https://snakeriverseeds.com/products/tomato-mission-mountain-sunrise?_pos=4&_sid=393a2c86a&_ss=r

If you loathe the idea of having to interact with real humans at the seed swap this might be an option for you.

Five Valleys Seed Library Annual Seed Swap 2023 March 25th Missoula Public Library 10 A.M. to 2 P.M.

So I just heard that the five valleys seed library's annual seed swap is March 25th from 10 A.M. to 2 P.M. at the Missoula Public Library.

Tomatoes I have successfully crossed into the Montana Tomato Project So Far

1. Unknown Lofthouse Potato Leaf. I noticed the stigma stuck out a bit on this one plant from Joseph Lofthouse’s seed mix in 2017. So I daubed pollen on it.

2. Blue Gold a blue blushed yellow/red marbled bicolor bred by Brad Gates of Wild Boar Farm in California.

3. Blue Ambrosia a tomato bred by Lee Goodwin in New Mexico. He dehybridized Sungold F1 and then crossed that with a blue skinned tomato he bred from Oregon State University developed material related to their 2012 blue skinned tomato release. The strain I received had stigmas that stuck out a long way on 4 out of 5 plants.


4. Amurski Tigr a tomato I bought from the tomato lady at Missoula’s Clark Fork Market in 2016. It is short season, red, indeterminate, and striped.

5. Solanum pimpinellifolium accession PI 270443 because it is reportedly known to have a trait called PH5 for late blight resistance.


6. Solanum pimpinillifolium accession PI 365967 because it reportedly has resistance to a new tomato disease called the brown rugose fruit virus.

7. Sweet Cherriette a currant tomato bred by Tim Peters that ripens in just 35 days from transplant IF a nicely grown large eight week old seedling is outplanted.


8. Aztek a micro dwarf yellow fruited tomato I bought from Bunny Hop seeds. I’ve been told by other breeders that crosses with it produce both regular and micro dwarfs.

9. Big Hill HX-9 a OSSI pledged regular leaf determinate yellow and red marbled bicolor. It is bred from a Hillbilly x Jagodka cross. It has stigmas that stick out nicely seemingly independent of the weather here.


10. Solanum habrochaites LA2329. This is an extremely unpalatable green when ripe wild species tomato with extremely hairy foliage and fruit. It is known for arthropod resistance.

11. Promiscuous project tomatoes are bred by Joseph Lofthouse. They are complex hybrids between domestic tomatoes, Solanum habrochaites, and Solanum penellii with about 75% domestic and 25% wild genetics selected over several generations for good flavor. Though still variable in that regard.


12. Solanum galapagense hybrid- this was a hybrid between Solanum galapagense and domestic tomato that showed up in my 2022 garden. I managed to make a cross with it and Mission Mountain Morning. I am not sure if the original cross happened in my 2022 garden or maybe at Heirloom Reviews seeds garden.

13. Brad’s Atomic Grape- this is a green/red bicolor with stripes and blue blush bred by Brad Gates


14. Purple Zebra F1 this is a hybrid with multiple disease resistance including PH2 and PH3 late blight resistance bred by the Artisan Seeds group including Mark Mccasslin. More interestingly it is supposed to also have heirloom flavor and that seems to be true. Purple in this sense is in the Cherokee Purple type of purple.

15. Dwarf Gloria’s Treat this is a yellow and red bicolor from the Dwarf Tomato project pledged to OSSI and with excellent flavor.

Future Desired Crosses in 2023 and beyond

Here is a list of domestic tomatoes I still want to make crosses with. Not to mention wild species of tomatoes and half sibling crosses I also will want to make. What tomatoes do you want to cross together?

Exserted Tiger
This is a tomato cross I made in 2017 it is Blue Ambrosia x Amurski Tigr and was an open cross without emasculation, so I didn’t know it worked until 2019 when stripes showed up in the F2. As a cross it has blue skin, stripes, and a stigma that sticks out a good bit. It isn’t completely stable yet, but I would like to cross it with Mission Mountain Morning. Blue Ambrosia is bred by Lee Goodwin and is part of his Ambrosia series where he followed the strange foliage smell of Sungold F1 down through generations of segregation and outcrosses to try to keep its unique flavor. Amurski Tigr is a short season striped red of Russian or Soviet origin which I picked up originally as a seedling in 2016 from the tomato lady at the Missoula Farmer’s Market.

Exserted Orange
This is my line of a collaborative cross with Big Hill HX-9 made in the garden of a fellow named Malcolm then grown in the F1 by Joseph. I grew out the F2 and selected it for the one with the stigma that stuck out the most. Then grew out the F3 and F4 isolated. I would like to cross it with Mission Mountain Morning to get the orange color but with the blue and the potato leaves of Mission Mountain Morning.

Blue Golden Tresette
This is a cross with interesting shapes I found in a packet of Alan Kapuler’s Golden Tresette. I noticed one plant with a slight blue blush. Turned out to be an F1 and the F2 segregated wildly into some very nice looking chile shaped tomatoes. Unfortunately, the flavor can be off putting. Golden Tresette is interesting because it is one of Alan’s tomatoes that sometimes outcross, and this would be an example. I would like to cross it with Mission Mountain Morning to see if I can get some interesting shapes without the odd flavor. Golden Tresette is interesting because Alan claimed it might be a three species cross.

Coyote
Coyote also known as White Currant is a standout small, fruited tomato with Mexican origins. It has good/interesting flavor and is early. I have been meaning to make a cross with it for a long time.

Dwarf Eagle Smiley
One of my favorites from the OSSI dwarf tomato project. I think it has good flavor. So, a good candidate for crossing with Mission Mountain Morning.

Muddy Waters
The fanciest looking of the three best flavored green when ripe tomatoes I grew in 2022. It has stripes, anthocyanin, and great flavor. So, I want to cross it with Mission Mountain Morning.

Amethyst Cream
A white tomato that is also blue bred by Brad Gate’s it has been a garden favorite now for a long time. It is fancy with its Anthocyanin blue blush over such pale fruit, and it has great flavor. I would like it crossed with Mission Mountain Morning.

Fuzzy
A Tim Peters interspecies cross maintained and sent to me by a fellow amateur tomato breeder who would like me to cross it with Tim’s “Fruity” strain. I would also like to cross it with Mission Mountain Morning.

Fruity
A Tim Peters interspecies cross maintained and sent to me by a fellow amateur tomato breeder who would like me to cross it with Tim’s “Fuzzy” strain. I would also like to cross it with Mission Mountain Morning.

Glacier
A local favorite tomato that has long done well here in Western Montana. I would like to cross it into the project just for that reason.

Yellow Pear
Back in the 1980s yellow pear tomatoes were probably the fanciest tomato we grew. I like that shape and want to cross it into something else.

