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Direct Seeding Tomatoes in ~100 Frost Free Days without season extension

William Schlegel

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posted 7 years ago

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My cool weather germinates of the day are Brad Gate's blue boar berries and Joseph lofthouse's deepest frost 2016 paradise UT. First (regular Solanum lycopersicum, second counting the Wild tomato hybrid that germinated) lofthouse tomato to germinate in the unheated greenhouse and first from my own (actually my wife's in this case) saved seed from previous years. I get to go out to check on my garden tomorrow it will be 8 days since I seeded a replicate there.

Western Montana gardener and botanist in zone 6a according to 2012 zone update.
Gardening on lakebed sediments with 7 inch silty clay loam topsoil, 7 inch clay accumulation layer underneath, have added sand in places.

Joseph Lofthouse

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William Schlegel wrote:Wonder if they share quite a bit of ancestry?

Domestic tomatoes experienced "Founder's Effect" twice. Once when they left the Andes to go to Mexico, and again when they left Mexico to go to Europe. I suppose there was a third Founder's Effect when they left Europe to go to the rest of the world. My experience is that domestic tomatoes seem like the most inbred species that I have worked with. I'd pretty much classify all of the domesticated tomatoes as sharing quite a bit of ancestry.

One of the primary goals of my tomato breeding projects, are to get some of those lost genes back into domestic tomatoes. Perhaps I'll find a fruit that tastes delightful to me: Something that would actually work well, for example, in a fruit salad. Actually, I'm approaching it the other way around... Introducing some of the domestic traits into wild tomatoes.

tomato-founders-effect-4.png

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Joseph Lofthouse

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William Schlegel wrote:Joseph lofthouse's deepest frost 2016 paradise UT.

The way to read that label, is that they were part of my frost tolerance trials in 2016, and were planted in the coldest field in which I grow tomatoes. I started out with 36 varieties that are known or expected to do well in cold weather. They were germinated in extreme cold. Many of them suffering from frost damage or outright died as young seedlings. They got plenty of snow and cold while in the cotyledon stage. Based on the results of the early cold stress, 18 varieties were selected for potting up. They were planted out into the garden many weeks ahead of normal tomato planting time. I planted one replicate in a warmer field. They all survived. I planted one replicate in my coldest field. About 2/3 of them died. The survivors were wild species: S. peruvianum, S. habrochaites, and S. pimpinellifolium, and a few domestic tomatoes. The packet labeled Paradise: Deepest frost contains seeds only from the domestic tomatoes. They are also descended from survivors of the 2015 frost trials, or descendants from crosses to Jagodka which was the winner of my first cold tolerance trials.

I saved seeds from the duplicate set of plants which were grown in the warmer field, but since they all survived, they are less useful to me. My sweet spots is when about 50% to 75% of the plants die. I'm growing many of them again this year, and they are part of the planting which I showed a photo of earlier today. A couple of the survivors from the warmer field last year were naturally occurring hybrids, so I'm hyped about that, since I've planted the second generation, and am thus expecting lots of segregation for all sorts of traits, perhaps even for cold/frost tolerance!!! The maternal parent of the crosses came out of previous cold tolerance testing, and we suspect that it has recent genetic influence from wild tomatoes. Later on, I intend to plant thousands of those seeds direct seeded for frost/cold tolerance testing.

I ran out of my named lines for sharing, but I sure have a lot of crossed up seed for experimenting with. It's an interesting transition for me, moving from named lines of tomatoes to promiscuously crossing tomatoes. I'll muddle through as best as I can, naming things based on phenotype, thus "Deepest Frost -- Paradise, Utah".

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William Schlegel

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Joseph Lofthouse wrote: I suppose there was a third Founder's Effect when they left Europe to go to the rest of the world. My experience is that domestic tomatoes seem like the most inbred species that I have worked with. I'd pretty much classify all of the domesticated tomatoes as sharing quite a bit of ancestry.

Indeed I was thinking perhaps of a smaller scale fifth founders effect where the genes for cold soil emergence are linked with many of the super short season varieties (Kalinka, Forest Fire, and Anmore Dewdrop) because of multiple breeders using closely related varieties to achieve super short seasonality. Though breeders have also been working with South American Material to try to introduce just the genes for disease resistance etc.

Joseph Lofthouse wrote:

Actually, I'm approaching it the other way around... Introducing some of the domestic traits into wild tomatoes.

I think that may be the more interesting approach.

I wonder if I plant the Solanum cornelio-muellerii x Solanum peruvianum next to the Solanum habrochaites if any crosses will result naturally?

Joseph Lofthouse

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William: I love the idea of a 5th founder's event... It's starting to sound like something from an Isaac Asimov novel... I could certainly see that happening. At least in my own garden, among my conventional varieties, Jagodka is pretty much the founder variety. It's sad to me, that it's not yet incorporated into my current projects, only into the legacy projects. I hope to get that remedied this growing season. I think that Jagodka came out of the N.I. Vavilov Research Institute of Plant Industry in Russia, so it's hard to get a good sense of it's heritage.

