New Gardener - Will My Tomatoes Be The Same Next Year?

We just bought our first house in the suburbs and finally have a yard to grow things! I’m still learning but I’ve read that it’s best to grow heirloom if possible. I bought about 5 different heirloom tomato seeds from a seed supplier but the terms (heirloom, hybrid, F1, OP,etc) that I’ve seen really confuse me. Long story short, I’m wondering if the seeds that my tomatoes produce this year will produce the same plants next year or will I have produced some kind of hybrid? The yard is not very large so I’ll likely be placing 1 plant of each variety within a few feet of each other. Considering how expensive seeds are online I’d much prefer to be able to save the seeds and have the same plant/crop next year.

Congratulations!

In general, tomatoes cross very rarely. Typically, the stamens form a cage around the stigma which causes the flower to be fertilized only by its own pollen. So your heirlooms are very likely to produce "true" seeds. Hybrids you plant will produce seeds with variation because they have two varieties' genetics mixed up. Even still, the tomatoes you grow from those are very likely to be good, just not exactly the same as the first generation you harvest. However note, many of us work hard to grow more likely to cross-breed varieties so that the plants we grow from saved seeds better over time. The industry's fascination with heirlooms is not really in your best interest.

I have been saving seeds and using them for the next year.

I have never noticed any difference from year to year.

Great tasting every time even with hybrids.

I like Champion and Celebrity and dear hubby likes Early Girl.

I am more concerned with yield and taste.

One year we grew Cherokee Purple.  It is a nice "sandwiched" tomato as it was good for slicing and putting on sandwiches otherwise I did not care for it.

One thing is for sure...if you get a "volunteer" anywhere on your property, and it survives and produces, save seed from that, and/or make new plants from cuttings.

Because "volunteers"--plants that pop up apparently where you did not consciously and deliberately plant them--that do well are best adapted to your local conditions...and therefore more likely in the future to do well again, if you can get them to reproduce.

I LOVE volunteers!

My recommendation is don't worry too much about whether it is an heirloom or a hybrid or any of the other things unless you're trying to become a tomato breeder. Grow whatever looks good to you. Then save the seeds from the healthiest plants with the best taste or whatever other quality appeals to you. Each year the tomatoes grown from your saved seeds will keep improving because they have acclimated to your soil & climate. If some variety is not suited for your area it won't do well so it will fade away. Each year I save some seeds from specific varieties so I have a general idea of what is what the following year. I save others in one big batch. Well, two batches. Large & small varieties. It's sort of a surprise grab bag of seeds. Those grab bags have seeds from many years & different growing zones & gardens. I plants a few of those each year as an insurance policy in case the weather does something weird or some strange bugs appear. Any cross breeding that might occur doesn't bother me. My goal is to produce good food, not specific genetics. I use the same method for squash & just about everything else.

I buy heirloom seeds and deliberately plant types near each other to hopefully get them to breed. This sweet one by this one that handles weather, hoping to get better tasting ones that are the most likely to survive.

Heirloom means it's a variety that has bred true for many years.
Hybrid means two or more types have been mixed in it's genetics (your kids are hybrids of you and your wife) You get neat variations that way.
F1 means a hybrid the first year, you have pretty certain odds of what it will be. The next generation after F2 it gets more variable about what is produced.
OP means open pollinated, that's what I'm doing, means they are letting them cross with other types and don't know what exactly the seeds will produce.

Another good word is
Landrace means a mixture of various genetics aiming toward a strain of plants that grow REALLY well in YOUR area, and YOUR conditions. A lot of the permies are aiming for that. And a landrace that works well in one area won't do well in another. Example is Mike Barkley, the post above me (unless someone else has posted while I'm typing) is landracing his tomatoes and squashes, on the Gulf Coast. I'm in Missouri, his best types wouldn't work here, as he get hot and muggy and fungus, and I get heat and drought and storms and hail.  My best ones stay on the vine even in hail, his best probably don't get fungus in midsummer. What YOU need is what YOU want to end up with. Keep seeds from anything that grows well, plant them by each other next year, and get the seeds again. You are making a landrace for YOUR area. What are YOUR challenges? Save seeds from things that survive THOSE.

