Tomato Journal

[Greenie DeS]

Exciting times! I've had some more firsts: Brad (EFN), silvery fir tree (annapolis, which surprises me: the hh plants were bigger and more robust to start), cole (annapolis), wild cherry (salt spring seeds -- this looks like a smaller sungold to me, haven't tasted it yet), and my green grocery store cherry. That green cherry really impresses me: it's a little crunchier than I normally like my tomatoes, but even the first fruits are sweet and interestingly flavourful and early. I am saving a lot of seed from that one.

My field exserted oranges are pretty uniform, but the one in my greenhouse has huge beefsteak-y flowers with at least a full cm of exsertion on many of them. Whether that's an environmental factor or not I'm going to make use of that for some crossing.

[William Schlegel]

Yeah, that one with the 1 cm exsertion! Extreme exsertion is more stable and more useful for crossing. Dust those stigmas with your favorite pollen!

That's the strategy I took with the strain of Blue Ambrosia I found to be exserted in 2017. When I save seed from it I pick the extreme exserted plants and also I like to dust those with pollen. Which is how I got Exserted Tiger. It's also how I picked the plants I saved seed from in 2019 to growout what became Exserted Tiger and Exserted Orange in 2020.

[Garrett Schantz]

Some S. chmielewskii flowers fell off indoor without fruits - I had been attempting to hand pollinate them using pollen from other species.

I noticed some bees were pollinating the outdoor plants, I hurried and moved the pot outside in between some plants.

Bees spent over 10 seconds on some the flowers, at least five seconds on other which were also revisited - which tells me that these plants are pumping out pollen.

Some of the newer flowers aren't as exserted, still looking pretty nice though.

The pot was placed next to a highly exserted habrochaites, Wild Gem.

There are more habrochaites flowers / plants than the wild gem. Unsure habrochaites if able to pollinate these (supposed) S. chmielewskii plants - it would be a SI plant as the father, SC as the mother. I haven't worked with anything in its group though.

If not, S. chmielewskii might have pollinated some habrochaites or could have pollinated some other exserted species / varieties.

Wild Gem has a few highly exserted flowers, S. habrochaites is more likely to pollinate them due to the plants touching.

S. chmielewskii could have pollinated itself from the bees as well.

Everything else is starting to put on large amounts of tomatoes.

Weight in Gold (trial) has two distinct plants that I am growing, I have two slightly different Wild Gems as well. I purposely selected for off type plants, most seedlings were uniform.

[Steph S]

Yea to more blushing.  Still waiting on the mystery F2's.
Major surgery yesterday on a couple of big plants that got some kind of blight or mold I didn't want in the greenhouse.   Hot and humid is the worst in there, mites and mildew liking it best.  More plants moved outdoors.   We had some welcome thundershowers after a long stretch of humid weather with no rain, stayed steamy for a day but then the temperature plummeted again with more drizzle and fog, and today we're back in the low 50's again.
Didn't have to water anything though. 

[Garrett Schantz]

Blight is hitting everything pretty hard.

Hopefully I get a few Peruvianum fruits - bees haven't been very attracted to them, granted this is basically their first year seeing the species - one plant mixed with habrochaites last year doesn't really count.

Habrochaites x pimpinellifolium F2s are looking nice. The blight isn't hitting them as hard. Seeing some green shouldered fruits on certain plants, some have interesting growth patterns. Most fruits are looking like they will be currant sized, like the habrochaites. Some plants have habrochaites colorations on the flowers / large petals. The plant with the largest petals has a slight exertion.

I imagine that I will be seeing a bunch of pea sized fruits, very small leaves in the F3 as I am not seeing them right now.

Some probable habrochaites crosses are setting fruits as well. Hopefully I can end up with slight exsertion on these plants.

Some plant seem to be Reisetomate crosses Suppose this is what I get for saving seeds from multiple off-type plants - not a bad thing though.

J&L Gardens habrochaites seems pretty blight resistant.