Last growing season, I inter-planted 1 S. pimpinellifolium, 2 S. peruvianum, 1 S. corneliomulleri, 1 S. pennellii, and 2 S. habrochaites into a tiny area. The pollinators were all over them. I collected thousands of seeds from the S. peruvianum, so finding hybrids might be as easy as growing out hundreds of seedlings and watching for naturally occurring hybrids. Unfortunately, if I saved the S. habrochaites seeds separately, they got misplaced, or dumped in with the rest of the S. habrochaites, so chances of finding a hybrid among them are much lower. There might be a hybrid (with S. habrochaites, or S. pennellii as a pollen donor) among the "S. cornelliomulleri possibly crossed" seeds that I shared. I certainly attempted to make that cross manually, and I watched bees making that same journey. We'll know it by it's phenotype.

Here's a labeled photo showing how closely they were planted together. (Basically, alternating species.) Wouldn't those be a beautiful decorative flower? That's what I intend for all of my tomatoes to look like in about 2 to 3 years.

tomato-auto-hybridizing-archetype-named.jpg

Photo from the auto-hybridizing tomato project.

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William Schlegel

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I do indeed like the showy flowers.

Zagadka and Joseph's strain of Solanum pimpinillifolium germinated today in the unheated greenhouse.

I had the day off today and it was sunny the unheated greenhouse heated up nicely- potting soil not so cold today.

I finally displaced my winter tomatoes and took All the tomatoes flats from the unheated greenhouse in. Today marks 8 weeks until last frost and I might as well get them going faster.

It strikes me that my orchard / garden expansion area is a colder field, closer to the hill and lower in Elevation. Last week it was under snow, this week under water.

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Vernal pool in orchard garden expansion area

William Schlegel

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Neat got an Earthway garden seeder today. One of the plates says it works for tomatoes. This should be interesting. Hope the soil dries out soon.

richard valley

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Location: Sierra Nevada mountain valley CA, & Nevada high desert

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Well, I/we grow tomatoes,(we have two ranches one in the mountains at 6800ft and one on the high desert at 4300ft~we've greenhouses at both these locations. Growing is best done at the high desert ranch as you can imagine. Direct planting is not a for sure thing and we need/want tomatoes for sure.
Regrowing tomatoes yes that does happen and they the come back every year, this year I re dug the beds so will not count on that because of rotating crops.

The water from the kitchen runs into the small trench outside and tomato plants will always grow and fruit there.

Tomato seed are in six packs in the greenhouse right now and the plants will be put out when sturdy enough, some plants bought recently have been planted, I'll use them for cloning, clones will fruit faster.

Onions have been planted where tomatoes were last season. The horse lunging soften and churned the earth and manure from the cows and horses dug in

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richard valley

Posts: 247

Location: Sierra Nevada mountain valley CA, & Nevada high desert

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Good luck with tomatoes, it can be done in 100 days but sounds like a bit of a rush, my wish for you is a greenhouse for an early start.

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William Schlegel

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Without intending to I've had an unexpected result in the winter tomatoes I started for early breeding. I've been using only OMRI listed fertilizer and fertilizing with organic fertilizers. I've also been growing the tomatoes under not the greatest grow light bulbs from lowes in the basement which is often on the cool side especially when I don't have the pellet stove fired up. I've also recently been working at a local organic greenhouse and my boss tells me some of the crops such a tomatoes and peppers can't make use of the nutrients in organic fertilizers below certain temperatures. So most of the older tomatoes are yellow. Particularly dark green veins and yellow in between. Some are doing great. If what I suppose is true they may be metabolically more suited to organic production at lower temperatures. Even if the cause and effect is different it's an interesting list. Not all has been equal so confounding variables may have kept some of these healrhy such as up potting and planting date.

Unaffected varieties and gene pool representatives:

2016 Current volunteer
Kibits
S. Cornelius muellerii x peruvianum
Forest Fire
Kalinka
Sweet Cherriette
JL Landrace 2015
JL 2016 deep frost
JL LX-M F3
Saraev M-22
Baby Boomer F1
Anmore Dewdrop (but not tumbler F1 it's parent)
JL 2016 earliest volunteer
Neandermato LA 1777 x other S. Hab
S. Habrochaites
Krainiy Sever
Saraev Shtaembovyi

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Joseph Lofthouse

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Location: Cache Valley, zone 4b, Irrigated, 9" rain in badlands.

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So much fun! We get what we select for. Even if the selection is inadvertent.

I didn't intend to select for varieties that do well with low-fertility. But by not fertilizing my fields, I have ended up selecting for plants that thrive without being fertilized. Then when they get into gardens with higher fertility, they may really thrive.

