2023 Tomato Plans

[William Schlegel]

I made a small order to Victory Seeds today. Ordered Uluru Ochre, Golden Bison, Dwarf Moby's Cherry, Farthest North, Azoychka, Mingold, and a packet of Asclepias tuberosa milkweed.

Should be fun to play with. Lots of early varieties in the mix. Some of the historic North Dakota bred varieties that have long been of interest.

I think if I grow very many tomatoes this year I may need to direct seed most of them. I am still weekend gardening this year but with the new job I may not have the ability to take care of very many seedlings for that first six to eight weeks or more for some of the wild species.

[Garrett Schantz]

I got a bunch of seeds as Christmas gifts.

Usually boggles peoples mind that those are what I want.

Anyways, I made a list and got a bunch of seed. I'll buy some others I didn't get myself.

1. Butter Apple - Seems to be a descendant of "Striped Students", which is a cross of Green Zebra, Stupice and another early variety.

This variety is sweetish, yellow with striping, HRseeds mentioned its not a commercial value meant to sit on a shelf - decent moisture and has a lot of flesh. Other sites say it's early and yields till frost - probably means it kept good traits from its parents.

Oh yeah, it's a Tom Wagner creation.

I'd like to try crossing this with Exserted Orange or a descendant of it. I dislike red tomatoes, personally.


2. Cherokee Tiger Large Tomato - Cross between Tigrette and Cherokee Purple, has bi-colored fruits and chartreuse leaves. Plants seem to be compact. Bill Jeffers made this.

Trying this variety out again. Neighbors dogs messed with things last year.


3. Aladdin's Lamp - I like how the fruits look. Sweet, low acid - not red, good producers, resilient. Russian variety I think.

4. Woolly Blue Wine. Another Tom Wagner variety. Blue / red woolly cherry sized tomato. Early and late blight resistant. Probably from the parent that gave the antho genes.


5. Texas Wild Cherry - Random feral tomato variety.


6. Independence Day Tomato - Probably direct seeding these. They were a free seed from the Christmas gift package. If I remember correctly they are a red tomato.


7. Wild Currant From Peru - Going to see how it does in this state compared to PA. Should have more time to breed and play with it.


8. Galapagos Island Tomato #2 - Solanum cheesmanni.


9. Galapagos Wild Tomato Minor Type 2 - Solanum galapagense.


10. Chmielewskys wild tomato


11. Solanum Arcanum


12. Solanum peruvianum


13. Solanum chilense Type 2


14. J.F. Macbr's Wild Tomato - Solanum corneliomulleri. The leaves remind me of S. habrochaites. The fruits are green, seem maybe hairy like habrochaites. Says self compatible.

I'm interested in growing this one. If it is S. corneliomulleri, I'd try and see how if it can cross with other species at all.


I'll update this with other things as they come in, look through my other seeds I have.

[Jeremy Weiss]

A hard question given that 1. No tomato can grow well here in the ground generally, so they all have to be potted, and there are limited places to put pots that get any sun. 2. I tend to have little success with any tomato that is bigger than a cherry tomato and 3. My dad, who I share the garden space with, has gotten a little tired of all of the tomatoes I grow each year being saved for seed (since there tend to be so few) and wants to devote some of the space to a regular ordinary mass market cherry tomato like Sweet 100 he can actually EAT. And the NUMBER of these plants he wants (and consequently, the amount of the space they will take up out of the available space), goes up every time he thinks about it.

Still, here are my tentative plans.

Regulars

Darkest Night generation II-I like the flavor I got from the one surviving generation I plant, but would really like to get the appearance back to that of the original tomato I found (where the darkness of the flesh extended all the way down to the bottom, as opposed to going pinkish about halfway down). 

Wooly Zebra - Tom Wagner variety. Since there doesn't seem to be a source in the US, and stricter customs laws make getting any more seed from France dicey, I better plant what I have before it gets too old.

Phil's Number Two - Trying again with this one (none made flowers this year, will try a different spot).

Cherries

Still sort of up in the air. I have some sort of long pale green cherry I found at the farmers market (NOT Green Grape, much longer, narrower and paler) and some round ones from the same place.

Space permitting, MIGHT re-plant the seeds of the round green cherry from this year that developed green stripes (parent did not have stripes, nor did any siblings. And tastes very different from siblings as well)

Drywall- COULD grow more of this out of curiosity, but a tomato with rock hard, dry flesh and no gel whatsoever does not seem to be one I really have a great desire to keep going.

Was given a free packet of Spoon from Baker Creek. Might try and convince dad to use that instead of the Sweet 100's or might pass on to coursing with very little kid just getting interested in gardening (and thereby hopefully make him forget about having designs on my watermelon seeds.) 

