segregants. Some of the various lines should provide additional morphological diversity as well. Though I still need to initiate more lines for that purpose of morphological diversity.

[William Schlegel]

Some thoughts on combining many lines into fewer:

My main idea with tomato breeding lately has been to take my 75 or so 50% and greater wild and indigenous crosses and turn them into morphologically exciting varieties. My plan to do this has been centering around blue bicolors and striped green when ripes because of what happened when my cross between Mission Mountain Morning and Brad's Atomic Grape segregated in the F2. What I saw was antho green when ripes with stripes, antho blue bicolors with stripes, antho red tomatoes with stripes, and tomatoes of course without stripes tomatoes in a wide array of shapes as well. I think a chocolate color is also possible. Perhaps six or seven worthy variants- and I chose to reselect green when ripe largely because I now knew that would produce this much larger level of variation in a cross. My plan for next year is to get that specific morphology expressed in a 50% indigenous and a 50% wild cross because I can than take those variants and reproduce that same level of variation in the original domestic cross- in cross after cross. In the meanwhile I am crossing as many lines as possible with #303 to produce more blue bicolors to cross the green when ripes with. There are more morphologies to mix in- some of which I've already crossed in and some on my to do list- that should add even greater variation to the mix.

Though it seems to me that there might be a limit to where you would then start repeating or creating groups of highly similar varieties. My current and rapidly expanding list of crosses should perhaps not produce the exact same number of varieties.

So, do I cull them? Do I cull the many crosses that now don't meet my 50% standard? Or do I cross those back to wild or higher percentage wild varieties until their descendants meet the standard? 

I recently found one possible alternative to culling. Collapsing the populations into larger genetic pools using the MAGIC system of even parentage. That particular method doesn't work well given my proliferation of new lines as its geared to relatively small numbers of founding populations (eight is the example I saw) and my count is around 75 and growing.

One alternative is simply physical mixing. I could mix all the lines I am done with into many fewer pools. Perhaps by level of wild and germplasm content as most crosses lead to quite predictable genetic admixtures usually around 0%, 12.5%, 25%, 37%, 50%, 75%, 85% and so forth. I have a few odd balls but those could be lumped into the next lowest category- so a 9% would simply be added to the domestic pool. Or I could do just two or three pools. 100%, at or above 50%, and below 50% come to mind for three physically mixed pools.
Google AI tells me that it would take between 50 and 250 years for that sort of physical mixture to cross on its own given a 2% outcrossing rate- I'm sure though a 5% outcrossing rate would halve that.
So, I could use the power off stigmas that stick out a bit- (exserted) a physical trait that leads to higher outcrossing rates. That strikes me as greatly decreasing the amount of time needed for natural outcrossing to do the mixing. This trait is foundational to almost all of my populations- but is currently poorly expressed in most of them because I stopped rigorously selecting for it once I got good at hand pollination- it's still there, just crossed away from, also it's a trait that is fickle- some years it is everywhere and others it seems like it is gone, because in many lines its environmentally induced. For example, during this year's long extended heat wave many germplasm accessions of currant tomato had it that I hadn't previously noticed it in. For a below 50% physical mix pool I could simply include large amounts of Big Hill HX-9, Exserted Orange, Mission Mountain Morning, and Exserted Tiger. These four highly exserted domestics should allow for a very high natural outcrossing rate. Then for a 50% and above pool I think I am already in the process of developing some lines like I have a EO x ET x LA0410 line for that purpose. I also have some fourteen LA0410 crosses already made with F2 seed produced. I could pool and increase lines like that that should produce a higher incidence of outcrossing- then add in the less likely lines later. Or I could just pool all lines equally. I actually already do something like that each year when I grow one clump of each of most lines.

Another method is to use the interplay between potato leaf and regular leaf tomatoes- in this the outcrossing rate isn't as important because as long as there is one, the crosses are easy to find amongst the potato leaf mothers. I have for this such wonders as LA0410 x 303 and LA0410 x 339 both of which I have a supply of F2 seed which should produce ¼ potato leaf seedlings.

Then something I could additionally do is play with self-incompatible tomatoes. Or I should say- continue to play with self-incompatible tomatoes since I've been making crosses with them or attempting to for years. If I am determined to keep my 50% standard I will need to cross Joseph's SI tomatoes with something high enough percentage to create some 50% wild or indigenous ones- the most obvious choice is anything that is 100%. The other choice is to use the several lines I have available to me that are themselves 50% crosses with SI habrochaites. I don't even need a pure breeding line- a mixed breeding system line with some plants being simply exserted and others being truly SI might provide the best of both worlds with this. This year I planted direct seeded SI tomatoes in parallel rows to direct seeded promiscuous tomatoes. Both did abysmally likely due to level of care I was able to provide. However, I got seed back from both- though both should be transplanted next year due to relatively low seed production from direct seeding this year. The merely promiscuous population has been in my garden for so long that many individuals have the anthocyanin skinned fruit trait I like- proof they've crossed with my other lines in the past. Continued for enough generations that parallel row system would result in the kind of mixing desired in a combined large population. I could do three rows since 339 is of promiscuous descent and definitely has an outcrossing rate given the rouging I had to do this year.

Also, with all methods I might be able to hurry things along a bit with some hand crosses- even if I couldn't perform the large number of hand crosses necessary to do all the crossing manually.
Which also brings me back to the reality that I have likely been doing some combination of the above fairly continuously throughout my 10 year tomato project. I've just been keeping each crossed line as a separate mother line in the matrix. Most all of the lines have some degree of relatedness since my method is often to select a favorite mother line and cross with it until I find or create a more favored one.

On the other hand, tomato seed stores for a long time- so I can wait awhile before I start culling lines or combining lines in lieu of culling. Still its currently too many lines. I grew out a subset this year. I think I will likely do the same next year. Some lines are much more favored than others because of traits or values I associate with them.