I make a point of using non-sterile potting soil teeming with many different types of microbes. I wonder if some of those microbes live in symbiosis with my varieties, and travel with them to other gardens.

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William Schlegel

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I kicked the tomato forest out of the house and into the greenhouse this evening- with a heater. Except for the new babies they remain under the grow light. Which is funny because they started germinating in the greenhouse.

Considering the results I found of healthy plants grown in the cool basement plus early cold soil unheated greenhouse germinates I have a combined list that did both.

Kalinka
Forest Fire
Solanum cornelio-muellerii x S. Peruvianum
2016 Current Volunteer
Anmore Dewdrop
JL Deepest Frost 2016
JL Solanum pimpinillifolium (not in original list of healthiest older plants but the old plant is healthy- just small and was overlooked.

These seven lines illustrate some things: 1. A group of elites that might be good for continued breeding for the two traits. 2. The potential utility of the wild tomatoes for breeding.

Forest Fire is a particularly exciting bit of germplasm. It's seedlings are outperforming everything else for early growth in the latest batch.

Other tomatoes I am also really excited about.

Sweet Cherriette- for bringing down DTM

Solanum habrochaites- cold tolerance and crossability.

Blue Ambrosia- from A breeder in NM fancy colors and short season. Good for crossing in colors.

Dwarf Hirsutum Cross- same NM breeder might be good for back crossing to Solanum habrochaites.

Last list for tonight. Things not germinating yet in latest batch.

JL Frost Trial wild Orange (no plants yet from this packet)

JL 2016 earliest volunteer (I have an older plant of this)

JL Fern (no plants yet from this packet)

JL Frost Trial Large Red Determinate (I think I had a weak plant of this but it was an empty cell when I was transplanting so no plants of this)

JL Solanum habrochaites (I have 1 older plant)

Neandermato LA 1777 x other S. Hab (2 older plants)

From here these were planted a little later in the unheated greenhouse and many come from recent acquisitions / last seed trade. They are also first attempts and they went into soil that had been sitting in the flat a smidgeon longer. Also the flat they are in is closer to the floor- might be colder.

JL Hamsonita - hah just realized this was a double planting, they are in another flat as well and germinated fine there. I'm gonna swap this flat out with the tomatillo flat and see if we can get these little guys to germinate!

42 days

Earl's Red Beefsteak

Siberia

Grushovka

Jagodka

Glacier

Ditmarsher

Coldset

Sub arctic plenty

I also checked on the early direct seeded tomato planting. After three weeks no germination. That's a good thing, it's far too early. Unheated Greenhouse results led me to wonder if some strains might simply germinate too early. This may still be the case but not yet. The ground even on my sand amended raised beds is much slower to warm and cool then are tiny pots. Weather conditions are highs around fifty and lows just above freezing this week.

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Solanum cornelio-muellerii x S. Peruvianum

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William Schlegel

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The first direct seeded replicate might have it's first germinant. I noticed one set of cotyledons in the Neandermato block yesterday. Low of 23 F predicted tonight.

Edit Note: May 15th nothing in the Neandermato block. I think the purported germinant proved a weed, I pulled a couple volunteer parsnip and Orach from that the area of the Neandermato block later.

Joseph Lofthouse

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Location: Cache Valley, zone 4b, Irrigated, 9" rain in badlands.

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In case you ever wondered what 10,000 tomato seeds look like, here's a photo. These are part of my direct-seeded and frost-tolerant tomato project. Many of these seeds are segregating hybrids, so they are really genetically diverse. Many of them were previously part of my frost-tolerance trials. I direct seeded about 6000 of them today (April 4th, 2017). It's 7 weeks before our average last frost date, and 9 weeks before I typically plant out tomatoes.

ten-thousand-tomato-seeds.jpg

Ten thousand tomato seeds for frost tolerance trial

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William Schlegel

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I finally got all the little guys in previous pictures transplanted. The damage? About 561 plants. Two of the beds in the 1/10 acre fenced garden if I really pack them in tight at square foot gardening type spacing. The next direct seeding might have to go into the as yet still unfenced but well rototilled orchard area.

I just walked outside to the greenhouse and took some pictures of the wild species tomatoes to share.

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Solanum peruvianum and JL strain Solanum pimpinillifolium with a few domestics

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William Schlegel

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I started out planting a few tomatoes because no frost was in the forecast on Sunday and Monday. So this morning it froze. Tomatoes in the greenhouse were fine. However I checked the ones out on the land and results were variable!

Larger older plants in general did better than younger plants. Many younger plants got a rating of mush. Some plants were completely unaffected.

Neandermato- possibly affected (looked a little rough before) but still alive.

Other Solanum habrochaites- unaffected

S. Cornelius muellerii x S. Peruvianum
Two oldest plants completely unaffected. Seedlings were either mush or unaffected.