[William Schlegel]

I should say I will mostly be growing the tomatoes I crossed in 2022 and maybe some of my favorites for crossing material. I might do some two plant crossing blocks this year instead of my usual large plantings. I want to shy away from using 1000 tomato plants and then later realizing 40 would have done the job.

Though for my F2 growouts including MMM x Sweet Cherriette, Galapagense x unknown, promiscuous x LA2329 Solanum habrochaites, and MMM x Aztek =MMR large numbers will be helpful. For MMR I'll likely direct seed and thin to dwarfs.

The F1 growouts will be promiscuous x LA2329, (promiscuous x LA2329) x MMM, Big Hill x LA2329, MMM x PH5 LB pimp, MMM x brown rugose fruit virus resistant pimp, Dwarf Glorias treat x mixed pimps, MMM x Brad's Atomic Grape, and MMM x purple zebra F1.

There is a good chance I will also find in the seeds from crossing blocks MMM x The One, MMM x unknown, MMM x LA1410 galapagense, MMS x mixed OSSI dwarfs, and MMS x Dwarf Mochas cherry. This is a little tricky because it takes room to have a flat of seeds grow long enough to pick out the regular leaf ones.

I want to make more crosses in 2023. Some tomatoes high on my wishlist include: Payette, Krainy Sever, Coyote, Amethyst Cream, fuzzy, fruity, the one (if not accomplished in 2022), Dwarf Eagle Smiley, Exserted Orange, Exserted Tiger and Muddy Waters. Probably will cross them with MMM F3 from my favorite 2022 plant for exsertion. Not sure I'll get all that done in one year. Some a little lower on my crossing list might include some shoulds like Galahad F1, Bison, and local favorites like Silvery fir tree and Stupice.

[Steph S]

I'm expecting to be really busy with work in 2023, which means I should simplify and keep the numbers down, 20 plants or so.   But intending to do that doesn't always pan out when seeding time comes. 

[William Schlegel]

I think my idea on growing less in 2023 is just stick to eight trays of 18 cells or about 144 starts. Hmm I wonder if I could cut that in half to 72. One problem is the seedlings I need to grow to find crosses. Maybe I could do 72 pots then the other four flats to find crosses.

Then direct seed the rest.

Do some small say two plant crossing blocks.

I also am busier with work but also work keeps me away from the greenhouse four or five days a week which could be disastrous. So I want to keep it way down.

[Kadence Luneman]

Determinant:
Big Hill
Exserted Orange (EFN)
Exserted Orange F5 (WS)
42 days (MIgardener)
42 days (WS)

Indeterminate:
Barry's crazy cherry
Hartmans yellow gooseberry
Great white
Big rainbow
Black beauty
Amethyst Cream
Brad's Atomic Grape
Muddy Waters
Exserted Tiger F4 (WS)
Lofthouse Panamorous Direct Seeded- 8
Mission Mountain Morning (not dwarf)- 6
Spoon tomato (pimpinellifolium)- 2
Cache valley currant (pimpinellifolium)- 2
Neandermato (habrochaites)- 2 each with two plants to maximize for pollination

Dwarf:
"The One" isolated- 10
Mission Mountain Morning- probably 4, depends on seed roulette how many are dwarf segregate
...and more to be determined. Got an email back and I'll get the dwarf tomato project seeds sometime next month.


I'm planning for way too many tomatoes honestly! Ha! However I want to can, and dehydrate, and hopefully trade/sell some.
I'm looking at this as like a mass test run. And I want to try to have a tomato tasting with some friends to help decide flavor profiles, especially on the Panamorous Direct Seeded.

[William Schlegel]

Kadence,

On the second MMM did you mean MMR F2?

Oh so there is also no such thing as an isolated MMM yet! So whatever crossing block it came from there might be regular leaf crosses with that parent. Any potato leaf are uncrossed. So if it came from The One block and it is regular leaf it is a fun cross!

I think a tasting panel of friends would be very helpful with both Lofthouse promiscuous project strains The One and Panamorous Direct Seeded. Though I had some tasters one day and we couldn't eliminate any panamorous direct seeded plants.

 
Caveats to The One are that for me the plants were very small, unproductive, very late, and seemed to have their best shot at really good flavor if underwatered.

I have about 7 inches of topsoil over a clay accumulation layer so unstaked tomato plants stay pretty small for me.

