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seeds and breeding

Dry Farmed Direct Seeded Tomatoes in 2019

William Schlegel

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posted 6 years ago

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This is intended as a year three extension of my direct seeded tomatoes threads.

I have an inkling both from recent experiences with under watering and reading about dry farming and dry gardening that it might be possible to not only dry farm tomatoes here but direct seed dry farm them and breed varieties for that.

I think there is both great variation in the suitability of habitat for that within gardening areas available to me and the genetic ability to withstand the growing conditions within the tomatoes I am growing.

Wild species and hybrids thereof seem to have tremendous potential for this. My favorite species complex so far the Peruvianum complex seems to have the ability to volunteer here. Moreover at least the Arcanum accessions I intend to grow in 2019 come from very dry deserts. My most successful Pennellii x domestic F2 plant in 2018 ultimately succumbed to overwatering which makes me think it retained some of the water sensitivity of its Pennellii grandparent. When I was gone recently for a month and did not water, only the domestic potted tomatoes looked stressed by not being watered. Habrochaites x domestic, habrochaites, peruvianum, and pimpinellifolium seemed fine.

Without watering for a month potted domestics Blue Ambrosia and Golden Tressette suffered but Amethyst Cream and Sweet Cherriette did not.

Generally it seems to me that my wild tomatoes and crosses are not ready for direct seeding. I don't have adequate seed stocks and they are still too long season. Therefore I hope to include them in dry farming experiments by transplanting. In my initial direct seeding experiment in 2017 they did not germinate adequately. However in 2018 Peruvianum and pimpinellifolium volunteered. My 2018 wild bed was watered minimally.

I have several potential sites for direct seeding experimental plots. One thought would be to use my entire outside the fence garden, though this may be excessive for an initial foray. Other sites could be a deeper soil moister area at the base of my hill, a dry shallow soil site on a small hill, and an intermediate site, then an even more mesic site at my parents hayfield. My backyard could work for a couple unwatered plants but I wouldn't have space for a full rep.

Another thought would be to do 20 foot x 5 foot reps with 3 plants each. Direct seed 10 seeds then thin to one. Transplant in wild species. Each rep might get something like 1 wild species transplant, and two individuals from my F2 Blue Ambrosia x unknown population.

It would also be interesting to test a number of varieties dry farmed direct seeded including:

Indeterminate
Blue Ambrosia
Brad
Sweet Cherriette

Determinate (this list could be shortened)
Big Hill
Forest Fire
42 Days
Jagodka

Wild
Pimpinillifolium
Peruvianum complex

Another related thought is to plant a few plants of pimpinillifolium and Peruvianum on pocket gopher mounds out in the wild grassland of my hill. If successful, they should reseed themselves.

There would be lots of room here for subsequent experiments or sub experiments. In fact 2019 might just be a few pilot plots I'm uncertain about the scale of the dry farming experiment just yet. Success with a pilot even partial, could inform scaling up in 2020.

2019 Tomato thoughts on what to grow out and how much:

Wishlist from transplant if get

Weight in Gold (4 seeds)
Wild Child (4 seeds)
Black strawberry (4 seeds)
Black Bumblebee (4 seeds)
Muchacha! (4 seeds)
Fairy Hollow (4 seeds)

To grow again: Direct Seeded

Sweet Cherriette (4 seeds)
Jagodka (Earls Strain seems earlier 4 seeds)
Anmore Dewdrop (4 seeds)
Krainiy Sever (4 seeds)
42 Days (4 seeds)
Coyote (4 seeds)
forest fire (4 seeds)
Blue Ambrosia ( large amounts as hybrids likely)
JL potato leaf exserted blue skinned RL exserted offspring F2 (large amounts as will segregate and hybrids possible)
Blue Ambrosia X Unknown F2 (large amounts)
Brad (4 seeds)
Big Hill (large amounts of home saved seed as hybrids likely)
Amurski Tigr (4 seeds- will replace with Black Strawberry if it performs well)
Dwarf Hirsutum Cross "jeepers" (4 seeds)
Brad x yellow pear (rest of original packet in search of short season yellow pear)

To grow again from transplant

Amethyst Cream (4 seeds)

Wild Species grow from transplant or just in pots in some cases.

