So, as I wrote
here, one of my far too many projects is to breed tomatoes (preferably a landrace) that do well in coastal mid-Norway. I'd also like them to grow okay from direct seeding. This year's results are in, and although there is only a very limited amount of success, it still gives me some hope that what I'm trying to do might just be possible.
I started the growing season by sowing some nine varieties of domestic tomatoes in one pot, some wilds (cheesmaniae, pimpinellifolium and galapagense) in a second, and a bunch of Lofthouse promiscuous in a third. I was fairly late sowing, and even later planting them out, since for various reasons we only arrived on our land around the middle of June. When planting the (still quite small) seedlings, I found a single volunteer plant already growing in the bed intended for tomatoes, which must originate from some random shop tomatoes we got last summer. It of course got included in the project.
The complete list of varieties for 2024:
-'Siberian'
-'Black Sweet Cherry'
-'Matt's Wild Cherry'
-'Canary Yellow'
-'Blue Ambrosia'
-'Bosque Blue'
-'Sungold' F2
-Some dwarf variety from my mother-in-law
-Some I got from a friend under the name black plum hybrid (since apparently it was a spontaneous hybrid)
-Volunteer from shop-bought tomatoes
-Lofthousers
-Solanum cheesmaniae (from two different seed companies)
-S. galapagense
-S. pimpinellifolium
I didn't keep track of what was what, except of what was domestic, wild, and Lofthouse, respectively. I also marked the volunteer plant. It's likely that some of the varieties never germinated at all (as there weren't many of each) or else died at some point.
The tomatoes started flowering in the beginning of August (suspect it would have been way earlier if not for the late transplanting). The first one to start was, surprisingly, a quite tiny S. cheesmaniae plant. The second, a couple of days later, was probably a 'Siberian'. After that, I don't remember exactly, but there was one plant (domestic) fairly early on whose stigma was extremely exserted, even before the flower had opened completely (see picture). I figured it had to be 'Blue Ambrosia', since that was the only one of the varieties planted I knew to have exserted stigma. Now, though, I have some doubts, given how the fruit turned out. Another noteworthy one was the volunteer plant. Its flower buds were odd. The sepals were long, and split away from each other in the tip of the bud, even very early in the bud development. None of the other plants had this trait. When the flowers opened, it turned out that it, too, had an exserted stigma, though not quite as much as the other plant.
When we had to leave our land for the year, in the beginning of September, none of the plants had ripe fruit, and only three had unripe fruits of any size: the (probably) 'Siberian', the one with extremely exserted stigma, and the volunteer. These three, together with the cheesmaniae that had been the first to start flowering and a random pimpinellifolium that seemed to be doing well, were dug up, planted in a pot and brought.
All three have since then ripened their fruit. The one with exserted stigma got cherry tomato sized, red fruits, slightly hairy, without any blue on them at all, leading me to doubt that it is 'Blue Ambrosia'. It might in fact be a 'Sungold' F2, but I don't remember the F1s having exserted stigmas. Nothing else on the list seems to fit. Odd...
The volunteer got a slightly larger, light red fruit, with only a few seeds in it. The fruit didn't taste like anything (like a standard industrial tomato). Not surprising. A few of the seeds started germinating while fermenting, so I lost them, and ended up with only about two good seeds. Boo! Well, I've got a cutting of the plant (which seems to be indeterminate) making some new flower buds right now. Hope for more seeds.
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