Stupice
A local favorite tomato that has long done well here in Western Montana. I would like to cross it into the project just for that reason.

Flamenco
A heat tolerant tomato bred from Silvery Fir Tree which is a short season tomato and with the carrot leaves of that parent. I want to cross this in because heat tolerance is getting more important with climate change.

Bison
A North Dakota bred tomato with the name of my favorite animal.

Payette
An early modern Idaho bred tomato which happens to be dwarf and resistant to Curly Top virus spread by leaf hoppers. It has some very dilute wild ancestry.

So, one of my favorite ways of doing tomato breeding is to use potato leaf tomatoes with a stigma (female part) of the flower that sticks out a bit. These are more likely to naturally be outcrossed, and I made my first cross this way back in 2017 using a potato leaf mother I got from a tomato mixture that Joseph Lofthouse made. Of the potato leaf tomatoes it had the stigma sticking out a bit more than any of the others in 2017. Though potato leaf tomatoes are famous for sometimes doing this. In 2021 I used the potato leaf descendant of the 2017 cross now named Mission Mountain Sunrise to make a new cross with Big Hill or HX-9 an Open-Source Seed Initiative pledged regular leaf tomato bred by Joseph Lofthouse. I grew that cross out over the winter and got some F2 seed which I planted in the spring and from which I sorted out all the potato leaf plants. I then used those F2 plants which I began calling Mission Mountain Morning to make up the mother portion of some crossing blocks. I didn’t have quite enough, and it turned out that Mission Mountain Sunrise had worked well as mothers in 2021 so I substituted in some of them as well especially on crossing blocks where the other parent was of OSSI descent as well. Though it does turn out that Mission Mountain Sunrise is more dependent on hot weather for the stigma to stick out of the anther cone than is Big Hill. Hopefully Mission Mountain Morning will be less weather dependent.

I made a larger than normal number of deliberate hand crosses in 2022 but what I want to talk about here is the crossing block crosses! The crossing block crosses aren’t emasculated, and they may or may not have happened. Though they are likely to generate several Mission Mountain Sunrise F6 and Mission Mountain Morning F3 seedlings as well. In fact- it will be the only way to get such seedlings! The regular leaf seedlings will be F1 hybrids, and the potato leaf seedlings will be selfed.

11? MMS x Dwarf Mocha's Cherry
This cross number 11 if it indeed happened is between Mission Mountain Sunrise and Dwarf Mocha’s Cherry an OSSI registered anthocyanin skinned dwarf. Any offspring of this cross would-be regular leaf with any selfed seedlings being potato leaved and therefore easy to pick out (and hopefully those will find a good home). This would be a great way to get dwarfism and anthocyanin better fixed into a dwarf tomato.

12? MMS x OSSI Dwarfs
A similar cross to number 11 but with any of several OSSI dwarf varieties though I think the seeds I picked were from a plant right next to Dwarf Kelley’s Green which was one of my absolute favorite flavors. No anthocyanin on the dwarf side though.

13? MMM x The One (Fruity promiscuous)
The One is a fruity promiscuous project strain. Its heritage is something like 12.5% Solanum habrochaites, 12.5% Solanum penellii, and 75% domestic. Its 2021 parent was a dwarf resulting from the wild cross with truly amazing fruity flavor. In 2022 I didn’t taste a bad one, but they varied from almost as good as the 2021 parent to normal tomato taste. Any regular leaf plant from this crossing block is a cross with it. So, it could be a truly amazing tomato- or normal. Still getting 12.5% wild genetics is probably a good deal for tomato diversity.

14? MMM x Unknown (Diversity Garden)
This is a wild card. The Mission Mountain Morning mother had some of the longest stigmas of the entire F2 population. So bound to have picked up some pollen. The mother was in a tightly woven row with lots and lots of tomato varieties. So, it’s possible that every regular leaf seedling from this tomato could have a different father. Or they could mostly be from whatever was closest!

15? MMM x LA1410 Galapagense
I really wanted to cross MMM and LA1410 Solanum galapagense in 2022. I did manage to make a deliberate cross with a hybrid that turned up. However, I think the 50:50 parentage F1 might just be in this seed lot waiting for us to recognize the regular leaf seedling! Should be interesting to find out. I can’t wait.

Volunteers and direct seeded tomato plants do ok in my garden. They bear later than transplants usually- though often a very heavy crop on plants that eventually get just as big as the transplants. However, they do so with a lot less resources- including my time! They seem to need weeded at least once and it may be best to water them until they start to set fruit.

This year for the first time I had a row of tomatoes that I direct seeded the previous year produce many thousands of seedlings as volunteers. In the past volunteers have been a little sparser with them often disappearing after a second year. These volunteers were different in that they were from Joseph Lofthouse's promiscuous tomato project which is about 1/4 wild species tomato genetics which I direct seeded in 2021. They may well come back a third year in 2023.

On the contrary! My tomato breeding started with volunteers in 2016. One was a currant tomato in some potting mix my mother had grown one in an earlier year and the other in a seed mix from Michael Pilarski. So in 2017 I gathered up some 70 kinds including those two and tried very seriously to direct seed tomatoes here in Montana. Everything worked. Some even better than the accidental two. In fact, they didn't even make my top ten list for breeding material!

I documented that first year of the project here on Permies:

https://permies.com/t/62189/Direct-Seeding-Tomatoes-Frost-Free

Where I am now with the project is that I have made some 14 or more unique crosses almost all of them with ancestors from 2017. A few of which I have seed saved into the sixth generation or so but many of which came about just this year as things seem to be picking up a bit of steam.

As far as paste tomatoes go, I am not against them. In fact, I think I found a couple interesting ones this year as potential breeding stock. My hope is that the community will take up the plant material and point it in new and interesting directions that support our local food culture.  You are of course a part of the community!

I made a cross this year with Brad's Atomic Grape which has the classic cylindrical shape we associate with Romas and sauce though a bit fancier looking.

I also made a cross this year with the earliest tomato I found in 2017 Sweet Cherriette which I bought from Adaptive Seed, and they resurrected from an old packet from the breeder Tim Peters: Peters Seeds and Research, and I even have a small amount of F2 seed already!

One of the 2017 crosses uses an unknown Lofthouse landrace potato leaf I direct seeded as a mother and Brad Gate's Blue Gold as the father. I ultimately sorted out some potato leaf blue golden offspring and named them Mission Mountain Sunrise. Last year I crossed that with Joseph Lofthouse's Big Hill HX-9 tomato for the long stigma and grew the F1 over the winter. I used the F1 and the resulting F2 for some nine more crosses this year. Some to horribly unpalatable wild tomatoes. Some to fantastic fancy tomatoes. Some to wild tomatoes with decent flavor. So the idea of getting tomatoes maybe even sauce tomatoes so wild that they reproduce on their own is not far-fetched!

https://www.facebook.com/groups/807438750513630

I created a Facebook group today but would be happy to discuss it here as well.

https://opensourceplantbreeding.org/forum/index.php/topic,746.0.html

Also started a thread to the same effect on the OSSI plant breeding forum.