S. Peruvianum seedlings- most were mush one was unaffected

Saraev Shtambovyi - older plant minor damage

Landrace 2015 older plant moderate seedlings complete mush to no damage

Betalyuk - severe

2016 current volunteer older plant moderate. Seedlings mush

Joseph strain S. Pimpinillifolium seedlings one was unaffected, remainder mush.

0-33 seedling severe damage

Saraev Druzhnyi seedling severe

Saraev 1-2 extreme

Saraev m-22 mush

2016 large tomato mix (my own) seedlings no damage or mush

Tomatillos - mush to unaffected no variety lost in entirety.

JL 2016 deep frost, older plant relatively minor, seedlings mush to severe,

Anmore Dewdrop, old plant minor, seedlings are mush

Kalinka seedlings- severe

Kibits seedlings - severe

Forest fire seedlings - severe

Nevsky- old moderate

Bison- old minor

Coyote old, minor

Sweet Cherriette old none- I think some seedlings were mush but it didn't get written down.

Hillbilly x Jagodka old none

I think part of what I was seeing was variation in frost severity but it's impressive when one seedling is unaffected and another is severely affected especially side by side.

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Largest oldest Solanum cornelio- muellerii x S. Peruvianum flowers in bloom (first tomato of mine to bloom in 2016).

William Schlegel

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Got to 30 F for several hours this morning. I sprayed water before the sun hit but it was too cold for too long. Most of the transplants died or are severely damaged. A dozen still look pretty good. The March direct seeded seedlings faired better. Most lived- around 40 healthy ones about an inch high.

Tomatillos and potatoes also severely damaged.

On a positive note this may mean I have more room for direct seeding in the fenced garden.

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William Schlegel

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survivors list from yesterday's frost:

Light Damage

1 Blue Gold
1 Sequoia Alpine
2 2016 large tomato mix
1 Zagadka
1 70 variety mix too late season
1 Forest Fire
1 Solanum Cornelius-muellerii x S. Peruvianum (2 frosts)

Moderate

1 Jagodka
1 blue ambrosia
1 Blue beauty
1 Sweet Cherriette
1 Silvery fir tree
1 Dwarf Hirsutum cross

Older plants alive at base 2 frosts all

2 Cornelius muellerii x Peruvianum
1 Neandermato
1 Bison
1 Saraev Shtambovyi

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Cornelio muellerii x peruvianum light damage

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Cornelio muellerii x peruvianum older plant alive at base

William Schlegel

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Yesterday morning I took advantage of the tomato frost massacre and the rain forecast for today which should aid germination I direct seeded 100 row feet of the fenced garden and 375 row feet unfenced as measured by pacing. I have about a 3 foot stride. I used a lofthouse style seed mix because I left my package of labels and pens. I didn't have 10,000 seeds but used my own seed mix from last year and several generous packets from Joseph and a trading partner in California. I noticed seeds weren't feeding perfectly probably because mine were clumpy so I went over the rows repeatedly.

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Not 10,000 seeds but I still had to pour some back into a packet

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Joseph Lofthouse

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Location: Cache Valley, zone 4b, Irrigated, 9" rain in badlands.

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Good work William!

We have cold temperatures forecast for the next few days, so yesterday I checked on the 6000 tomato seeds that I direct seeded on April 4th. I found about 16 plants. They were very tiny. Cotyledons and a tiny leaf. Then I planted the remaining 4000 seeds into a 50 foot row. It's about 3 weeks before I typically plant out tomato starts.

I walked through last years tomato patch and couldn't find any volunteer tomatoes. There were thousands of volunteer tomatillos. They have been growing for a decade as volunteers in the valley, so they do fine with cold weather.

I'm taking vacation from gardening for a couple of days due to snow.

tomatillo-frost-tolerant.jpg

snow-day-vacation.jpg

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William Schlegel

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I have one good patch of seedling tomatillos in my March direct seeding. It's the my 2016 home saved seed of the variety Terrapin. Simple explanation for this variety doing better is that I have way more seed for this variety because I saved it myself so I sprinkled more of it out of the packet. I lost one seedling of the variety Amarylla to the frost and see a couple possible seedlings in a grex mix I traded for from California. My lofthouse block of tomatillos might have one emerging seedling. So I added a few seeds to the direct seeding. The older plants I started indoors are all looking pretty sad regardless of variety.

Both direct seeded tomatillos and tomatoes had a way higher probability of surviving. There must be an inch high advantage to frost. Be it the physics of warm air near the soil surface or genes for early season frost tolerance that turn off as seedlings mature.

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William Schlegel

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At least Three closely allied tomato projects exist amongst the landrace crowd at the homegrown goodness forum working with Tomatoes. Frost/Cold tolerance, promiscuous pollination, and direct seeding. Actually as far as sub projects I think their are two types of high outcrossing tomatoes, a subset of us want fancier short season tomatoes, there is a high percentage wild cross idea afoot, and I want a really weedy cherry tomato.