Neither of the two kangaroo apple species that I am growing have any blight. Same story with the litchi tomato. Hopefully I can do some embryo rescue in the future, for now I will just acclimate the species. Having new traits from different edible solanum species in a promiscuous population would be really great.

[William Schlegel]

Not much ripe fruit on the horizon. Though some. If we get some good fruit setting weather I suspect a big crop will eventually come in.

I have some favorites out there already.

About 2 promiscuous project plants with awesome open and exserted flowers but early and abundant fruit set. These will probably end up being selfers. They could be the start of another exserted selection.

Five R18 G2s look to not self and good flowers all. If they will just set some fruit!

One bicolor promiscuous with good exsertion conveniently in the crossing block for crossing with LA2329. No fruit set yet.

One exserted potato leaf direct seeded with good exsertion- narrow stigmas.

One of the F4? MMS PL is a favorite because it has good fruit color and modest exsertion.

I think a couple other promiscuous bicolors have been double flagged for good flowers. Was thinking about thinning one of the direct seeded rows down to just good flowered (exserted) plants. Haven't yet.   

Five more days of an online class. Then will have more time.

[Steph S]

It's interesting to compare the differences between greenhouse and outdoor plants.  Those that have been outdoors are still flowering and setting.  The greenhouse plants blew through their upper canopy blossoms in a very short time.  A lot of sets were lost due to the heat and mites, although there are some 'maybe's that haven't had time to grow.   After pruning off the infested and dying upper foliage there are just 'orphan' fruit speckling the tops with no leaves.   Quite a few orphans got pruned off too, but that doesn't matter because there are plenty set below.  I'm also happy enough to see the flowering come to an end because I want my crop in by the first of September. 
Pruning pattern on the outdoor plants is the opposite: bottom up and thinning with the crown still fresh and intact. The outdoor plants have smaller fruit.  They will take longer to ripen too.  But they won't lose fruitset to the heat.  Outdoor set is always good here.  The problem is, ripening takes too long.  We are back to daytime temperatures in the 60's or occasional low 70's, mostly overcast and some rain in the forecast.  My main regret about moving plants outdoors that are loaded with fruit, aside from risk of losses, is that it will now take longer to ripen. 
I haven't done anything to promote pollination this season, except for running a couple of household fans that shake the plants some while cooling it.  Set has been excellent except for losses due to heat and/or mite attack.  Exception is the larger fruited OP AYOX which for the most part only seems to have set the blossoms I mined for pollen. 
This sort of vigorous selfing is an important feature for me, reduces the amount of attention I have to give the plants and provides a measure of food security.  Those that don't self and set without effort are selected out.

[William Schlegel]

Just set my first seed of the year out to dry the MMS x BH crosses. Looks to be about forty seeds from each tomato so about eighty seeds. Hmm eighty hybrid tomato plants of my own design. What would that look like? Hoping to start one plant for a winter grow out.

[Steph S]

Happily I was wrong about the moved plants taking longer to ripen outdoors.  Three of the plants moved out in the last week are blushing fruit.  I guess they got their degree days behind them, and temperatures are not much lower outdoors at the present in any case. 
Back to heat and humidity this week with the addition of rain, some amount of it in every 24 hours it seems, and quite a bit in thundershowers or their spinoff kin.   Very wet for the week before garlic harvest.  Outdoor tomatoes don't seem to mind a bit.

[William Schlegel]

I have most of the MSS x BH F1 seed in envelopes but I just planted four seeds. Hoping for some F2 seed for spring planting next year.

[Steph S]

Temperatures for a string of days in the low 20's C have been enough for my outdoor fruit to start blushing already, which have been outside through the cold and wet vagaries of June. 

[William Schlegel]

Getting some ripe tomatoes but I think the never ending heatwave has messed with fruit set.