I am a gardener in Ronan and Missoula who breeds tomato plants. The hobby has gotten to the point where I think it would be nice to share it more with the community.

I finally made a plant breeding move with Mandan Squash, Lofthouse Crookneck, and Lofthouse Zucchini last year. This year the result was tremendous, and I added in Zephyr F1 and Costata Romanesco. Next year I plan to add in Carol Deppe's Goldini squash. I can't wait for the F2 or maybe more properly G2 next year.

Emily Schaffner wrote:Hi everyone,

I hope your summer gardens are doing as well as can be. I was wondering if anyone had any of Carol Deppe's Goldini Zucchini seeds to trade or sell. I would only need a few. Please let me know if you have any to share.

Thank you so much.

GratefulSeedSaver posted over here that they have some.

https://alanbishop.proboards.com/thread/9491/looking-goldini-zucchini-seeds?page=1&scrollTo=132047

I grew some this year as well and gave the seeds to my wife to sell on her etsy store called smashflower when she opens it for the season- which is not yet.

I think it is a very nice variety that Carol bred. I think mine is a little inbred- a genetic sub-sample of what it should be. She described it in a pod cast as having variable leaves from plant to plant. Mine did not- it was uniform all twelve plants or so.

The community Joseph and Julia started at https://growingmodernlandraces.thinkific.com/

Is currently doing a seed swap but seeds are due by the end of October

Aurora also check for Joseph's seeds here:

Experimental Farm Network

Giving Ground Seeds

Snake River Seed Cooperative

Wild Mountain Seeds

Seed Savers Exchange

High Ground Gardens

The Buffalo Seed Company

Resilient Seeds

Baker Creek Seeds

Miss Penn's Mountain Seeds

Hawthorn Farm Organic Seeds

Indeterminate tomatoes have stems that end in new leaves and just keep growing.

Determinate tomatoes have stems that end in flowers and eventually ripen all their fruits.

I used to only grow indeterminate tomatoes. However when I started my own tomato breeding six years ago I started experimenting with both.

I now have both wonderful varieties bred by other people with both traits and my own tomatoes.

It is a simple dominant / recessive situation with indeterminate dominant.

There is a third way called dwarf and at least some dwarf varieties keep their fruit off the ground without staking for me.

The most important thing for starting a tomato breeding grex in my opinion is to start with hybrids and or include at least one variety that crosses readily because a part of the flower called the stigma / style sticks out and or make deliberate crosses using the many videos available on youtube or other online tutorials.

I've occasionally been able to find a blooming sungold F1 or Sunsugar F1 plant for sale at a local retailer and checked to find the stigma / style to be sticking out before even buying it. That could be a very good place to start such a grex because dehybridization projects using Sungold have produced numerous successful open pollinated versions for other breeders.

Other seed for varieties with stigmas that tend to stick out a bit is available including Exserted Tiger, Exserted Orange, Big Hill, and the promiscuous tomato project from Experimental Farm Network and Snake River Seeds.

Cindy Haskin wrote:

William Schlegel wrote:How out crossing works in tomatoes in my experience:

Domestic tomatoes can be almost 100% inbreeding to about 30% outbreeding. This depends in part on pollinators available. They will accept pollen of any other domestic tomato and multiple wild species. Flower structure is the main game changer.

Habrochaites tomatoes range from inbreeding to obligate outbreeding. Domestic can accept their pollen.

Penelli tomatoes are about the same as habrochaites. Except growing the plants is tricky.

Galapagense, pimpinillifolium, and Cheesemanii tomatoes are about the same as domestic. In practice though this means they mostly keep to themselves or only contribute pollen to open flowers.

Peruvianum tomatoes can sometimes accept penellii pollen. The larger Peruvianum complex is a bit complicated. It can be crossed with domestic with difficulty.

Some specific Arcanum tomatoes can contribute limited pollen to domestic. But cannot cross back to the Peruvianum complex.

One specific Chilense population is known for both crossing with domestic and peruvianum. But growing it is elusive.

I have never seen or heard of all these tomatoes you have listed. Are they from other countries as some of the names suggest? Where would I find any? Would adding a few to my own future land race attempts be of any real benefit?

Cindy,

Those are species tomatoes. You can find them online and they do contain rare genetics but most wild species tomatoes do not taste good.

https://www.hrseeds.com/wild-tomatoes here is one source.

Solanum pimpinillifolium, and Solanum cheesemaniae are the two wild species known to taste good.

Some wild species tomatoes like Solanum habrochaites are commonly used as rootstocks or rootstock parents for grafted tomatoes but do not taste good.

Most people do not need wild species tomatoes, but serious plant breeders make crosses with them looking for resistance. Joseph Lofthouse has used a couple species of them to make some hybrid populations. After about 7 generations some tasty ones showed back up!

If you just like tasty tomatoes, I would not go all the way to wild ones. Or at least stick with the two tasty species. Though personally I've found it a delightful journey of botanical discovery it may not be for everyone.

The two tasty wild species contain tremendous diversity and those I would recommend to everyone. Also many modern varieties incorporate wild genes.

Fortunately, Joseph's tomatoes are available and with those most of the hard work has already been done but depending on the population may vary in flavor a lot even still.

https://store.experimentalfarmnetwork.org/collections/tomatoes?page=2

Joseph's tomatoes are at the above link including some wild species such as a diverse population of Solanum habrochaites sold as Neandertomato (these would not taste good).  Solanum habrochaites crosses are a serious long-term project to get back to good flavors but the journey can be a lot of fun for those who love plants. His Q series and Wildling Panormous tomatoes will offer tremendous diversity and the benefit of those first seven generations or so, but some will likely still have off tastes. Some of them may be obligate outcrossing which means planting at least a few plants may be necessary.

If looking for a fun source of resistant genetics in a fully domestic tomato you might try something like Purple Zebra F1 or Sungold F1.  These modern hybrids incorporate small amounts of wild genetics from the wild species for various resistances to common tomato diseases.

https://territorialseed.com/products/purple-zebra?variant=41647593062574

Modern hybrids can be a fun and tasty way to get started with tomato breeding. They will segregate the second year you grow them. Segregating tomato populations are great fun! It is basically like having someone else make a tomato cross for you as the start of a breeding project!

I think the main thing with a tomato landrace or grex is really to look for tomatoes that have open flowers with styles and stigmas that stick out a bit and are more likely to cross occasionally.

