Thank you so much for the detailed response William! I will move the other heirloom tomatoes near the exserted stigma tomatoes, none are GMO or hybrid or patented or anything. They are all from my own seed saving or from local seed swaps saved by local gardeners. I’ll also physically flag the Promiscuous Returned plants with the exserted stigma so I can seed save from those and share back to GTS if GTS would like them. I’m so excited to mix up the genetics of some new and fun tomatoes in the years going forward!
Matt’s Wild Cherry are SO productive here making giant sprawling behemoth plants loaded with fruit, and self seeding. I have approximately 45 plants in my front yard that self seeded, and my friend down the street has dozens sprouting in his gravel near where I gave him two plants last year. Matt’s Wild Cherry are also the most blight resistant to our humid hot summer climate so far (I haven’t tried Everglades Tomatoes yet). The only downside is they don’t pick clean, they split when you separate the stem. They’re tasty though! I’m not convinced they necessarily have any wild tomato in them, but I don’t have a genetic testing lab.
Got a 3 degrees Celsius min temperature yet again on the second week of August, so should be interesting to see what stands out.
Next year I definitely plan on direct sowing obligate and promiscuous returned once I have enough seed.
This year I direct sowed Q-series (year 2 for me), and various Mission mountain and Exserted seeds (year 1 for those). Germination was quite good, much better than last year. I thinned them last week, and I believe Q-series are growing faster so far. Probably because I saved lots of seeds from that one plant that grew much faster.
I really believe in direct sowing tomatoes in terms of the potential for selecting outstanding genetics among thousands and thousands of seeds, and I hope others will join us in doing so (same for TPS).
One of the promiscuous returned plants has these cool double flowers and that same plant is setting fruit lower down on the stem. I’ve seen little tiny pollinators, maybe hoverflies, visiting the promiscuous tomatoes’ flowers.
Yesterday I culled two of the first four to bloom of the obligate outcrossing or self-incompatible line tomatoes for not having stigmas that stick out a bit from the anther cone. The two keepers were both from a sub-line called #38. These were transplants. However, I have many more plants of that project direct seeded- and when those start to bloom, I think I will cull heavily for the proper blossom type.
Checked up on my transplanted tomatoes (as part of a new landrace for “bigger than cherry” tomatoes). This is the Q-series Panamorous tomatoes (Experimental Networks):
#38 came from my field last year. It was the most productive, producing 10x more seed than everything else combined. I bagged some blossoms to test for self-incompatibility. You can see photos of it here. It’s cool to see the diversity apparent in its offspring in my field this year.
I did a little experiment this evening. I had a very nice black plastic spoonful of pollen from a 1/4 pimpinillifolium LA 1375 plant I call 366 dwarf. The plant is important to another project because the dwarfing comes from a curly top resistant university of Idaho bred tomato named Payette. However, the pollen was about to go to waste. So, I went through the stand of transplant SI promiscuous project plants and attempted crosses with 11 out of 15 plants. The other four simply didn’t have enough flowers. I’m curious if this could be a more fun way than bagging to get some data on these plants. If crosses take- what does it mean? If they do take I’ll have some nice crosses to use in my other projects. If they don’t take that might mean that the SI promiscuous plants cannot accept pollen from such a source!
I hope to try the experiment again with the direct seeded plants- but this time use pollen from the parallel row of fully domestic Mission Mountain Morning x Brad’s Atomic Grape. Might take a while to do that though- will see if there is time in the morning and how far down the row I get.
The first of my plants grown from 2024 GTS Promiscuous Tomato seeds to flower. This is my first time growing them, but it seems to me like this plant still has a closed flower? Maybe a tiny bit of exposed stigma right at the end, but anther cone is pretty closed.
I have 4 other plants that survived and are further behind this one. Hopefully I get a few with more open blooms.
On 6/25/25 I cut off some suckers from my GTS Promiscuous Tomatoes, took all leaves off except for the growing tip and put them in a small container of water with a bubbler
On 7/11/25 I put the rooted suckers in 2 containers, one to be hardened off (1 hour outside the first day, 2 hours the second,…) and the second one to be put outside 24/7. The suckers came from outside, so they should have been pretty sun-adjusted, but my concern was that the growth that happened during its stay inside may be very sensitive to the sun and die off. After 2 days, I did not see any sun damaged on the “24/7 outside” tomatoes (even though it has been very hot outside), so I will keep the other plants outside 24/7 now as well and know in the future no hardening off is needed (yay!).
Planning to plant these new tomato plants outside mid-next week (dig a deep hole so the hole stem is buried). Picture:
I will keep track to see when they produce their first tomatoes, so with math I will be able to guesstimate how late I can transform suckers into new plants next year(s).
Yes that looks like a pretty closed flower. A tiny bit of exposed stigma at the end can be somewhat promising. Some also have anthers that aren’t strongly connected but yours looks to have pretty coherent anthers and not much of the stigma sticking out.
Your experience with Matt’s is pretty much identical to mine. I love their productivity and basically bomb-proof growing habit when it comes to pests and environmental conditions. I just wish they weren’t so delicate! My goal is to cross some thicker-skinned varieties into my volunteers eventually… something with color, a bit more fruit durability, and the Matt’s Wild Cherry growing habit would be a dream come true!
I think there might be one take from the experiment. On a plant that set a early tomato. I suspect that means that plant has two points towards it being Self Compatible.
I tried to gather a lot of pollen from the Self-Incompatible promiscuous tomatoes today. I found out that it is important to totally detach and split the anthers before letting them dry a little. I got a decent amount of pollen and tried quite a few crosses. The most important of which was on my own 356 line the 2025 plant of which is acting self incompatible perhaps and seems to be refusing to set a tomato. I was able to also use 356 as a pollen parent using a very similar hybrid anther scraping technique where I basically split the anthers open and then extracted the pollen onto a pollen spoon.
I appreciate the illustrated pictures of tomato flowers showing the parts and comparing which are outcrossing and self pollinating.
But when I look at the flowers on my tomatoes, prom tom and domestic I am uncertain.
Perhaps a zyne, like in the growing guide zines, for the tomatoes could include not only illustrations but photos of various tomato flower types and those also diagrammed to show the differences.
If they are in a zyne, they might be easier to locate rather than tracking it down here in some post or comment.
That could be helpful not just for me, but others too.
I rouged (culled) the direct seeded row of the promiscuous project that had been selected for Self Incompatibility today. I also pulled a few more plants out of the transplant patch of the same genetics. Though the transplant patch is not nearly as interesting just because of the smaller population size. I selected for exposed or exserted stigmas and also disconnected anthers. I culled all plants that weren’t blooming yet. I culled plants with very early fruit set. I’ll attach some photos of flowers of keepers.
Interesting at least one of the two survivors of this year’s adjacent direct seeded row of MMM x (Promiscuous x LA2329) would have been a keeper. I really hope the neighboring row contributes some pollen to it successfully because it’s not setting fruit yet and thus may be SI!
Some of my crosses with SI project pollen took. Also, some of my crosses with 356 pollen took. However, I am not yet certain if any of my cross attempts 356 x SI will be takes- some of them are definitely fails.
I left my garden for a month and came back yesterday to a tomato jungle.
One observation is that I have harvested 20-30 tomatoes in the “promiscious returned” row, and none yet in the “obligate outcrossing” row. I have about 20-25 plants in each row.