Peruvianum (4 seeds as backup to volunteers)
Pimpinillifolium (4 seeds)
Galapagense (4 seeds)
Penellii X domestic (all homegrown) + 1 seed
Cheesemanii (4 seeds)
Arcanum (24 seeds)
Chilense (24 seeds- will grow in pots)
Habrochaites x domestic (all homegrown)

New Must Grows from transplant

Stress Tolerant Strain from Darrel (4 seeds)
Blue Speckled Favorite of Andrew’s (4 seeds)

Possibly others

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.

William Schlegel

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posted 6 years ago

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http://members.efn.org/~itech/

Found a couple of the same opensource instructions in a book on gardening. At the bottom of the page there is a list of root system sizes for various crops. 5.5 feet lateral for tomato by 5 feet deep for the variety John Bauer. This was in 1927.

https://www.seedsavers.org/john-baer-organic-tomato

That would suggest starting a tomato plant every four steps in a grid (my strides are about 1 yard). Probably say 10 seeds, thinning to one.

Dillon Langer

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posted 5 years ago

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Hey William, first of all good luck, and second of all, what kind of climatic limitations do you have? Like precipitation distribution or short season without frost? I know vaguely of a farm here in California that dry farms tomatoes, and we have ZERO summer rainfall, but that farm is close to the coast where it’s foggy and temperatures are cooler. They don’t direct seed though as far as I know. It’d be awesome to hear about your progress, and if you think it’s plausible with my scant rain here, and IF I can clear the space, I have a long enough season to attempt direct seeded dry farmed tomatoes.

William Schlegel

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posted 5 years ago

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Not much to report yet. I seed about 10 or 15 days before expected last frost.

From the past two years I know I don't really need to water till July. Though you never know.

Growing season varies a bit but typically frost free from May 15th to some time in September.

Direct seeded tomatoes can be ripe here as soon as August first.

July and August are our hottest-driest months and when I usually irrigate tomatoes, though total monthly precip is typically 1 or 2 inches. Total yearly precipitation of around 16 inches is fairly typical.

Here is what Web Soil Survey has to say about my site:

"145—Round Butte silty clay loam, 2 to 4 percent slopes
Map Unit Setting
National map unit symbol: 4vxp
Elevation: 2,000 to 3,200 feet
Mean annual precipitation: 10 to 16 inches
Mean annual air temperature: 39 to 45 degrees F
Frost-free period: 100 to 130 days
Farmland classification: Farmland of local importance
Map Unit Composition
Round butte and similar soils: 85 percent
Minor components: 15 percent
Estimates are based on observations, descriptions, and transects of the mapunit.
Description of Round Butte
Setting
Landform: Lake plains
Down-slope shape: Linear
Across-slope shape: Linear
Parent material: Lacustrine deposits
Typical profile
Ap - 0 to 7 inches: silty clay loam
Btn - 7 to 14 inches: clay
Bkn - 14 to 44 inches: silty clay
C - 44 to 60 inches: stratified silt loam to clay
Properties and qualities
Slope: 2 to 4 percent
Depth to restrictive feature: More than 80 inches
Natural drainage class: Well drained
Capacity of the most limiting layer to transmit water (Ksat): Very low to moderately low (0.00 to 0.06 in/hr)
Depth to water table: More than 80 inches
Frequency of flooding: None
Frequency of ponding: None
Calcium carbonate, maximum in profile: 15 percent
Salinity, maximum in profile: Nonsaline to slightly saline (0.0 to 4.0 mmhos/cm)
Sodium adsorption ratio, maximum in profile: 60.0
Available water storage in profile: Low (about 5.6 inches)
Interpretive groups
Land capability classification (irrigated): 4e
Land capability classification (nonirrigated): 4e
Hydrologic Soil Group: D
Ecological site: Clayey (Cy) 10-14" p.z. (R044XW124MT), Saline-Sodic Grassland (R044AP803MT)
Hydric soil rating: No "

I've added sand to some of the soils involved, specifically two dump truck loads back in 2012, Though there is one troublesome area with very bad clay soils within the direct seeded tomato field. It may have gotten subsoil clay deposition when a frost free hydrant was installed back around 2005.

If I don't keep this thread updated well I may do better here:

http://opensourceplantbreeding.org/forum/index.php?topic=13.0

William Schlegel

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posted 5 years ago

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I seeded today may 11th. About 700 row feet.

