(Greenie/Erin DeS)
Interestingly, Joseph’s seeds only fruited for me at a slightly higher rate than the other tomatoes. I’m so curious to see what happens this year!
(Lauren Ritz)
When I did cold tests for tomatoes I noticed that the underside of the leaves of many of the survivors turned purple in the cold. Not causation, no, but it indicates that something is going on that you may want to pay attention to. Perhaps a survival mechanism that you can use in future generations.
I haven’t planted any of Joseph’s tomatoes yet (I have some seeds; life happened last spring and very little got planted) but like all other seeds the results have been variable for what I did plant. Joseph grows in a short season, cold mountain valley with clay soil and plenty of water. I grow in the hot desert, with sandy soil and limited water. So it makes sense that his plants wouldn’t thrive for me, but there’s always a few that just take off.
(Lauren Ritz)
“Before I planted these out they were on my deck in 10C daytime weather for almost a month (I brought them in to keep them from freezing)…any blossoms the plants made at this time tended to be more exserted, so I’m hoping they crossed a little.”
I wonder if the exerted stigma might be a response to stress in some tomatoes? I’ve noticed that those I deliberately cold stress tend to be more exerted. Not always, but more.
A few years ago I found a watermelon that had perfect flowers. Joseph said it was a response to stress. Since I was growing them without water, that makes perfect sense. Only one of the four varieties I grew that year under the same conditions did that.
(Greenie/Erin DeS)
That’s how I interpreted the exsertion-- as one of those attempts to mix up the genes that so many plants seem to do when they’re under stress. It occurred to me to deliberately super-stress a bunch of plants in small pots to try and get them to cross, but I don’t think I could do it emotionally 
(Greenie/Erin DeS)
I couldn’t wait until a reasonable time to test my two best-tasting Lofthouse-stock tomatoes, so I planted several seeds each of the firm green berry and the bicolour (these need working names).
The bicolour seedlings came up largely very similar to each other, five near-identical plants so far, and then one that is having trouble shedding its seed coat and looks different than the others. At a guess this means it didn’t outcross as much; I’m very curious to see how it does.
The firm green berry seedlings are more heterogenous. I’m super excited to see what happens with them.
In the meantime I have first true leaves on the plants I’m going to cross into exserted orange, but I haven’t started any exserted orange yet. Oops.
(Greenie/Erin DeS)
Super exciting! One of my favourite plants from last year was a potato-leaf green-fruited plant, KARMA miracle. It was bred by Karen Olivier whose tomatoes often seem to be somewhat open-flowered. I planted some seeds from it and got a couple of regular-leaf plants in the batch; because potato leaf is recessive this means it probably crossed with something. I had been hoping for some new things to show up out of my tight spacing and panamorous seeds, it’s pretty great that one of my favourite tomatoes seems to have done it, and also that its flower architecture allows this kind of thing.
(Greenie/Erin DeS)
2022-04-25T07:00:00Z
Planted seeds for my northern garden, the one these seeds came out of, yesterday. I put seeds into 48-cell trays which I intend to plant out in 7 weeks without potting up in the meantime. I planted 1-3 seeds per cell, I don’t intend to thin, so some will be planted in clumps.
Planted:
48 cells of “everything mix”
12 cells from one particular bicolour red/orange plum plant that was a little crunchy and tasted good.
36 cells from promiscuous tomatoes that tasted good and were harvested mid-August.
I may add some solanum peruvianum and Julia’s golden cherry.
I don’t expect I’ll be able to harvest past the end of July and August is my tomato season, so I don’t expect to get much food out of this. I am very curious about what the seedlings and young plants look like, and how long it takes them to grow and ripen, and what colours and flavours I get out of the fruit. It’s been a bit since I wanted to check seeds a dozen times a day to see if they were germinating yet.
(Greenie/Erin DeS)
I also have 4 seedlings of “exserted orange”, grown by William Schlegel as a breeding tool, of which 3 are regular leaf and one is potato leaf. Potato leaf is recessive, exserted orange is regular leaf, so that means there must have been both some crossing and some weirdness with original seed. Very exciting!
(Greenie/Erin DeS)
2022-06-01T07:00:00Z
Hardening off. Should be in the ground in 3 weeks. I kept most of them in cells and planted a little later. It’s a good happy medium between growing starts and direct seeding for me: 36 or 50 plants per flat is pretty easy to handle. Those in yoghurt containers in front are my breeders. Not much variety trial this year because of the moving confusion, just my landrace growouts and deliberate crossing.
(Greenie/Erin DeS)
2022-06-01T07:00:00Z
After watching the webinar on dwarf tomatoes, I bought and just yesterday seeded uluru ochre, saucy mary, and bundaberg rumball dwarf tomatoes. They’re supposed to be quite short season and they are some lovely colours, so I expect to be making some deliberate crosses with them. Meanwhile it’s been quite cold here so everything is yellowing when I take it outside for some sun during the day; nights are still frosty.
Well, I’m also considering planting some wild species or wild hybrids. But yeah they’d be promiscuous too so…