I was thinking a lot about promiscuous pollination today. A few of my tomatoes are known for exerted stigmas and other outcrossing traits. Matina, Jagodka, hillbilly x Jagodka F2.

In the book "the Seed Garden" published by the seed savers exchange they suggest 10 foot minimum spacing between highly inserted stigma varieties and 20 feet for exserted. With greater distances for variety preservation.

Working back from this tomatoes planted closer than 10 feet apart should cross at higher rates. Exserted stigma varieties should cross at higher rates. So I paced out a rough 10 foot radius from my Sole Jagodka plant and came up with a list of 30 varieties within it's reach cross pollination wise!

In my March direct seeded trial there are 33 varieties surviving in about 15 feet of bed length. They are:

Matina (promiscuous)
Blue Ambrosia (high Anthocyanin)
Grushovka
Dwarf Hirsutum cross
Glacier
Earl's First Early
Ditmarsher
Siberia
42 Days
2016 Large Tomato Mix
Sequoia Alpine
Indigo Kumquat F2 (high anthocyanin)
Bloody Butcher
Siletz
Krainy Sever
Roma VF
Saraev M-22
Nevsky
Sungold F2 (promiscuous?)
Fourth of July F1
Silvery Fir Tree
Summer Girl F1
Pilarski Direct Seeded
Hillbilly x Jagodka F2 (promiscuous)
Deepest Frost 2016 Paradise UT
Sweet Cherriette
LXM F3
Lofthouse Landrace 2015 version
O-33
Forest Fire
Zagadka
Lofthouse Short Season Landrace
Betalyuk

Note: some lofthouse landrace individuals are potato leaves, some regular.

This entire patch has potential for crossing at a higher rate since it's all within 20 feet- also most if not all are within 20 feet of the lone Jagodka.

My Blue Gold transplant plant that survived the may 15th frost with it's top growth intact has it's first flowers. First blooms also have higher outcrossing rates. The top flower of a flower cluster appears to be wide open with a large exserted stigma. So I ripped apart a Sweet Cherriette flower and laid the anthers on top of that Blue Gold stigma... Only other variety in bloom was one flower on sweet pea current tomato. I did the same thing to it.

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First flower Blue Gold -open stigma exposed

Joseph Lofthouse

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Location: Cache Valley, zone 4b, Irrigated, 9" rain in badlands.

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William: That's a great looking tomato bed!

I haven't noticed any naturally occurring hybrids in my Jagodka population. However, it is highly attractive to bumblebees, so it is likely shedding lots of pollen into the rest of the patch. (I don't think that I would be able to identify a Jagodka X Matina hybrid...) That's why I generally call my variety Ot'Jagodka, cause I don't know that it's still pure.

In general, hybrid tomatoes are about 50% more productive than heirlooms or other stabilized varieties. And hybrids tend to be a earlier than the parent varieties. So in a landrace population, I would expect that any seed saver that was selecting for either earliness or for productivity would end up inadvertently selecting for higher levels of promiscuity.

Today I planted the survivors from this spring's frost tolerance testing. Some of them were flowering. About half of those that were flowering had exerted stigmas. Even though promiscuity has not been a selection criteria in the frost tolerance trails. I suspect that it occurred naturally, due to hybrids having more genetic diversity, so more opportunities to have combinations of genes that lead to better frost tolerance.

I'm finding off-types (natural cross pollination) in about 20% of the offspring from mother plants that had exerted stigmas. For example, last summer I planted about 72 Sungold F2 seeds. One plant was the earliest and had exerted stigmas. So I saved seeds from it and replanted. Among the four F3 plants that are growing this spring, three looked just like the mother plant, (small fruits and leaves). One plant had huge leaves and medium sized fruits. I'm presuming that it is derived from cross-pollination. (25% crossing)

However, in a different line, with industrialized flowers, I only found two plants out of 150 that are obviously off-type (1%).

I am changing the way that I grow tomatoes... I'm starting to grow them more like corn, where I do recurrent mass selection instead of line-breeding. I'm growing a lot of sibling groups this year. When I identify what I think is a naturally occurring hybrid, I'm planting about 25 seeds into a pot, then transplanting them as a clump into the garden. That lets me screen a lot of tomatoes with little effort. Sure I won't get the full picture, because they are crowded, but I expect to be able to see fruit color, growth habit (determinate/indeterminate), flower shape, etc.

Today I finally finished planting tomatoes!!! At least the first lot. There are some F2 hybrid seedlings to be planted in about 3 to 4 weeks (S. lycopersicon X S. habrochaites). And I might start a few more patches of naturally occurring hybrids. And some F3 seed may become available within a week or two.

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William Schlegel

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I have a smaller in parallel Tomatillo experiment. My transplanted Tomatillos are almost all dead from the May 15th frost. The resprouting tomatillo is weak.

One clump of direct seeded tomatillos is majestic. 1st generation Home saved seed more seed available= more planted. It massively outperformed it's parent packet packed for 2016.