Alex Howearth

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Best of luck. The tallest, most productive tomatoes I've ever grown sprouted up from canning waste, unintentionally direct seeded in my garden bed. They came up much later than vigorous transplants, (about a month later) and quickly caught up, then surpassed my carefully tended plants.

Shortly thereafter they not only outstripped the coddled transplants, but more than quadrupled their yield. Moreso, the direct seeded plants were from hothouse hybrid tomatoes, with wildly different parentage lines. All those seedling from cherry to large salad still out grew and out produced all my carefully selected heritage and open pollinated transplants. The flavors were exceptional. This was truly an eye-opener and very happy accident.

William Schlegel

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posted 5 years ago

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Thank you, I replanted the seed of the hybrids I found last year. Plus some hybrids Joseph sent me. Plus some half wild seed from Joseph. Plus some Sweet Cherriette as a standard. I suspect I selected a little for earliness mostly inadvertently because of a shorter season last year than the year before. Lots of F2 seed which is supposed to be the most variable generation after a hybridization event. Should have a lot of adaptive potential.

William Schlegel

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A few seedlings are up. May 26th.

William Schlegel

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True leaves now. Maybe three weeks from blooming?

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William Schlegel

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June 14th. Weeding, looking for Joseph Lofthouse bred half wilds. They represent about 5.6% of what I planted. No luck so far but only 1/10 of the way through.

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William Schlegel

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Got the field weeded.

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William Schlegel

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Found the first direct seeded flower today June 28 Probably a Sweet Cherriette.

Over in my transplant field I made some intentional crosses mostly using Big Hill as either pollen or mother. Though one mother was a Big Hill cross F2 with good exsertion. Big Hill is a joy to work with when available as it has great big stigmas.

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William Schlegel

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Did a little rototilling to smooth out last weekend's hoeing. Rained yesterday.

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Joseph Lofthouse

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I found a bunch of tomato volunteers in my kitchen garden. It doesn't seem to have flea beetles. Hmm. I wonder if that's due to a flock of chickens foraging in it while the garden was fallow during thefall, winter, and early spring?

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William Schlegel

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30th of June: Weeded a bit more in the transplant tomato garden. I have the water on now, had to replace a controller on the well. So will probably commence watering it in July as per usual. Laid out and tested the soaker hoses today.

Checked on the direct seeded field. It looks pretty good but weeds are popping back up. Will need to work on it more next weekend. I think the far West row will be my watered control on it. It's downslope, so any extra water will go to the squashes.

It does occur to me that my system of transplanting and not watering till July seems to work fairly well. I suppose I could do transplanted dry farmed tomatoes and have ripe tomatoes a month earlier. For 700 row feet would just need 140 plants spaced every five feet. Might be an idea for next year.

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William Schlegel

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Didn't spend as much time in the garden as I would have liked this weekend. Rototilled some this morning but didnt hoe. Only got two intentional crosses attempted. Direct seeded plants are much bigger. Especially the patches I weeded first and ones in the best soil. Lots of flowers already on those.

Transplant patch has interesting plants. I think some Solanum arcanum will be blooming next weekend. Took a picture of one plant I thought earlier might be a three species hybrid betweem escuelentum, penellii, and habrochaites. It's blooming. In the picture the soil texture around it has big chunks. That was a side effect of using the Meadow Creature broadfork. My old sand mulch slid down between peds of clay soil as I broadforked. This resulted in clay chunks on the surface. However I am very curious to see what the infiltration is like on the beds when I start watering them.

Some have tomatoes already in the transplant patch.

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William Schlegel

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Solanum arcanum has a few blooms. One accession seems inserted. The other only modestly exserted.

Spread some pollen around the transplant patch amongst the exserteds. Put some arcanum pollen on some peruvianum stigmas. Then collected some hab x pollen without wiping off the arcanum pollen and spread it to other hab x plants and a few Big Hill and one Big Hill x plant. Added a little Big Hill Pollen to the mix and applied it to some exserted pimp types. None of the deliberate crosses I made on prior weeks seemed to take. I think they got emasculated young enough but should have had more pollen applied over a couple days. So this morning I just didn't emasculate as the exserteds take up pollen pretty well.