[Tim DH]

Happy Betwixtmas! (That's the bit between Christmas and New Year)

In these dark days I do as much reading as I can. Browsing a Polish Forum I discover they have a class of fruit called 'Raspberry Tomatoes'. (I'm guessing that would better translate as Pink Tomatoes.) One of the recommended cultivars is Faworyt. I checked online and it is freely available in the UK. Five different suppliers list it with this exact wording:

A compact-growing beefsteak tomato that performed marvellously in our trials, producing large fruit up to 0.4 kg (14 oz) in weight.

 It is inconceivable that five independant "our trials" would have produced, to the letter, identical reviews!! Which suggests to me that at least four of those suppliers are lazy liars!

Anyway. .... I think I've finally allocated my 18 Greenhouse spaces for 2023:

Seven spaces for the Early Red F1 trial.
Moskvich x ImurPriorBeta
Mosk x BloodyButcher
Mosk x Stupice
Latah x IPB
Lat x BB
Lat x Stu
And for a control, Latah OP

Seven spaces to create Cherry F1s
Three Potato Leaved mothers: ABC, Galina's & Brandywine Cherry
Four Regular Leaved fathers: Chadwick's, Sunviva, Rosella & Sunrise Bumblebee
To produce twelve F1s for trial in 2024

Four remaining spaces
Goat's Tit (Some of 2022s crop pictured below) Don't fancy a year without it.
Two dwarfs, to see if I like dwarfs: Uluru Ochre &  Coorong Pink
Caitlin's finally won the last space, against half a dozen contenders

Tim DH

[Adrian]

Tomato project 2023

[Randy Simmons]

My plans for 2023 for tomatoes are:

The One- have three flowers between two plants right now so we'll see how many seeds I get
Mission Mountain Rising-  planted 12 seeds, 11 came up, and one was dwarf potato leaf  want to plant seeds from it
Bison- want to cross it with Purple Zebra
Purple Zebra- hoping for cross with Bison
Exserted Orange- want to plant what I saved from last year
Exserted Tiger-doing a container grow to look for more blue blush tomatoes
Yellow Chariot- doing a container grow looking for determinate, yellow, pear shaped

Then one plant each of Galina and Amana Orange from last year's seeds.  Also got seeds for Lyana Pink if I can find a spot for them.

[UnicornEmily]

My plan is to direct sow a whole bucketload of seeds from different varieties and not pay any attention to what I put where.  (Grin.)  Then I'll save seeds from anything my husband or I really like.  I'll keep a record of all the varieties I planted, just not what I put where, so I'll be able to figure out what the variety name is for anything I liked best and saved seeds from.  But if they've crossed with another variety, I'll shrug and consider that a bonus.

Half will go into a bed with minimal irrigation and deep mulch.  The other half will go into a bed with zero irrigation and deep mulch, along with my tepary beans and zucchinis that are used to being dry farmed.  If any of them survive that, they will SO, SO get their seeds saved and have their descendants put back into that bed next year.

[Jeremy Weiss]

My plan is to direct sow a whole bucketload of seeds from different varieties and not pay any attention to what I put where.  (Grin.)  Then I'll save seeds from anything my husband or I really like.  I'll keep a record of all the varieties I planted, just not what I put where, so I'll be able to figure out what the variety name is for anything I liked best and saved seeds from.  But if they've crossed with another variety, I'll shrug and consider that a bonus.

Half will go into a bed with minimal irrigation and deep mulch.  The other half will go into a bed with zero irrigation and deep mulch, along with my tepary beans and zucchinis that are used to being dry farmed.  If any of them survive that, they will SO, SO get their seeds saved and have their descendants put back into that bed next year.

I sort of did that three or four years ago. I gathered up all of the old tomato seed in my "file cabinet" mixed it up, and tossed it into a pot with the same intent.

I just didn't get much of a choice because the seed was SO OLD that, out of all of it (about three pounds worth, I weighed it before I planted) only ONE germinated (and that one took so long that I had long since assumed it was all dead and planted mint over it, so it had to share space.)

[Kadence Luneman]

Yes the MMM should be MMR. The first is the ones that aren't dwarf, then the dwarf plants. I'm going to group the plants in the rows together.. determinate, indeterminate, dwarf.

It'll be interesting to see how the plants do here from the seeds from you William. I have clay loam soil, pretty clay-ey. Last year I only watered the tomatoes a few times after transplanting. My average precip here is pretty much twice yours there so it'll be interesting to see what they do.

And hopefully with as many as I'll have I can compare their growth to each other in the same conditions/same year.

[UnicornEmily]

I just didn't get much of a choice because the seed was SO OLD that, out of all of it (about three pounds worth, I weighed it before I planted) only ONE germinated (and that one took so long that I had long since assumed it was all dead and planted mint over it, so it had to share space.)

Wow!  How old were those seeds?