Welcome to permies! We don't look at the world like others do!!
:D

Pearl Sutton wrote:I buy heirloom seeds and deliberately plant types near each other to hopefully get them to breed. This sweet one by this one that handles weather, hoping to get better tasting ones that are the most likely to survive.

Heirloom means it's a variety that has bred true for many years.
Hybrid means two or more types have been mixed in it's genetics (your kids are hybrids of you and your wife) You get neat variations that way.
F1 means a hybrid the first year, you have pretty certain odds of what it will be. The next generation after F2 it gets more variable about what is produced.
OP means open pollinated, that's what I'm doing, means they are letting them cross with other types and don't know what exactly the seeds will produce.

Another good word is
Landrace means a mixture of various genetics aiming toward a strain of plants that grow REALLY well in YOUR area, and YOUR conditions. A lot of the permies are aiming for that. And a landrace that works well in one area won't do well in another.....

Very good explanation.  Anything other than "heirloom" is not guaranteed to produce predictable descendants with traits (looks/size/taste/hardiness/disease resistance/etc) like the parents.  Even heirlooms may not produce predictable descendants when allowed to pollinate with others varieties around.  Two years ago, I was raising Tromboncino squash (which I really like) and had Luffa growing nearby.  I didn't know that they were in the same extended family, so when I saved some Tromboncino seeds, last year I grew an unexpected hybrid squash.  They were edible, but not what I wanted and I had effectively lost all of my Tromboncino seeds and am now starting over.

A "landrace" is very good for finding something that is well adapted to your environment, but that well adapted plant may not have certain of the other traits you want.

Addendum: If you want to preserve heirloom seeds in a mixed-variety garden, there is a technique to do that.

It basically means:
  1- "Bagging" the unopened flowers of the plant you want to preserve to protect them from open pollination.
  2- Manually pollinating between flowers to be preserved once they are open- commonly with q-tips.
  3- Re-covering the flowers and waiting until the flower shrivels and the fruit/veggie starts growing.
  4- Remove the bag and mark those fruits/veggies for seed harvesting later.

Cujo Liva wrote:

Very good explanation.  Anything other than "heirloom" is not guaranteed to produce predictable descendants with traits (looks/size/taste/hardiness/disease resistance/etc) like the parents.  Even heirlooms may not produce predictable descendants when allowed to pollinate with others varieties around.  Two years ago, I was raising Tromboncino squash (which I really like) and had Luffa growing nearby.  I didn't know that they were in the same extended family, so when I saved some Tromboncino seeds, last year I grew an unexpected hybrid squash.  They were edible, but not what I wanted and I had effectively lost all of my Tromboncino seeds and am now starting over.

A "landrace" is very good for finding something that is well adapted to your environment, but that well adapted plant may not have certain of the other traits you want.

Yup. I learned that with zucchini and luffa. They tasted "gamey" is the only word I have for them. Pulled up a whole bed of them.

And the line "that well adapted plant may not have certain of the other traits you want" is why  I start my breeding with good varieties of heirlooms, gives me better chances at good genetics to start with.

Good explanation of how to keep cross pollination down!  :D

:D

Thanks everyone for the very informative posts. I think I have a good grasping of the terminology now. Essentially all the seeds coming out of my garden this year will produce hybrids - F1 Hybrids to be exact. And each year I save seeds they will continue being F1 Hybrids. And the only way to ensure an heirloom stays an heirloom would be to grow only one variety and/or prevent the flower from getting pollinated by another tomato variety plant.

I get the message loud and clear and 100% agree with you all that I should only want to save seeds from fruit and plants that do well in the garden to keep the “good” genetics. Phew who knew I’d have to brush up on high school biology to better understand my tomato garden

No. First, most of your tomatoes won't hybridize at all, they will self-pollinate. So any heirloom variety you plant won't (mostly) ever be F1. Second, the F in F1 stands for filial generation. When you buy hybrid seeds, they are F1. If you grow them out and force them to cross-breed, the next generation will be F2 and the next F3, etc. I'm not totally sure what people would call the case where you buy F1 hybrids and save+plant the seeds from those. Technically, each one is a new variety that will perpetually (usually) self-pollinate, so the first year you plant seeds saved from them, they're either F2 or just new varieties that could be called heirlooms if you continue growing and saving for fifty years or whatever.