In the transplant garden on a really old plant from my overwintering experiment, there is one ripe pimpinillifolium.

Rototilled a little and started soaker hoses on garden sectors including the transplant patch. Note: it's the 12th of July and this will be the first watering. Also on the single row of the direct seeded field that will be the watered control.

In the direct seeded field, the best soils are becoming really obvious. Eight years ago in 2011 I spread two piles of sand and then grew squash. The pile bases still have perhaps too much sand. But in between the two piles got perhaps the perfect amount and now it's mixed in nicely. That is where the tomatoes are biggest. They've exceeded the size of the more crowded transplant tomatoes. Better soils probably means in part better tilth, better infiltration, and greater water holding capacity. This soil as mapped recall from an earlier post only can store 5.5 inches. So the best soils modified by sand addition probably hold more water now. My soil seems to loose water in the early spring that flows through the soil to a vernal pool. This suggests to me that techniques like sand addition, hugelkulture, broadforking, and deep double digging may have a big impact.

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William Schlegel

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I watered the control, the transplant patch and a few other things like squash. Then it rained nicely this morning.

Just finished another round of transferring pollen sans emasculation. Put some "pollen mix" tags on.

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William Schlegel

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20th July.

In the direct seeded patch: Blooming continues. A few tiny tomatoes have formed. It's still hard to tell if any half wilds are in the mix. There are a few that look possible but none that look certain, and those that look possible usually seem a little to a lot behind. There are definitely descendents of Blue Ambrosia, Big Hill, a Lofthouse landrace potato leafed, and lots of Sweet Cherriette. Potato leaved trait is fairly common and some look odd like my one known Fairy Hollow potato leaf. The control row stayed watered all week. I watered some of the surrounding squash.

In the transplant garden: half wilds are increasingly blooming well. Arcanum are setting fruit. Lone chilense is about to bloom. A special patch of a special Lofthouse strain is about to bloom. A lone Galapagense has its first flower. The possible 3X cross Hab x pennellii x domestic is getting nicely large. I hope it sets fruit, it has several penellii x domestic, several hab 3 loculed, hab x domestic, domestic, and a pure penellii plant nearby so there should be compatible pollen somewhere. I think in fact that it is starting to set some fruit. However the first infloresence mostly aborted save for one fruit so it must be self incompatible? I turned the soaker hoses on in the dense domestic garden beds but decided to leave them off in the Peruvianum complex bed. Maybe next weekend I'll give them another shot.

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William Schlegel

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26th of July:

Why do we water our tomatoes? Almost to the end of July and the plants look great. Direct seeded and never been watered.

Though it's been a cold wet year relatively speaking here.

Only a few fruits on the plants yet though. Next month will be key. Perhaps will not be a long season, but do expect to get some ripe tomatoes from it.

Small chance it could still dry out more and become an unproductive enterprise. In fact it's hot and dry today with no rain in the forcast and there is a big fire west of town burning a small mountain but filling the whole valley with smoke.

I think soil quality is key though and I got a new load of sand today, which I plan to spread on the poor soil areas of the field where the plants are small. Wish I had a humus source too.

Over in the transplant patch plants are actually much smaller than the direct seeded field because of my crowding habit. However, a few tomatoes are starting to change color. Ate a few from some really old over wintered plants. Found two ripening in the normal aged transplants. A F2 loft house land race potato leafed x unknown blue skinned and a commercial seed Galapagos tomato that Andrew sent. It's much more domestic like than the true wild ones Andrew also sent but it is early. Perhaps early enough to make it into my early keepers. Wonder how much real wild tomato is in it though?

The lone chilense plant has aborted two flowers and has more in the works but none currently blooming. About a dozen or so more in the works though. Flowers bloomed while I was away at work. Touched the second which was still attached and it fell off. Guess it disn't get pollinated or doesn't like Peruvianum or arcanum pollen.

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William Schlegel

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posted 5 years ago

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Mini experiment:

Spreading sand on the worst soils. So there is this one really tiny tomato plant. Probably too small for fruit this year. However: can I get the plant to grow? So I gave it some gifts. Soil repair. Let's see what happens.

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Joseph Lofthouse

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William Schlegel wrote:However the first infloresence mostly aborted save for one fruit so it must be self incompatible?

That is the observation that I have been using to screen for self-incompatibility.