So some tomatillo pictures:

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lofthouse-landrace-tomatillos.jpg

amarylla-tomatillo.jpg

William Schlegel

pollinator

Posts: 680

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The direct seeded tomatoes doing the best so far are the earliest planted in March.

I suspect as long as the variety is modestly short season ~60 days or less it will produce at least modestly.

Some pictures of some of the larger plants:

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Andrew Barney

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William Schlegel wrote:At least Three closely allied tomato projects exist amongst the landrace crowd at the homegrown goodness forum working with Tomatoes. Frost/Cold tolerance, promiscuous pollination, and direct seeding. Actually as far as sub projects I think their are two types of high outcrossing tomatoes, a subset of us want fancier short season tomatoes, there is a high percentage wild cross idea afoot, and I want a really weedy cherry tomato.

I was thinking a lot about promiscuous pollination today. A few of my tomatoes are known for exerted stigmas and other outcrossing traits. Matina, Jagodka, hillbilly x Jagodka F2.

The variety i was most excited to get and grow last year was 'Magnus' because of it's reported high outcrossing rate and exerted stigmas about 100 years ago. It's an older variety. Unfortunately i was not able to adequate grow and trial it because of my haphazard seedling starts dieing it being my first year and all and starting them too early. Though i will say that Magnus was one of the most vigorous tomato seedlings i've ever seen. I direct seeded it this year cause i ran out of time and didn't plan well among the wild tomatoes and it's mixed in grex style rather than by sibling group unfortunately. But it is a potato leaf one so it may still be easy to identify when they get bigger.

http://alanbishop.proboards.com/thread/7933/restoring-promiscous-pollination-tomatoes?page=12&scrollTo=120513

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Wild tomato pictures:

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Best surviving hybrid cornelio muellerii x peruvianum + direct seeded blue ambrosia

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Solanum habrochaites LA 1777 descended Neandermato

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Cornelio muellerii x peruvianum the plant Joseph thought had the slower growing father

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Cornelio muellerii x peruvianum the plant Joseph thought had the faster father

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William Schlegel

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Went out to the tomato patch for my morning hour of weeding.

On the largest Solanum cornelio muellerii x peruvianum (Fast Father) there is again a flower. The petals have yet to open, but is the style and stigma ever protruding already!

So I photographed it. Then I went looking for another flower. Found a sweet Cherriette flower- probably to young to shed pollen in my estimation but dissected it and put it on the style / stigma anyway. Also this cross should be made the other way and the ovules embryo rescued. Alternatively sometimes amazing broad crosses can be accomplished by mixing pollen. Both things to try later when I have more than a few flowers to play with. But who knows?

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Cornelio muellerii x peruvianum extruded style before petals 1

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Cornelio muellerii x peruvianum extruded style before petals 2

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Stuck a sweet Cherriette anther ring on the style

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Andrew Barney wrote:

The variety i was most excited to get and grow last year was 'Magnus' because of it's reported high outcrossing rate and exerted stigmas about 100 years ago. It's an older variety. Unfortunately i was not able to adequate grow and trial it because of my haphazard seedling starts dieing it being my first year and all and starting them too early. Though i will say that Magnus was one of the most vigorous tomato seedlings i've ever seen. I direct seeded it this year cause i ran out of time and didn't plan well among the wild tomatoes and it's mixed in grex style rather than by sibling group unfortunately. But it is a potato leaf one so it may still be easy to identify when they get bigger.

I am growing several potato leaved varieties: stupice, Matina, bloody butcher, white shah, dwarf hisutum cross 'Jeepers', and I see potato leaved sprouts in JL's landrace 2015. The potato leaved sprouts are easy to identify after a few true leaves.

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My potato leafed White Shah tomato in the backyard large pots has produced it's first flower and the stigma was modestly exerted. I couldn't remember if id examined white shah flowers at work but wondered if it's known as a exerted variety I searched yahoo for exerted stigma tomato varieties and while I found no handy lists I came up with this article. http://www.academia.edu/2173496/4.4_Extent_of_genetic_contamination_in_exerted_stigma_tomato_seed

It suggests that potato leafed is recessive and that if we have an exerted stigma potato leaf variety or single plant we can recover the hybrids with regular leaf plants as seedlings in the F1. Which would be handy with Andrew's potato leafed variety Magnus and make it very valuable for easy home breeding.

In the case of Joseph's Matina x Jagodka cross you would know it in the F2 with Jagodka as the parent and in the F1 with Matina as the parent because Potato leaved seedlings would serve as a marker.

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William Schlegel wrote:In the case of Joseph's Matina x Jagodka cross you would know it in the F2 with Jagodka as the parent and in the F1 with Matina as the parent because Potato leaved seedlings would serve as a marker.

I don't remember making a (successful/intentional) Matina X Jagodka cross. The plants that I grew with the name "Matina" were regular leaved, and determinate. In other-words, didn't match the description in the first two seed catalogs that I looked at a few minutes ago.