John Indaburgh wrote:I've found that tomato seeds germinate well in wood chips, undisturbed since the tomato fell on them, and since most weeds don't you get a big advantage. I have a lot of tomatoes that fall to the ground and get left there.
I only grow a limited number of heirloom beefsteak varieties. Mortgage Lifter is my shortest to harvest.  I also grow Dester, Pink Brandywine, Pink Ponderosa, and Belgian Giant. So the volunteers are one of those, but I don't know which.

Intriguing! Wood chips, bark, and sawdust at least temporarily create a more open soil texture similar to sandy or gravelly soils. Similar to those soil textures found in seasonally dry riparian areas where I have seen volunteer tomatoes. Also, in seasonally dry riparian areas you tend to get little drifts of organic materials such as branches, sticks, or leaves. Soil texture could also explain the good germination out of compost piles.

Pink Ponderosa would be that same variety or a close relative that Richard Clemence wrote about with Ruth Stout. It would make sense that it would still work.  

https://permies.com/t/170703/Tomatoes-seed-zone-colder

Just thought I would cross link in this new thread above because I think it asks an important question:

Is reliable volunteering possible in tomatoes?

Dependent on genetics?

Dependent on soil type and other habitat elements?

Is good volunteering ability the ultimate evolution of direct seeded tomatoes? Or will they stop short of that?

Why don't wild south American tomato species either direct seed or volunteer well with some exceptions? Namely Solanum peruvianum and Solanum pimpinillifolium seem to do some but the other species at least for me do not.

Some other related threads:

https://permies.com/t/84929/Direct-Seeded-Tomato-Breeding-Project

https://permies.com/t/34777/tomato-transplant-seed

https://permies.com/t/99150/Dry-Farmed-Direct-Seeded-Tomatoes

https://permies.com/t/70905/Changing-world-direct-seeded-gardening

https://permies.com/t/139369/William-Seed-Seed-Garden

Paul Sofranko wrote:I had about a dozen volunteers from tomatoes that were tossed on the ground or were in the compost pile. Unfortunately, I didn't record what they were because I didn't expect them. Nevertheless, very few produced anything as they germinated too late.  

That is about where I was in 2016 when I first noticed two volunteers that barely produced. In 2017 I collected tons of short season tomato varieties and tried them all direct seeded. With more deliberate selection direct seeding and volunteers are much more productive in zone 6A. Though they do produce a late crop

Some of the results of that 2017 direct seeding were as follows:

Earliest:
Sweet Cherriette
Jagodka
sungold F3
Anmore Dewdrop

Almost as early:
Tumbler F2
Krainiy Sever
42 Days
Coyote
forest fire

Female part of the flower sticks out and early enough to direct seed:
Blue Ambrosia
PL Matina
JL potato leaf

Fancy and early enough to direct seed:
Blue Ambrosia
Amurski Tigr

tasty and early enough to direct seed:
Sungold descendents
Blue Ambrosia
Possibly yellow pear (in a good year like 2017!)

Other interesting:
Dwarf Hirsutum Cross "jeepers" exceptionally healthy plants and worked direct seeded.

I would add in subsequent years I have discovered or bred some additional very interesting tomato varieties all of which I think will work direct seeded or as volunteers:

Big Hill (Bred by Joseph)
Exserted Tiger (Bred Blue Ambrosia x Amurski Tigr)
Exserted Orange (Bred w. Joseph and others)
Joseph Lofthouse's promiscuous tomato project
Brad (A favorite of Joseph's)
Wild Child- bred by same guy as Blue Ambrosia a very early stabilized wild cross
I have one project I call Mission Mountain Sunrise or MMS for short. It is a very fun blue bicolor but is so far unreleased.
Also I would add there are at least two strains of Jagodka and the strain I obtained in 2017 was different from Joseph's strain. Which is funny because it was really good but I only got it because Joseph said so much about his strain! If I were interested in boring red tomatoes I would cross the two strains and call it Jagodka x Jagodka. I don't know for sure if Josephs strain is as early as Earl's strain. Also Anmore Dewdrop is a stabilized version of Tumbler f1. So if you want hybrids to start with I would highly recommend Sungold F1 and Tumbler F1.

2018 was the only year that was a little iffy. I got a freeze after I got a good amount of tomato seed back but before I got the amazing production I got in 2017. Though the early produced F1's from 2018 led to an amazing F2 year in 2019! Maybe my favorite year so far!

john Harper wrote:

Jan White wrote:I have 6-8 months of potential freezes. I've always had lots of volunteer tomatoes of all different varieties. I don't pick all my green tomatoes at the end of the season and leave the plants and fruit as mulch. If I have a tomato I don't particularly like, I'll chop the plant down and leave it in place as well. So lots of rotting tomatoes all over the place.

The problem I have is that my season isn't long enough to get much fruit off the volunteers. They don't start producing until right at the end of the season.

This year I planted some of the shortest season varieties I could find. Jagodka and Brad are used in the breeding work of one of the members here, so I got those. Then I got seven or eight others with names like Manitoba and Sub Arctic Plenty. I planted them in pots outside so they would come up on their own schedule.  I got my first ripe tomato on September 2nd, which may have been a bit later than it otherwise would be because our summer was very challenging for unwatered plants this year. I'm hoping with some seed selection to improve on that date.

So I'd say just plant lots of short season tomatoes and leave lots of fruit from the ones you like.

I think this is your best chance of developing a usable variety that reliably self seeds.

One problem I have seen is that I get tomato seedlings popping up all over my 6a garden in the spring but most often they either get killed off with late frosts or germinate too late to supply useful fruit. Finding a variety with short season that can delay germination would be key to developing a viable freely reseeding variety.

I would say one additional element is needed in variety development: the potential for genetic segregation. You can gain this potential by starting with hybrids, making crosses, or acquiring varieties that are more likely to cross on their own.

Hybrids: In 2017 when I first got serious about direct seeding I acquired all the shortest season tomatoes I could including the hybrids! One that worked particularly well was Sungold which is an F1 hybrid. There are quite a few early season F1 hybrid tomatoes on the market!

The second way is to make crosses. There are lots of videos available on youtube for how to do this! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aj5TPzhDuI

The other easy source for this potential in my experience is searching for varieties with a trait where the female part of the flower tends to poke out a bit. That is what I found with Joseph Lofthouse's Big Hill and another variety called Blue Ambrosia. This trait leads to a greater rate of crossing. I've tried to capture that trait in Exserted Tiger (descended from Blue Ambrosia x Amurski Tigr) and Exserted Orange (Big Hill x Unknown). Exserted means "sticks out a bit". You will be able to find the crosses when you save the seed from one sort and it turns out quite different. For instance red tends to be dominant so if you plant any sort of yellow tomato like Big Hill and it turns up red the next year you have a cross!

Also and on a separate note: I have hardly any tomato disease issues here. You may have many more on on the East coast? I grew some of my tomatoes on a shady balcony in Missoula MT last summer and the powdery mildew!