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William Schlegel

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Joseph Lofthouse wrote:

William Schlegel wrote:However the first infloresence mostly aborted save for one fruit so it must be self incompatible?

That is the observation that I have been using to screen for self-incompatibility.

Amongst the self incompatible half wilds habrochaites you sent the trait seems pretty consistent already after your selection for it. The best two plants have both it and a nicely exserted stigma. Those two have the most fruit setting. It's also pretty common amongst my half wild patch from last year's saved seed- from the one plant that did well of habrochaites crosses. Only one seedling I think from the saved penellii seed. It's ok, but I have many better plants from seed you sent. The penellii hybrids are segregating to two extreme growth forms. Spreading and upright rigid bush. Upright rigid bush plants are fun looking. Hope they set some seed. The possible 3/4 hab plants produce the best quantity of pollen. They may become pollen parents of some next generation plants as I am trying to spread pollen around between a few patches of hab cross plants.

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Ate first ripe F2 tomato from a cross. Earliest ripe from a red exserted potato leaf from Joseph Lofthouse x unknown blue skinned. Now guessing father was a blue skinned bicolor. Set seeds aside to ferment, forty one of them. It is regular leaf, blue is half strength, and a bicolor. Not notably exserted.

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William Schlegel

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August 2

Thought maybe I spotted a 50% half wild with hab influenced leaves in the direct seeded garden.

Tiny tomato might be bigger after gifts last weekend.

Direct seeded garden is looking ok. Getting hotter and drier and wild fires starting

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Joseph Lofthouse

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Wonderful project William!

It's looking to me like the self-fertile trait is recessive. Therefore, I expect self-fertile tomatoes to be showing up in the 50% wild patch for generations. Fortunately, it's a trait that's easy to eliminate, just use pollen from the partly wilds to pollinate a wild tomato. The self-fertile pollen will be rejected. It's nice that the self-fertile tomatoes can't contaminate the self-sterile plants... Paying attention to fruit set on the first few flower clusters can help to identify self-fertile plants to cull. Once the bees get really active on them, fruit set is high.

Last year, some plants with 3 locules showed up in the S habrochaites population. I believe that they are descended from [S habrochaites X [Domestic X S habrochaites]]. That is exciting!!! Because that means that they have been restored to pure self-incompatible, and don't have the recessive gene for self-fertility any more! Woot!!! And, the fruits are big (for a wild tomato), and it's looking like there are about 5 locules...

Some really nice traits are showing up, such as huge flowers, and anthers arranged in a star shape instead of an anther cone. Wow!

I've been spending a lot of time pollinating tomatoes. Bees are also working the flowers as demonstrated by bruised anther cones.

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75% S habrochaites. 5-ish locules? Big fruit (for a wild tomato)

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William Schlegel

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Hmm, so if we have a homozygous female line that is self infertile the haploid pollen will self select.

In the heterozygous female lines then each generation should be 50% homozygous.

So if we can plant tomato to row, homozygous rows shouldn't need to be culled for self fertile tomatoes.

However wouldn't there only ever be heterozygous plants and homozygous self infertile?

Except we know that sometimes we get a Fairy Hollow not a Nymph so segregation goes both ways. Which requires selfing.

I still don't get it. However, seems like homozygous rows might happen going from heterozygous back to homozygous for the trait.

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Joseph Lofthouse

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William Schlegel wrote:Hmm, so if we have a homozygous female line that is self infertile the haploid pollen will self select.

I think that we can't have a homozygous self-infertile plant. The self-infertile trait works by rejecting pollen that contains a matching "S" allele. For example, if a mother plant contains S3 and S7, then it could be pollinated with S4, or S5, but not with S3 or S7. And the fully wild self-infertile plants can't be pollinated with what I'll call Sbroken which comes from domestic tomatoes. That's why the self-infertile tomatoes are such a powerful breeding tool. They are tending towards heterogeneous in many different traits. It's not just on/off. There are a multitude of different alleles for the same gene. I guess that you'd need a minimum of 3 S alleles for a self-incompatibility system to work, and the more the better. It has been estimated that Solanum chilense has 35 S alleles in the species. That is 35 different versions of the same gene.