Last year, I crossed a regular-leaf tomato (yellow pear) with a potato-leaved tomato (I call brad). I grew the first generation out overwinter. I planted the second generation (F2) into the field last week. Potato-leaved is definitely a recessive trait. Some plants were potato-leaved, but most were regular-leaved. I don't even know why I'm devoting attention to the cross. It's not part of the promiscuous pollination project. I suppose that Yellow Pear is the most popular tomato around here among people that don't like tomatoes, and Brad is the earliest tomato that I grow. Therefore, something useful might come out of the offspring. Perhaps a population of early cherry tomatoes.

I've been thinking about markers to tell if plants have been naturally hybridized... One of the easiest for me has been yellow-fruited varieties with red-fruited offspring. Exerted stigmas seems more like a QTL, Offspring of regular-tomato X wild-tomato with exerted stigma are tending towards exerted stigma. Large flower petals are also tending towards being a dominant trait.

I had one S. pimpinellifolium plant last year that produced larger than typical fruits. A couple days ago I planted a bunch of seeds from it, just to check to see if it got naturally hybridized. I direct seeded them, so not expecting much...

My garden is pretty much a study in chaos theory. Nothing is as it seems. I become more convinced all the time that record keeping is counter-productive for me. I kept meticulous records for the cold/frost tolerance trial, only to discover today, years later, that one more variety in the trial was off-type. Sheesh.

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William Schlegel

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If Joseph hadn't grown Matina in the frost trial I wouldn't have grown it this year and we wouldn't have known it was off type regular leaf Matina! Maybe I will luck out and potato leafed Matina will have exerted stigmas- which could explain why Joseph's didn't have potato leaves!

Interesting out in the garden this morning. I was weeding the grass out of the March direct seeded bed again and I noticed the Betalyuks plant has really tight flower buds. I looked around the bed and 42 days, Siletz and a seedling from my last year's "2016 large Tomato mix" were doing the same. Interesting because they are still very short- but getting to be fairly wide plants! Also an interesting selection of varieties. Early germination ability while surviving frosts at 1" height + short seasonality seem to be key factors in the winners in this particular attempt. I expect these 4 to be at least relatively productive. Will be interesting to see if anything else catches up including plants from other direct seeded patches. Not many of the shortest season plants are among the most rapid growers. In the March plot many of the intriguing varieties are empty squares but I have a couple other plantings of most of those. In the landraces, patches of true volunteers, and the 2017 grex mix of Joseph's, my California trading partners, and my own seed there are occasional high performing individuals size wise.

The resprouted transplants are most often larger sometimes much much larger but occasionally smaller than direct seeded or true volunteer plants.

Also in that March planted direct seeded bed Sweet Pea Current and 2016 volunteer current have just recently germinated. We know that 2016 volunteer current is capable of producing a few ripe tomatoes before frost- it's a bit of a control. So in guessing everything short season that is way ahead of 2016 volunteer current is a better direct seeded variety. Roma- another control is a large seedling but it's so long season I doubt it will produce much. 2016 pilarski direct seeded is further along but not a front runner by any means.

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Cornelio x peruvianum with anther cone stuck on a second time

Andrew Barney

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i guess i will need to start taking some pictures. The Solanum peruvianum is flowering today. very long curved exerted stigma.

The Solanum pennellii F1 hybrids are so far my favorite tomato plants in the yard. They are so large and robust. I'm expecting good things from this line, and this project in general. The fruits are expected to be small yellow for the F1 generation.

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in addition i found this interesting photo of wild tomato crosses that you might find interesting:

William Schlegel

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Last summer I went to a farmer field day at a small vegetable seed farm in the local seed co-op. One of the farmers spoke at length about disappointing inconsistent same variety seed lots of tomatoes and the importance of growing your own to maintain productive local adapted traits within a tomato variety.

I ended up with 41 extra Sweet Cherriette seedlings. Haphazardly I up potted two of them into gallon pots. One of those two did so good I wonder now if it may be a hybrid. However most of it's cohort wasn't as lucky to get up potted to a bigger pot. So it's probably just a good seedling. However anytime you sow a row, a community flat, or a tray if a tomato variety size variation arises. Variation is apparent throughout the growing season. Seed saving theory suggests we should always save seed from our best plants. I bet it's fairly often the case that our best plants are natural hybrids.

So how much real within variety variation is there? I'm finding this year on some varieties I ended up with lots of individuals and others I have only one representative.

I reckon when I go to save seed later this summer I will have some jumbled up jungles and some individuals I can still actually tell apart. I'll probably end up saving a lumped seed lot and lots of individual seed lots for specific varieties if they are separate enough or distinct enough.

It would be interesting to grow out a lot of potato leafed plants next year from home saved seed to see how many are hybrids with regular leaves. Same with yellow red fruits like Joseph mentioned and any non-blue variety with blue fruited offspring.

