TL;DR: Seeking Canadian gardeners to collaborate on direct-sown tomatoes. Goal: build a diverse, cold-adapted population. Open to seed sharing and trial participation.
Hello,
I’m wondering if anyone in Canada would be interested in collaborating on direct-sown tomatoes.
Primary goal: to generate a diverse population of tomatoes that can reliably produce fruit in northern climates when sown directly outdoors.
Secondary goal: for this population to be used for any other objectives individual gardeners may have: earliness, adaptation, taste…
How it works:
The idea is to save or obtain seeds from interesting projects and grow them outdoors, direct sown. Given the low germination and survival rates, an individual gardener could aim to start with roughly 500–10,000 seeds for 10–200 plants.
Seeds are sown directly 1–3 weeks before the average last frost, and depending on germination, we thin to the most promising plants. We then harvest seeds from fruits that mature before the end of the season.
My experience so far:
Year 1 (2024)
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Direct-sowed ~100 seeds from Q Series and Wildlings (EFN) on May 19
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Harvested seeds from 1 very promising Q-Series plant and 4–5 others
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First mature tomato: August 31
Year 2 (2025)
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Direct-sowed thousands of seeds on May 4 (2 weeks before average last frost):
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Seeds from Year 1 (~1,000–2,000)
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Mission Mountain Grex (100 seeds)
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Exserted Orange (2 grams)
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Mission Mountain Sunrise (2 grams)
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Big Hill (2 grams)
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Seeds from Year 1 had the most success, but I’m also harvesting some from the other varieties
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First mature tomato: August 17
Looking ahead to 2026:
I plan to harvest as many seeds as possible from this season’s direct-sown plants, as well as from other projects (promiscuous returned tomatoes from GTS have shown promise in terms of earliness).
I’m curious if others would like to collaborate, either through running their own trials or through seed sharing. It could be a great way to explore northern-adapted tomatoes together.