[William Schlegel]

A little yellow tomato is ripening on a plant from the promiscuous project. It's with the LA2329 as a crossing block plant but the early fruits came before LA2329 flowers. It has open anthers and exserted stigmas (rare combination). The first fruits formed rapidly. I think it is SC unless the fruits have no seeds. Subsequently it stopped setting fruit on every blossom. Very unusual sequence of events. Planning to save early fruit seed for a SC but very nice flower structure selection. Later fruits will have a chance of being pollinated by LA2329.

[Garrett Schantz]

The heatwave sort of screwed up the tomato set here as well.

Everything has calmed down now, but I was gifted with blight. So once again, fruit set is being effected.

The Peruvianums seem somewhat resistant to the blight. The temperatures evening out along with the decrease in humidity appears to have slowed the blight down as well.

The strange looking plant grouped in with the habrochaites mix has been dropping a lot of flowers / aborted fruit despite being pollinated frequently. Not every flower on it has exsertion - the ones with exsertion are the only ones been setting fruit, most of them still drop anyway. So it could be a SI plant - or it just has issues due to possible hybrid status.

I checked my notes, the Peruvianum that survived last year was from Restorationseeds. I had no fruit set on the single plant that I grew last year. So, it could be SI. Or I messed up my notes. The plant came up outdoors, so the tags could have gotten mixed up at some point as well.

I am doubting any of my domestics / pimpinellifolium crossed to make this plant. The flowers are large, have markings on the flowers.

Whatever it is, I am saving seed from it if possible. Hopefully it doesn't all abort.


S. chmielewskii has begun to set fruit. I only put it outdoors once, a bee swarmed the flowers. The flowers appear too large for what is generally considered chmielewskii - I am not complaining, this is rather nice. More buds are begnning to flower. Unsure if I want the plant outdoors with the blight on the other plants.

S. neorickii seedlings are beginning to appear. Not really much to say on these yet.

No germination yet on S. pennellii - S. cheesmaniae - S. galapagense.


My Wildling with a lot of S. pennellii traits is quite small. The leaves are small, the flowers aren't very large. The flowers are exserted - appears to be SI. Bees haven't been visiting the flowers on this plant. Now that the weather has been nicer, this plant should hopefully make more flowers to attract bees.

I will be regrowing the "Wild Currant Tomato From Peru" again next year. The leaves are quite small, along with the seeds / fruit. This could help me create hybrids, rather easily.


Some of the Wild Currant x Habrochaites F2s are beginning to show their fruit sizes / formations. One plant has exsertion. Another has a fruit set similar to habrochaites - flowers are large. Others have brown markings like habrochaites. Some have pea sized fruits. When everything starts ripening, I will take a look at seed size.

Ideally, I will end up with something that has small seeds / fruit. Large / exserted flowers. Might as well keep the small leaves as well. Anything that would allow for easier hybridization.


Next year I am converting to a no-till garden, adding compost and everything as I need it. Not expecting much the first year, the mulch should keep weeds down / conserve moisture.


Probably going to skew cold tolerance / drought tolerance tests. I can probably plant some wild tomatoes closer together due to tilling no longer being a factor.

[William Schlegel]

A little yellow tomato is ripening on a plant from the promiscuous project. It's with the LA2329 as a crossing block plant but the early fruits came before LA2329 flowers. It has open anthers and exserted stigmas (rare combination). The first fruits formed rapidly. I think it is SC unless the fruits have no seeds. Subsequently it stopped setting fruit on every blossom. Very unusual sequence of events. Planning to save early fruit seed for a SC but very nice flower structure selection. Later fruits will have a chance of being pollinated by LA2329.

It has no seeds. Picked more that are blushing.

Hypothesis: produces some siletz like fruits. Then eventually may require cross pollination I..E. despite odd behavior could actually be SI

In the perfect place if SI in crossing block with LA2329. With any luck an SI in this block will produce F1 interspecies hybrids. Honestly even a nicely exserted should just fewer of them.

Fruit is a beautiful bicolor. Has a great flavor until the acrid bitter component hits you.