Sbroken seems to be a recessive trait. I don't think I fully understand how self-fertile plants are segregating out of that... It seems like the self-infertile trait may not be 100% effective. And I started this project with only 2 S alleles. Others have since been added.

Hmm. I think that I will try both: Fruit-to-row planting to screen for recessive Sbroken. And back-crossing to the wild species which I would expect to reject pollen containing Sbroken.

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William Schlegel

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August 9

No ripe fruit yet in direct seeded. In 2017 it was August 1 and 2018 august 7 but it was a very late spring. My guestimate prediction is August 20.

Rain expected this weekend and caught some already. Bit of a jungle between rows one and two. That plant I babied with potting soil and sand grew. Some started to dry out, but now should be fine with new rain.

Fruit coming in on transplants. Found a neat one in the segregating F2s. Chilense still has no fruit.

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William Schlegel

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August 10

Found a pretty one, direct seeded never watered. Looks like father of the cross had stripes. Mom of cross was probably Blue Ambrosia.

Did some rototilling and sand spreading today. The storm I expected kept getting delayed.

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William Schlegel

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What I seeded:

Mostly F2 generation plants a total of 0.71 oz of tomato seed.

Blue Ambrosia descendents red with various sizes. Probably with a tiny bit of contamination from a suspected Brad cross. Father's unknown but I had an enormous variety of domestic tomatoes in 2017. Hopefully some were very early.

0.46 oz or about 65 percent of the total. Well represented as plants.

Descendents of purple skinned exserted regular leaf child of potato leaf exserted plant in Lofthouse land race 0.07 oz about a tenth of total. Potato leaf is well represented as plants, probably mostly segregating from this cross and Fairy Hollow.

Half wilds from Joseph mostly x habrochaites 0.04 oz about 5.6 percent of total. Poorly represented as plants only a couple plants detected and these I suspect to be mostly Fairy Hollow. Curious to see how much half wild seed I manage to grow this year.

Sweet Cherriette 0.07 oz only nonsegregating seed. I wanted it as a control for earliness and to see if it would cross naturally. May also be a parent of some of the F2's about a tenth of total. Well represented as plants but may not be 10%. Plants do best where they have less competition as are not as tall.

Big Hill cross F2 exserted from Joseph 0.07 oz about a tenth of total. Well represented, very large seeds probably contributed to good germination.

William Schlegel

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Finished off my sand pile.

Squash mostly revived.

Hab x in direct seeded is dropping blossoms

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William Schlegel

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Saved the seed of a Big Hill last night, well started it fermenting anyway. Sure is a lot of seed in one big tomato.

Once a beefsteak size obligate out crossing tomato shows up we should get quite a little seed from it. Wouldn't be surprised to have that happen next year from the 1/4 habs.

Curious though how much half wild seed I will get this year. If everything gets ripe should be hundreds of seeds. Not thousands though. Not a half ounce.

If I had half an ounce of seed from them I could seed my direct seeded field mostly with that, maybe add a quarter ounce of domestic F3 seed. Short of that it might be best to interplant the field next year with some half wild transplants. It wouldn't take a lot of transplants either. Eighty plants might do the trick. I've thought of that in the past, but hopefully I will actually do it next year. 5.6% was not enough. The one promising plant that seems out crossing direct seeded I will try to carry some pollen to this weekend from the other garden. Maybe if it sets a fruit from that and an early frost threatens in early September I will pull the plant and pot it up. Same with the quarter habs if they don't quite make it. If frost holds off long enough though I think they will make it to ripe fruit.

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William Schlegel wrote:Once a beefsteak size obligate out crossing tomato shows up we should get quite a little seed from it. Wouldn't be surprised to have that happen next year from the 1/4 habs.

Out of 250 1/4 habrochaites plants that I'm growing this year, I found one plant with beefsteak-type fruits. I expect more next year.

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William Schlegel

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This spring when I grew out all my seed from last year's hab and penellii plants which wasn't much seed, there were three very fast growing seedlings. Two in the penellii, and one in the hab. The penellii seedlings have now been identified to my satisfaction . They are big hill plants and not penellii at all, I dropped two seeds in the wrong container at some point. The third seedling, I still have doubts about. Maybe this really is a cross? It's a really domestic looking seedling. I think it selfed. The rest of the seedlings from the one hab plant that produced in 2018 seem mainly self incompatible and look hab like. It looks a lot like a domestic tomato. The two fruits were partly ripe and continue to ripen off the vine but more slowly compared to all other tomatoes in my seed saving pile. The two fruits are badly cracked. It smells tomatoey harsh. If it is the child of last year's hab plant the fruit was red and tasted lycopene tomatoey extra harsh. So either another dropped seed of a full domestic or a very domestic hab cross.