Oh and for whatever reason here my volunteers and direct seeded tomatoes almost never germinate before the last frost- they did a bit in 2017 but then mostly survived it at one inch in height. So the other four years germination was well timed. If a one inch rainfall event doesn't happen at the proper time here tomato seeds need to be watered to germinate. Rain virtually stops in March and April here and then we tend to get hammered by rain in May and June.

So some questions for you: What are the varieties you spread tomatoes from? What is the texture of your soil that is how much sand, silt, and clay? You can answer the latter question if unknown with the USDA's Web Soil Survey https://websoilsurvey.sc.egov.usda.gov/App/HomePage.htm

Tomato seeds seem quite capable of surviving the winter and volunteering the next year. However, and I don't know why this is, the percentages seem to be lower than for direct seeding. Also it seems like at least in my garden their is a trend towards gradual extinction. For instance in my direct seeding experiments these past five years I have probably left thousands of tomatoes on the vine at the end of the season. My current garden is littered with them. This spring I couldn't find a tomato packet I had saved of one variety I grew a seed crop of the year before. So I walked out to the isolation garden picked up a tomato mummy crumbled it into a pot and grew some more! In that garden however there were no volunteers.

In 2019 I grew a huge direct seeded population of segregating F2's. In 2020 I had a nice little patch of volunteers. I fully expected them to volunteer again in 2021 but they really did not. Evidence towards this trend towards gradual extinction.

Now some of the seeds can survive for multiple years in the ground. It does seem to me like tomatoes really benefit from a one inch or greater germinating rainfall event properly timed.

I've hypothesized that enough years of direct seeding and volunteering could result in tomatoes that volunteer as you wish. However the reality often seems to be this gradual trend towards extinction.

In 2016 I picked up a single plant of Amurski Tigr https://ohioheirloomseeds.com/products/amurskij-tigr-amur-tiger-tomato-seeds
From the tomato plant lady at the Missoula Farmer's market. It seemed to have everything I liked about tomatoes at the time. It was a early season indeterminate and it had stripes!

So in 2017 I did my first big direct seeding experiment and this included seed from the Amurski Tigr plant. It also volunteered. So I put some pollen from it on the exserted stigma of Blue Ambrosia also in my 2017 garden.

In 2018 I direct seeded a huge direct seeding of Blue Ambrosia saved seed.

Then in 2019 the stripes reappeared in my 2019 direct seeding.  

So in 2020 I grew the result out isolated and Snake River Seeds has been kind enough to offer the result in their catalogue.

https://www.snakeriverseeds.com/products/tomato-exserted-tiger#:~:text=%EE%80%80Exserted%20Tiger%20Tomato%EE%80%81%20was%20bred%20by%20Montana%20seedsman,plants%20is%20quite%20the%20accomplishment%20in%20Western%20

In my personal seed collection I also have yellow variants from 2019 and volunteers in 2020.

So in my personal experience Amurski Tigr and it's descendant Exserted Tiger volunteer fairly well. However if they volunteered as well as you hope they would utterly have taken over my garden by now and would have made it impossible to direct seed other varieties in some of my gardens. That has not been the case- though I worried it might be in the garden where I grew the ancestors of Exserted Tigr in 2018, 2019, and 2020, they didn't reappear in 2021 or at least not much and any that did got weeded out because I used the area for a massive grow out of elite material from Joseph Lofthouse's promiscuous project in 2021.

Joseph Lofthouse's promiscuous project is best available from EFN seeds https://store.experimentalfarmnetwork.org/collections/lofthouse?page=1 both the wildling panamorous and the Q series are currently available and look fairly similar to what I grew out. Direct seeding was successful in 2021 but I found no volunteers from the 2020 grow out in my oldest garden. Exserted Orange is also available on the Joseph Lofthouse page and it is one that Joseph sent me in the F2 from Big Hill x Unknown and I reselected for good exsertion of the stigma to match Big Hill which is also available from EFN and Snake River.

This year I also grew a great deal of potentially crossed Big Hill seed direct seeded but didn't select anything from it. Suffice it to say Big Hill, Exserted Orange, Exserted Tiger, Amurski Tigr, and Blue Ambrosia all work direct seeded as do many others.

I would look for tomato varieties of about 60 DTM or less ideally though 70 DTM or greater varieties will sometimes work out direct seeded.

One would think that wild tomatoes would be particularly good at volunteering and direct seeding. In my experience having grown ~12 or so species tomatoes, that is not the case in zone 6a. I believe that is largely because of adaptation- most North American garden habitats do not closely enough approximate the habitats found in South America and the season is shorter here.

One key word there is habitat. I have seen volunteer tomatoes growing in the wild in places like dry riverbeds in southern California near agricultural areas, in areas burned by forest fires where someone may have sat and eaten a lunch while say fighting fire, along sidewalks in Nevada, on city streets in Southern California, in a waste place on the edge of an agricultural field in southern California, and along a trail on the island of Kuai in Hawaii. Disturbance, lack of competition, and riverbeds seem to be key habitat factors. I add sand to my gardens and I do think the gardens that have had sand addition seem to have better volunteerism. That is to say the more your garden is like a dry riverbed the more closely it may approximate natural tomato habitat. There is a book on growing grapes that I read that says that to grow grapes properly the vine yard's soil should be deeply mixed and inverted to mimic something like that of a natural riparian area where grapes grow in the wild. I think something similar may be true of tomatoes. Riparian soils are hard to characterize because they are deeply mixed and layered, there may be patches of sand, cobble, organic material all in layers. So certain soil textures may be favorable or unfavorable to tomato volunteerism!

One intermediate method was reported by a gardener who cowrote a book with Ruth Stout https://www.amazon.com/Ruth-Stout-No-Work-Garden-Book/dp/1927458366/ref=asc_df_1927458366?tag=bingshoppinga-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=80195748809666&hvnetw=o&hvqmt=e&hvbmt=be&hvdev=c&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=&hvtargid=pla-4583795274845089&psc=1 one Richard Clemence. He grew the variety Ponderosa and every year would bury a few tomatoes in the mulch next to a wooden stake. Then he would dig up those tomatoes in the spring extract their seed, pull back the mulch and replant the seeds  in a row each spring. Their is a very good parallel there with what I did this spring when I walked out and grabbed a tomato mummy and extracted its seed and replanted it. This method might represent a nice way to ensure year to year success without encountering that slow decline towards extinction. One wooden stake and an hour or so of work in spring and fall combined. There need not even be a stake if you get good at recognizing tomato mummies and finding the little ball of seed inside. I could therefore spend an half hour collecting the mummies the spring before I rototill. Crumble the mummies to extract the seed, rototill. Then sprinkle, cover, mark, and weed the row.

