Cindy Haskin wrote:
William Schlegel wrote:How out crossing works in tomatoes in my experience:
Domestic tomatoes can be almost 100% inbreeding to about 30% outbreeding. This depends in part on pollinators available. They will accept pollen of any other domestic tomato and multiple wild species. Flower structure is the main game changer.
Habrochaites tomatoes range from inbreeding to obligate outbreeding. Domestic can accept their pollen.
Penelli tomatoes are about the same as habrochaites. Except growing the plants is tricky.
Galapagense, pimpinillifolium, and Cheesemanii tomatoes are about the same as domestic. In practice though this means they mostly keep to themselves or only contribute pollen to open flowers.
Peruvianum tomatoes can sometimes accept penellii pollen. The larger Peruvianum complex is a bit complicated. It can be crossed with domestic with difficulty.
Some specific Arcanum tomatoes can contribute limited pollen to domestic. But cannot cross back to the Peruvianum complex.
One specific Chilense population is known for both crossing with domestic and peruvianum. But growing it is elusive.
I have never seen or heard of all these tomatoes you have listed. Are they from other countries as some of the names suggest? Where would I find any? Would adding a few to my own future land race attempts be of any real benefit?
John Indaburgh wrote:I've found that tomato seeds germinate well in wood chips, undisturbed since the tomato fell on them, and since most weeds don't you get a big advantage. I have a lot of tomatoes that fall to the ground and get left there.
I only grow a limited number of heirloom beefsteak varieties. Mortgage Lifter is my shortest to harvest. I also grow Dester, Pink Brandywine, Pink Ponderosa, and Belgian Giant. So the volunteers are one of those, but I don't know which.
Paul Sofranko wrote:I had about a dozen volunteers from tomatoes that were tossed on the ground or were in the compost pile. Unfortunately, I didn't record what they were because I didn't expect them. Nevertheless, very few produced anything as they germinated too late.
john Harper wrote:
I think this is your best chance of developing a usable variety that reliably self seeds.Jan White wrote:I have 6-8 months of potential freezes. I've always had lots of volunteer tomatoes of all different varieties. I don't pick all my green tomatoes at the end of the season and leave the plants and fruit as mulch. If I have a tomato I don't particularly like, I'll chop the plant down and leave it in place as well. So lots of rotting tomatoes all over the place.
The problem I have is that my season isn't long enough to get much fruit off the volunteers. They don't start producing until right at the end of the season.
This year I planted some of the shortest season varieties I could find. Jagodka and Brad are used in the breeding work of one of the members here, so I got those. Then I got seven or eight others with names like Manitoba and Sub Arctic Plenty. I planted them in pots outside so they would come up on their own schedule. I got my first ripe tomato on September 2nd, which may have been a bit later than it otherwise would be because our summer was very challenging for unwatered plants this year. I'm hoping with some seed selection to improve on that date.
So I'd say just plant lots of short season tomatoes and leave lots of fruit from the ones you like.
One problem I have seen is that I get tomato seedlings popping up all over my 6a garden in the spring but most often they either get killed off with late frosts or germinate too late to supply useful fruit. Finding a variety with short season that can delay germination would be key to developing a viable freely reseeding variety.
Joseph Lofthouse wrote:In the spring of 2021, I did a direct-seeded planting of about 10,000 seeds of Wildling tomato, which is a hybrid swarm of three species of tomatoes. I planted about two weeks before average last frost date.
Seven plants survived and bore fruit. I collected around 1800 seeds. Maybe that will be enough to continue the experiment next year, maybe not.