I have grown out a fair amount of saved seed from prior years this year. It was not isolated so there should be an outcrossing rate. If I grew 100 plants from my own seed one of them might be off type. I doubt on many I would know the difference though! This the need to plant out a large lot of some kind next year that should show the hybrids!

My largest plant is a Blue Gold that survived the frost on May 15th remarkably unscathed. One if it's first flowers was highly irregular and some of it's flowers are still irregular I found some with stigmas exerted sideways out of the anther cone. If it keeps doing that all season I may have to grow out a lot of it's seed to look for off types.

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Joseph Lofthouse wrote:

I don't remember making a (successful/intentional) Matina X Jagodka cross. The plants that I grew with the name "Matina" were regular leaved, and determinate. In other-words, didn't match the description in the first two seed catalogs that I looked at a few minutes ago.

Last year, I crossed a regular-leaf tomato (yellow pear) with a potato-leaved tomato (I call brad). I grew the first generation out overwinter. I planted the second generation (F2) into the field last week. Potato-leaved is definitely a recessive trait. Some plants were potato-leaved, but most were regular-leaved. I don't even know why I'm devoting attention to the cross. It's not part of the promiscuous pollination project. I suppose that Yellow Pear is the most popular tomato around here among people that don't like tomatoes, and Brad is the earliest tomato that I grow. Therefore, something useful might come out of the offspring. Perhaps a population of early cherry tomatoes.

I've been thinking about markers to tell if plants have been naturally hybridized... One of the easiest for me has been yellow-fruited varieties with red-fruited offspring.

I planted an extra sweet Cherriette 35 DTM current tomato in with each of the yellow pear patio pots in the back yard. Any red tomatoes produced from saved 2017 yellow pear in my garden will be highly interesting. Though I also hope to try crossing them deliberately if there is time.

I think any project to make a shorter season yellow pear should be interesting considering the popularity of yellow pear and my own fond childhood memories of it. Yours has the potential to create a potato leaved shorter season yellow pear!

Yellow pear is a variety I wonder about within variety variation on. About 1988 we had an amazing tomato year and tons of yellow pear. I think a lot of my mom's faith in and desire for the variety dates back to that year's grow out. I wish we had known how to save tomato seed back then and had saved seed continuously from those plants because many subsequent yellow pears have been duds. How much of that is year to year variation and how much is within variety variation?

Also in regards to yellow pear my wife saved seed from 2014 when I was in California doing botany field work. If it had an outcrossing rate any red or blue fruits would be hybrids. Though we only grew out so many plants- there is a lot of seed left.

Another fun yellow pear cross might be yellow pear x blue ambrosia. Might be able to recover the pear shape in a shorter season plant with a blue blush.

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William Schlegel wrote:I have grown out a fair amount of saved seed from prior years this year. It was not isolated so there should be an outcrossing rate. If I grew 100 plants from my own seed one of them might be off type. I doubt on many I would know the difference though! This the need to plant out a large lot of some kind next year that should show the hybrids!

I estimate that the domesticated tomato outcrossing rate is about 5% when averaged across varieties, years, and gardeners. And because there is little diversity within the species as currently domesticated, most of those hybrids go undetected most of the time. In the two inbreeding varieties I planted in large numbers this year, I identified 3 off-type plants in 125 (2%). They were planted separate, but not labeled, so perhaps something interesting will call attention to itself later on.

In my garden, the outcrossing rate on mothers with exerted stigmas, grown near other varieties, has been about 20%.

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William Schlegel wrote:I think any project to make a shorter season yellow pear should be interesting considering the popularity of yellow pear and my own fond childhood memories of it. Yours has the potential to create a potato leaved shorter season yellow pear!

Chaos theory at it's finest. I make crosses based on what pollen and mother are available at the time I happen to be making crosses, and live with the consequences.

In my fantasy world. It would have been a short-season determinate yellow pear. Alas, both parents of the cross are indeterminate. Brad is often tied with Jagodka as my earliest tomato, so there is a good chance to select for earliness among the offspring of the cross.

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My March direct seeded list of varieties with tight flower buds was sorely in error.

Additions:

Roma VF
sequoia Alpine
Earl's First Early
Silvery Fir Tree
Sweet Cherriette
Lofthouse Landrace 2015 (an potato leaved individual)
Zagadka
0-33

Basically what this means is that any tomato plant of a certain size and above regardless of known length of season for the variety has a few tight flower buds. It's a phenology advancement but I no longer think it means much- it means the plant is about the size of a small tomato transplant. It means the plant is bigger but not necessarily earlier!

In the transplant tomatoes that got frosted on May 15th there are 11 varieties or species in bloom. Though the bloom is quite sparse. Not enough yet for bee watching, all the bee action is in pollinator patches, mustards, and the chia has bee action.

Here at the house in big pots I only have 7 varieties but 5 of those are in flower and two are setting fruit.

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