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.