There are currently 100's of Lofthouse promiscuous project tomatoes lying rotting on the ground of the direct seeded rows of my massive 2021 grow out. Representing untold thousands of seeds. I don't plan to let them volunteer next year though as I had one plant with so spectacular a flavor I want to dedicate that entire garden to its offspring in 2022 which will because of small seed numbers necessarily have to be transplants.

So if there are volunteers I want to keep I'll likely end up transplanting them! I'm sure I'll put in some direct seeded rows in 2022 though. Maybe the segregating yellow seed I've saved including the packet from the 2020 volunteer yellow sibling line to exserted tiger.

Another key thing I think is weeding. Without some weeding direct seeded and volunteer tomato seedlings tend to disappear. In my experience this can be as little as one weeding event. when everything is about ~6 inches tall or so give or take. Earlier and more frequent weeding seems to give better results but once a bit later is enough. Though it helps to know precisely where the seedlings are likely to appear!

Joseph Lofthouse wrote:In the spring of 2021, I did a direct-seeded planting of about 10,000 seeds of Wildling tomato, which is a hybrid swarm of three species of tomatoes. I planted about two weeks before average last frost date.

Seven plants survived and bore fruit. I collected around 1800 seeds. Maybe that will be enough to continue the experiment next year, maybe not.

If those seven plants represent a genetic improvement in germinating and surviving direct seeded it almost certainly will. If they simply survived by random chance then they very well may not! Interesting experiment nonetheless either way and the very small number of surviving seeds is sort of exciting for the prospects of the former.

In 2021 the main tomato I saved seed from direct seeding was a very ordinary seeming red exserted potato leaf from the mixture of exserted tiger, non-isolated big hill, and promiscuous project. I'm not sure from which it came ?! It tasted like a normal red tomato. I am curious to find out what percentage of regular leaf offspring it will have because each of these will be a hybrid as potato leaf is recessive!

That velvety leafed plant is perhaps more typical of Solanum penellii heritage. It is still a pretty common trait in my saved from 2020 seeds maybe because there was penellii heritage in the promiscuous project bicolor and orange tomatoes I grew last year.

Prepared this post for another thread but I am posting it here too because it is a good history of this project.

I've been intentionally direct seeding tomatoes for five years now. This being the fifth year. Last year I direct seeded a early version of the promiscuous project so I know it can be done. Though Joseph sent me better seed and nothing elite enough segregated out of the direct seeded row. So this year I direct seeded the elite material from last year.

This all started in 2016 when I noticed two volunteers that barely produced a couple tomatoes. I thought: what if I was more deliberate about this? I started this thread for my 2017 garden. Joseph sent me some seed that contributed to the project. I read Joseph's posts about exsertion and open tomato flowers. I found some exserted tomatoes in my 2017 garden- I used them as mothers!

I have noticed that direct seeded breeding material can be good at volunteering in subsequent years. I suspect that a direct seeding protocol could eventually lead to tomatoes that don't have to be planted- just weeded around a bit. I don't have any plants that have been consistently direct seeded for more than about 4 out of 5 generations. Those four year plants are some seeds of a variety I call exserted tiger. Specifically the parents (one striped and one exserted), F1, F2, and F4 generations. Which I direct seeded for the fourth (F4)  time this year but grew from transplant last year (F3) for a seed grow out (available from snake river seeds). I mixed them with Joseph's Big Hill and some leftover seed from the direct seeded rows of Joseph's promiscuous project.

I did notice a few flea beetles this year probably taking out some seedlings. Also I have black nightshade which attracts Colorado potato beetles which sometimes predate a few tomato seedlings. I noticed one year some volunteers that disappeared when I didn't weed around them promptly and I think they were eaten possibly by arthropods such as flea beetles.

I am also in the second year of growing a different Solanum habrochaites accession that is a known source of arthropod resistance. It will be interesting to see if I can use it as a habrochaites cytoplasm mother in the promiscuous project- it might introduce needed flea beetle resistance so more people can direct seed with the success I've known. I have planted it from transplant as I consider pure habrochaites too long season for direct seeding and I do have exserted tiger, big hill, and promiscuous project plants right next to it. Hope to find F1s to plant next to it next year. Which should facilitate back crossing into the habrochaites cytoplasm if it hasn't already occurred last year or this.

Another note, in 2019 the year I grew out the F2 that led to Exserted Tiger I did it without ever watering. It was an exceptional year for good rainfall in my locale but I think it possible that maybe aside from some occasional help with enough water for germination, that tomatoes could be direct seeded and dry farmed in many semi arid climates. I documented that year here: https://permies.com/t/99150/Dry-Farmed-Direct-Seeded-Tomatoes

In 2020 I grew only the promiscuous tomatoes direct seeded but alas saved no seed because they were all wild type and the transplant tomatoes from Josephs selections from the same cross were elite.

So now in 2021 I have four rows of the elite promiscuous project tomatoes direct seeded and about seven rows of the mix of big hill, exserted tiger, and promiscuous. Though the big hill I used for this like the tomatoes I planted in 2018 https://permies.com/t/84929/Direct-Seeded-Tomato-Breeding-Project were exposed to pollen from other varieties including wild species- so its really about finding more F1's. The Big Hill seed was grown in 2018 and 2019 gardens and not isolated. So this project should probably keep me busy for another decade or so!

I've been intentionally direct seeding tomatoes for five years now. This being the fifth year. Last year I direct seeded a early version of the promiscuous project so I know it can be done. Though Joseph sent me better seed and nothing elite enough segregated out of the direct seeded row. So this year I direct seeded the elite material from last year.

This all started in 2016 when I noticed two volunteers that barely produced a couple tomatoes. I thought: what if I was more deliberate about this? I started this thread for my 2017 garden: https://permies.com/t/62189/Direct-Seeding-Tomatoes-Frost-Free Joseph sent me some seed that contributed to the project. I read Joseph's posts about exsertion and open tomato flowers. I found some exserted tomatoes in my 2017 garden- I used them as mothers!

I have noticed that direct seeded breeding material can be good at volunteering in subsequent years. I suspect that a direct seeding protocol could eventually lead to tomatoes that don't have to be planted- just weeded around a bit. I don't have any plants that have been consistently direct seeded for more than about 4 out of 5 generations. Those four year plants are some seeds of a variety I call exserted tiger. Specifically the parents (one striped and one exserted), F1, F2, and F4 generations. Which I direct seeded for the fourth (F4)  time this year but grew from transplant last year (F3) for a seed grow out (available from snake river seeds). I mixed them with Joseph's Big Hill and some leftover seed from the direct seeded rows of Joseph's promiscuous project.

I did notice a few flea beetles this year probably taking out some seedlings. Also I have black nightshade which attracts Colorado potato beetles which sometimes predate a few tomato seedlings. I noticed one year some volunteers that dissapeared when I didn't weed around them promptly and I think they were eaten possibly by arthropods such as flea beetles.