Edit: I tasted the smaller one, larger was too moldy.from cracking and sitting a week. I think it's an ordinary domestic. It's a bicolor so maybe a Big Hill cross. Not very interesting though.

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William Schlegel

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Interesting day in the tomato garden. August 16th 2019

First and formost.

In the direct seeded never watered patch I found the first ripe tomato! On the minus side it is a boring red with closed flowers. On the plus side, it beat Sweet Cherriette under the same conditions.

The second thing that happened in the direct seeded patch is that I found more tomatoes with interesting stripey patterns. What is more, some of those have the exserted trait or traits. If it turns out to be Amurski Tigr x Blue Ambrosia it could lead to some interesting color and flavor combinations with the exserted trait! Also could be reasonably early.

Then over in the transplant patch I murdered a clump of tomato plants. Specifically Joseph Loft house strain pimpinillifolium. I saved some berries for my seed stash, but I murdered the plant so that a clump of exserted pimpinillifolium Andrew sent the seed for can be seed collected without berry mixing.

Don't have a photo but 100% of the 1/4 hab plants have been loosing blossoms which indicates they all have one copy of a working S allele and one copy of Sbroken. 8 have set fruit, five haven't and it's still a long time till a ripe fruit.

Found a blue blushed tomato in Golden Tressette. Very Blue Ambrosia like but a pointier shape.

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Jan White

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Been following this with interest.

I haven't had the space up until this year to experiment with staple crops that might fail outright. I'm still growing long season tomato varieties from before I moved to this crazy, cold microclimate we ended up in. This year, lots of volunteer tomatoes came up in one of my squash beds, so I let them go nuts. I picked my first ripe fruit from my transplants (also unwatered this year, but we had a wet summer) yesterday. Volunteers aren't too far behind.

Next year I'm going to try some shorter season varieties, and I bet sucessful direct-seeded tomatoes are in my future.

Thanks for the motivation!

William Schlegel

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My ridiculously tiny tomato plant seems to have greatly overcome it's bad soil affliction with my copious application of sand mulch and potting soil. It finally has a bloom, and that bloom is an extreme form of the exserted trait. Interesting. Maybe it'll set one ripe fruit for me by frost time.

This exserted stigma trait has become foundational to my breeding program since I found out about it from Joseph Lofthouse and started looking for it year before last. It was this trait that allowed for the creation of my current crop of F2 tomatoes with their segregation of interesting traits.

I now have species tomatoes including
Habrochaites
Penellii
Peruvianum
Arcanum
Chilense
Pimpinillifolium
All with this trait and mostly with the S allele system as well.

Then there are half, quarter, and 3/4 hybrids with this trait and the wild species tomatoes habrochaites and penellii.

Then I have three domestic varieties with the trait and their descendents:

Blue Ambrosia
Big Hill (Lofthouse bred)
Golden Tressette (Kapuler bred)

I also have some domestics descended from plants with a weaker version of the trait. A lot of these are coming out not exserted, barely exserted, or just even with the pollen tube.

It seems like the more exserted the better for good cross pollination. Some of the S allele Nymph plants illustrate this well with their fruit set. The better the exsertion, the more fruit sets.

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William Schlegel

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August 22

We went out to check on tomatoes after supper as I got home tonight.

Found a dozen ripe ones in the direct seeded patch.

Was looking to sort them into exserted and inserted and encountered a difficulty. Some were done blooming meaning they are determinate. Intriguing. This means that determinate may be fine for direct seeded dry farming here, and also early.

Thinking the green fruits with stripes might possibly be green vernissage descended but uncertain.Picked one. Edit: it turned red, so Amurski Tigr was the grandpa.

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William Schlegel

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August 31

Direct seeded dry farmed patch is doing good. Think I'll call the stripey exserted tomato "exserted tiger".

That little plant is much bigger now and has set some fruit. Will be very weather dependant what happens with it.

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