2022-09-01T07:00:00Z
I started out with an idea to breed the polyamorous tomato with a variety that has a plethora of flowers on each cluster. I picked Berrys crazy tomato from wild boar farms. My idea is to select for both size of flowers and number of flowers in each cluster. The goal being to create something that could be s real breeding powerhouse, a breed that could be used as a catalyst for other selection projects in the future. I planted 100 seeds of each and planted them in upstate ny. I also planted a handful of random varieties. We experienced a moderate to severe drought and I 100% neglected care in my space. Out of those 200+ tomatoes I have only collected 2 tomatos. Others are in flower but we are approaching our avg first frost date in 2 weeks and I’m not expecting much. I count this as potentially a huge success for selecting hardy varieties. Seeds have been saved and I’m intending on planting out all of those, completely neglect them and intermix a few random varieties for good measure. In the pic is a huge tomato flower that is unlike any I’ve seen before, I thought it was a dandelion at first. I’m thinking it’s one of the polyamorous tomatos. I’m hoping it makes it to fruit before the frost.
Lowell M
This is awesome! I like the idea of using Berry’s Crazy tomato to increase promiscuity with the high flower count.
I had some megaflowers like that one in my polyamorous mix.
Please keep us posted on this!
Robert B
The mega flowers never made it to fruit. All in all I planted some 120ish tomatoes many panamorous and promiscuous and many Berrys crazy tomatoes, other random varieties. I did total neglect during a medium drought year and produced out of all the plants combined maybe 20 tomatoes. I saved seed from all and will replant next year. A few I believe are from Berrys crazy tomatoes so hopefully there was cross pollination. I have space for 200 starts between everything I hope to grow. I’ll plant out whatever seeds I collected and if I have remaining cells put into them panamorous and promiscuous seeds.
I also saved seed from a few neighbors in the community garden that will get planted out bc of the chance they crossed with a promiscuous or panamorous
Lowell M
I wonder if the mega flowers are self-incompatible or physically unable to self pollinate. I had a lot of mega flowers on the promiscuous mix I planted and many of them failed to fruit. Do you know if the 20 tomatoes came from promiscuous/polyamorous lines or were mostly self-pollinating varieties?
Robert B
In my planting I did not keep track of which plants were from which lineage.