I am also in the second year of growing a different Solanum habrochaites accession that is a known source of arthropod resistance. It will be interesting to see if I can use it as a habrochaites cytoplasm mother in the promiscuous project- it might introduce needed flea beetle resistance so more people can direct seed with the success I've known. I have planted it from transplant as I consider pure habrochaites too long season for direct seeding and I do have exserted tiger, big hill, and promiscuous project plants right next to it. Hope to find F1s to plant next to it next year. Which should facilitate back crossing into the habrochaites cytoplasm if it hasn't already occurred last year or this.

Another note, in 2019 the year I grew out the F2 that led to Exserted Tiger I did it without ever watering. It was an exceptional year for good rainfall in my locale but I think it possible that maybe aside from some occasional help with enough water for germination, that tomatoes could be direct seeded and dry farmed in many semi arid climates. I documented that year here: https://permies.com/t/99150/Dry-Farmed-Direct-Seeded-Tomatoes

In 2020 I grew only the promiscuous tomatoes direct seeded but alas saved no seed because they were all wild type and the transplant tomatoes from Josephs selections from the same cross were elite.

So now in 2021 I have four rows of the elite promiscuous project tomatoes direct seeded and about seven rows of the mix of big hill, exserted tiger, and promiscuous. Though the big hill I used for this like the tomatoes I planted in 2018 https://permies.com/t/84929/Direct-Seeded-Tomato-Breeding-Project were exposed to pollen from other varieties including wild species- so its really about finding more F1's. The Big Hill seed was grown in 2018 and 2019 gardens and not isolated. So this project should probably keep me busy for another decade or so!

I am growing a couple micro dwarfs this year. Should be a fun winter hobby but I will probably do something odd like cross them with Joseph's promiscuous project or a strain of Solanum habrochaites. Shouldn't after all my winter hobby be just as wild as my summer hobby?

I know I would value potato leaf tomatoes in the promiscuous project because I could plant one with each group and get an idea of outcrossing rate just by planting some seeds. I thought I spotted a potato leaf seedling while rototilling along a direct seeded row last weekend. Mixed lot planting but possibly a promiscuous, but then I couldn't find it again so will have to keep an eye out when I weed that area more carefully.

In my prior post I had put down some compost my wife rejected for weed seed content and sand over the ground to smother volunteer tomato seeds. It caused poor germination as well! Though when I actually counted there were around 90 seedlings in the two rows, though not evenly distributed. Luckily I got the bug to do two more rows where I grew a corn seed grow out last year and those germinated normally. Still this is going to be a tough year for the direct seeding method compared to most other years. If fall frost comes early it might be a bust! Or it might be a very good selection year for shortness of season on the promiscuous tomatoes! Which would be fine because some of the various tomato breeding and seed grow outs still got transplanted and there are close to 500 transplants so no matter what I will have too many tomatoes. That pales in comparison to the sheer number of very small plants I have typically in a few direct seeded rows. I also have ahem around seven more rows direct seeded in two other isolation gardens for a different reason- to look for hybrids from past years of close planting Big Hill with other tomatoes including wild tomatoes. Though I threw in some seed from the tomato I call exserted tiger and a healthy amount of leftover promiscuous bicolor seed.

I got Joseph's new book but with school ending / work starting I have still only read the tomato chapter. Still it beats having to scrounge around the internet to read what Joseph has to say and I hope all you readers take heed and order a copy. Josephs older writings and his seed lines have definitely changed my garden for the better over the years.

I have a tomato cross that looks like it is taking in my garden. It will be 75% Lofthouse ancestry and 25% Brad Gate's ancestry. Should be another fun tomato breeding project.

Having tomatoes with exserted stigmas in my garden since 2017 has greatly changed my garden and gardening. I think I could stop growing other peoples tomato varieties and just grow tomatoes that have been bred in and for my garden. It has led to a couple varieties of tomatoes which I have been working towards pledging to the Open Source Seed Initiative and one of which is already available in 2021 through Snake River Seeds another will join it in 2022 and I would expect another in about 2025 if not sooner if the cross I just made takes. Which all started by reading what Joseph wrote some of it here, then going out in my garden the first year of my direct seeding project and checking carefully till I found a couple varieties with exserted stigmas.

The promiscuous tomato project seems like it may take things further than exserted tomatoes alone. One tomato this year is called R18 because it was the 18th plant in row R last year when Joseph selected it for awesomely promiscuous flowers. It will be interesting to see if any of its descendants in my garden this year have spectacular flowers! Joseph changed the focus of his tomato chapter a bit to be more about the flower structure because of its easy observability. The goal of obligate outcrossing tomatoes is still there- but a little more subdued. I am not certain but I think it is possible that the promiscuous project or some of them may yet retain that ability from the wild ancestors. One thing I am curious about is using potato leaf plants more to check outcrossing rates as crosses with regular leaf plants are regular leaf. So if a potato leaf plant produces seedlings that are 30% regular leaf it may have just incredibly effective flowers structurally. However rates above that might start to indicate obligate outcrossing! By comparison with a potato leaf tomato in 2017 with just ok exsertion I got about two regular leaf seedlings out of over 100 to get one of my now favorite tomato creations. A tomato that regularly got 30% would be a huge advance. 100% outcrossing would be awesome too but either way is much better than the typical hybridization rates we might see!

Rowan Tyr wrote:You’re all making me want to breed my own tomatoes, and I do *not* have the space. ... how close can I pack the poor plants and still get fruit?.... 😅

Really close. 1 plant per square foot in garden. 20 in a clump. A five gallon pot for a full size or dwarf. Gallon or less for a micro dwarf. Ultra earlies tend to be quite small plants also. Smaller in a small pot.

Just seeded a 80 foot row of what has become year 5 of my direct seeding of tomatoes. This is the second year that will be tomatoes that are part of Joseph Lofthouse's promiscuous tomato project.

Bet they have ancestors in a region with high UV and light colored soil that reflects light to the underside of the leaf.

Anthocyanin pigment is a plant sunscreen. It might help certain wild tomato species or populations live in harsh environments.

In breeding it is significant because the genes that express stem and leaf anthocyanins can help the expression of the trait that expresses blue / purple tomato fruit skin. Which has some health benefits but also just contributes to some good looking varieties. I've also read that when expressed in fruit the fruit tends to store longer and be less prone to sunburn.

Consider if you live in a sun drenched local climate that anthocyanin expression might be a good thing and the reverse in a constantly cloudy or shady environment.

Hairiness is another adaptation that can have similar purposes it can slow wind, raise humidity, provide some shade, and repel insects to some extent.  

https://www.snakeriverseeds.com/products/tomato-exserted-tiger?_pos=1&_sid=40e0735a0&_ss=r

So in my 2017 garden which this thread commemorates I facilitated a cross between Amurski Tigr and Blue Ambrosia. This is the result an exserted stigma cherry tomato with a blue blush and tiger stripes with several generations of direct seeding in its ancestry.