As Christopher said, your tomatoes are likely to breed true, because tomatoes are likely to self pollinate. The flowers are constructed in such a way that it is quite difficult or sometimes impossible for them to be cross fertilised naturally. This isn't always the case for different fruit and veg. which may have different characteristics in how easily they cross fertilise or not.
If you're interested there is a host of reading material available, as well as several experts right here. R Ranson made a good list of reading materials about seed saving and vegetable breeding here which may be of help.
If you have good heirloom varieties that do well for you, then they are easy to save seed from. Just select a nice fruit from a healthy plant. Let it get a bit riper than you normally would on the plant, then crush the pulp out which contains the seeds (you can eat the rest!). Mix the seed and pulp in a little water and allow to ferment and go mouldy in a warm place for a few days, then rinse the seeds and dry before labelling and storing somewhere cool and dry till next planting season. The alternative is to just crush the seeds onto some thick tissue paper and dry seed, paper and all before storing. I'm told that allowing the seeds to ferment makes them germinate more easily (think what would happen in nature), but I've had pretty good success with the tissue method too, and not everyone is keen on a pot of mould on their kitchen window sill!

BTW, not only heirloom varieties, but any "Open Pollinated" varieties should be fairly reliable if you save seeds from them. Most tomatoes mostly self-pollinate most of the time, but occasionally they cross, so if you want to keep a variety as it is, plant a few plants of it in one bed, a bit away from other tomatoes. But most of the time that doesn't happen, and tomatoes self-pollinate.

I have always had good success saving cherry tomato seeds, even hybrids. But one time I saved seeds from a hybrid medium-size tomato that I liked, called Estiva. The offspring the next year were just as tasty, but they had a problem with the shape. Where the original were perfectly round and all the same size, the offspring had an odd star-shaped shoulder, and then got cracks around the latitudes. My second generation from Sungold F1 have been very similar to the original, but I've read they're often not as good. Cherry tomatoes always volunteer because i never manage to pick every last fruit. Also the second generation from a hybrid might taste or look fine, but might lose some of the growing properties or resistances that the original hybrid had.

I'm surprised to hear that luffas crossed with zucchinis and tromboncinos. According to wikipedia, luffas are in their own genus, and are Luffa aegyptiaca or Luffa acutangula. Zucchinis are Cucurbita pepo, and tromboncino are Cucurbita moschata. I have always read that our popular  squashes, in the Cucurbita genus, won't cross outside their genus, and even between within their genus they prefer not to cross but can be made to do it. But my knowledge of squash breeding is pretty much from reading.

My own squash seed saving has been very simple and straightforward because I usually only grow maximas in that genus, so it's easy to save seeds from them. Their seeds last well for 5 to 8 years, so I easily save 10 years worth of seeds from the one best squash of the year.

Rebecca Norman wrote:I'm surprised to hear that luffas crossed with zucchinis and tromboncinos. According to wikipedia, luffas are in their own genus, and are Luffa aegyptiaca or Luffa acutangula. Zucchinis are Cucurbita pepo, and tromboncino are Cucurbita moschata. I have always read that our popular  squashes, in the Cucurbita genus, won't cross outside their genus, and even between within their genus they prefer not to cross but can be made to do it. But my knowledge of squash breeding is pretty much from reading.

Hey Rebecca.  
All I can say is that squash and luffa and zucchini are all members of the Cucurbitaceae family.  I was also surprised by the cross-breeding, but it appears that was sufficient.  In my case, the only other things I was growing at the time were tomato, pepper, onion, asparagus, some herbs, fruits and berries.  None of my neighbors are gardeners and none of the veggies listed are even in the same family as squash.

If you are wanting to grow your hybrids true year after year you can just root a couple suckers at the end of season in a little pot and bring it in for the winter.  Keep it watered and alive and you can take cuttings off of it come next spring and start plants like that.  Don't have to save seeds.