Ellendra Nauriel wrote:How does one go about selling seeds through the Experimental Farm Network? I poked around their website and couldn't find an answer to that.

I just sent them a message through their Web form and they emailed me back when I had this same question. I explained who I am what tomatoes I've bred, and why they are useful for plant breeders. Got a definite maybe in reply. Plan to stay in touch and send in some seeds maybe next cycle. Note: I also work closely with Joseph on a few things which is why the Exserted Orange Tomato seed is available now- that was a definite in. I also don't expect to make much money on this. For example: I just sent a different and regional seed company an ounce of unique tomato seed for $50.

Though before I did this I worked at plant breeding for a few years and have a couple tomato varieties in progress of potential utility to others like us. Not everything on EFN is new so it would also work to be the seed steward of a unique variety with limited availability. Which is something we often encounter when engaged in plant breeding because we also are seed savers and often looking for unique varieties. When we find a unique variety we like we often seed steward it as well. If there is enough demand we might as well grow enough seed for a seed crop and make it available.

I think there is a logical progression here in my case it's gone like this:
Gardening>Seed Saving>Native Plants> Heirlooms> Seed Trading> Plant Breeding and or Seed Stewarding > More Seed Trading > Seed Sales.

Jeremiah Squingelli wrote:I'm interested in getting a pack of these this year, but I'm just a seed saver and not a professional breeder or anything. As much as I'm thinking about the wildling, should I consider the Q-series instead? I'm here in central florida and between the heat, humidity, rampant disease, and invasive insects it can be hard to get much of anything to last very long here, if that makes a difference.

Hi Jeremiah,

This is plant breeding anyone can do. If you save seed and you have likes and dislikes you are qualified. Try any or all of the tomato accessions Joseph has on EFN. Save seed from any that survive your conditions and taste good to you in central Florida and repeat till they thrive and taste great for you. If they don't thrive for you then try something else.

Perhaps unfortunately the G2 of my dehybridization project of Autumn's choice was very pale fleshed. I really want the banded pattern in my grex so will keep some, so I may get the opportunity to see how it crosses with the green fleshed.

The green fleshed itself is not consistently green from the description there is lots of variation within it. Which should also mean variable flavor dilutions.

My aunt misses my old Maxima population which was light fleshed. Some people prefer mild flavored squash. Also mild light colored squash has some uses. Agrosperma/mixta has light flesh and it is great cooked with something stronger flavored like beets or beef because it picks up the flavor and doesn't have its own strong flavor to compete. Though mixed in a population different flavors may be hard to anticipate in a culinary plan.

Greg Martin wrote:The Experimental Farm Network offered seeds of the green fleshed C. moschata variety Guatemalan green fleshed ayote squash for the first time this year and they sold out in one day (I was sad!) but then just recently they started offering more (I was happy!), limit one packet per person.  They are long season so the first thing I'm doing this year is growing them out mixed with Joseph's landrace moschatas to get some northern adapted green fleshed squash....then after that the true fun will start!  Just wanted to mention this here in case anyone else happened to be looking for green fleshed squash for a breeding project.  I'm planning to breed them to the C. moschata summer squash 'Avocado' to hopefully get a nice green hue for mock guacamole apps.  

Probably these seeds won't last long.

Greg, I ordered them before they sold out initially and now have the packet in with my special seeds. I also hope to grow them with Lofthouse moschata this year as that actually ripens for me unlike most moschatas. I will probaby do one green fleshed plant in the greenhouse with one Lofthouse moschata and six plants out with the main grex of things likely to cross with Moschata which will be banded yellow/green from Autumns Choice G3 just a few plants, a few Lofthouse, and all the Tetsukabuto G2 I can grow.

What you are describing is segregation in the F2 and it can give you some data on what the grandparents were. Given that you might be able to reverse engineer and figure out approximately what went into the original cross.

The inbred lines used in most hybrids are secrets kept closely by seed companies and not sold. So they are basically secret recipes mainly kept from other seed companies.

An open source F1 anyone could make. Joseph Lofthouse did such a thing a year or two ago with a corn.

You can also dehybridize hybrids which is something Alan Kapuler popularized.

Promiscuous = Obligate Outcrossing

Its fun to think about this promiscuous / obligate outcrossing trait now that its in tasty forms in my garden. Next year I may direct seed a row of the now tasty promiscuous lines.

I think that the single plant of fuzzy fruited / other habrochaites cytoplasm line surrounded by lots of tasty promiscuous plants is by far the space efficient method to introduces habrochaites cytoplasm lines into the promiscuous project. Planting large numbers of the hard green fruited sorts of obligate outcrossing tomatoes is getting less exciting now that the tasty sorts have arrived. I have the seeds to do it though if need be or if needed.

It was interesting to me just how much more fruitful the Lofthouse habrochaites cytoplasm line was then the new fuzzy habrochaites cytoplasm line. New Fuzzy Hab really struggled to set fruits with only a few mothers actually bearing despite ~10 fuzzy hab plants and lots of lofthouse strain hab x plants around them, I expect better results from the saved seed, and am curious to see signs of hybridization between the hab lines next year. I have plates full of the seeds that need put into packets.

There was one clump of something Joseph sent that is a three species hybrid. Mostly green fruits but one kinda peach colored. Unsure what the cytoplasm was on that? If its a hab or penellii cytoplasm I need to seperate that peachy fruit.

This question Joseph posed. I think we can generalize it a little bit. To "have we previously accidentally produced any promiscuous lines".

I've been growing habrochaites tomatoes from Joseph since 2017 alongside exserted domestics. I undoubtedly have newly hybrid embryos amongst my seed stash. No idea what percentage.

In 2019 I grew out a huge F2 growout. Mostly of plants from exserteds I open pollinated. I deliberately daubed habrochaites pollen as well as others onto stigmas of the F1. I included a small portion of known wild hybrids. Percentage wise not great, but I definitely found a few obvious ones in the direct seeded growout. These did not set seed.

There are a few lines that I was uncertain of. However, while these may or may not have had some wild ancestry they produced abundantly. Suggesting that they were selfers.

I direct seeded BH x W4 G2 of wild type parents in 2020. Direct seeding worked great. They were fruitful. I think most say upwards of 90% were obligate outcrossers and the same with the elite lines I transplanted.

So ultimately I think from my experience an accidental promiscuous line seems unlikely. Though possible.

However, I'm curious to see what happens when I isolate a habrochaites plant amongst the promiscuous G4 plants in 2021. Have a furry habrochaites line and a G4 packet with good bicolor. Yep it would be possible to have a furry bicolor. If our promiscuous lines can back cross to a full habrochaites that's convincing proof that everything works. I grew the G2? Of such an experiment with the usual habrochaites lines this year from Joseph but all were wild type so far.