I’m envious. I thought I was going to be thinking about trees and ecosystems and turns out it’s all people and legislation. And maps, but maps are great.
On the plus side I get lots of winter time at home/not in camp.
I think we are in the same industry. Except I tend to be most focused on the small plants; rare ones, ones that are good for pollinators, ones that need to donate a bit of seed to my seed bag and ultimately the nursery, state listed noxious weeds, and the Pinus albicaulis. I have to share the Pinus albicaulis with foresters and silviculturalists.
Certainly adjacent industries anyhow. I still haven’t found my niche, I think.
Whitebark certainly needs all the help it can get. Now that’s a decent food tree for some very niche locations.
Adding a project fork for the year: I’m going to Flavour Test a set of varieties I think or know do well here. This will facilitate the part where I cross my flavourful tomatoes into more open flowered plants, and hopefully also give me a little more to work from. I need to go through my seed inventory but this is going to include anything in Karen Olivier’s lineup that’s midseason and earlier, some dwarf tomato project plants, and probably a couple more.
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Inventoried 214 varieties of not-self-saved seed with at least 2 seeds left in the packet. There are 2 for sure missing, I’ll need to hunt them down.
Most of my self-saved seed is a duplicate of the bought packets but there are my crosses, my discoveries (zesty green, firm green bicolor, store green cherryetc), and anything I actually used up all the store seeds and threw the packet away. Plus I’m not sure you’d call my promiscuous tomatoes anything near what they started with in the panamorous EFN seeds.
Now to choose what goes into my flavour fork, with heavy emphasis on greens and browns and some currants/wildy things.
I think peruvianum needs is own category. I wonder if it’ll set fruit this year?
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214 is quite a little as my grandpa always phrased it! I started with about 70 packets in 2017. Including some sorts saved over from prior years. Which speaks to the seriousness of your project! About 3X as serious as I was seven years ago! I’m closing in on 300 accessions in my spreadsheet though I may have used a few up last year and created a few new ones. I don’t think I have updated it since May last year. I did quite a few data sort spreadsheets too where I just kind of like sorted out a list of this or that. So far this winter I have added about 10 or so varieties. Tomato addiction is real! I reckon I could have stuck with my 10 favorites from 2017 and an accession of Solanum habrochaites like Joseph’s Neandermato and been about just as productive as a tomato breeder.
With all those accessions which ones are actually early enough to be good breeding material in Northern BC? What is your top ten list for earliness?
Peruvianum is a different beast but it can be crossed with difficulty. If I had fewer responsibilities, and more time, I think I would go for it. It is really just a matter of embryo rescue which isn’t that big a deal. However, it would be nice to have the ability to make about 100 crosses on the same day and then the freedom of schedule to rescue them at the precise number of days later. Then just a good tissue culture set up and a dissecting scope. It isn’t rocket science but it feels like its just a little more than I can do.
Andrew sent Joseph and I a large number of accessions he hoped would solve the difficulty of crossing with it. I’ve done tiny seed increases on those, sent some back to Andrew, sent some to the guys at EFN. One I grew out in 2022 seemed to be almost domestic about where the habrochaites crosses were a few years back. Unless it got crossed with something- I haven’t been protecting them from that.
2017 is when I bought this place. 2018 was my first garden here in the north; before then I was in rentals on the coast and never grew more than 16 types in a year (black plum was one of the best back in the city but I’dhave to look at records, I did 5-8 favourites then 5-8 new ones every year to see if they could displace a favourite. It was a good system, but it was in buckets and first year lasagna beds and half the time in moving trucks every year).
2018 was the first garden, so it had my favorites from the coast, then we were evacuated for wildfires so when I got back the greenhouse was so overgrown I couldn’t get into it. I think there was one native sun outside the greenhouse that fruited? Oh, and a principe borghese that surprised me by the whole plant ripening outside the greenhouse before frost. I picked the whole thing and hung it up inside to eat off.
2019 I planted um, 15 varieties and 2 replicates of each? Probably very similar to 2018. I was still following the common wisdom that tomatoes don’t ripen outside here so I didn’t try. Greenhouse was starting to get shade (the sun is lower here than I thought, and I was at work a lot, aspens were growing fast). I think this year and the next I got Native Sun fairly early in the lineup, stupice, bloody butcher. Maya and Sion’s Airdrie Classic was pretty early and also it was tasty, it’s surprise/impressed me a couple times now. I wasn’t recording first harvest date at this time since I couldn’t imagine having so many plants I didn’t remember everything that happened ever.
2020 first tomato on lughnasadh, Aug 1: moravsky div, I’d started planting in the yard too outside the greenhouse. That was a cold spring, I had the heat on in the house till mid July. I tried growing in buckets on the deck too but up there it was getting to 5C at night. I think this was the year I realized i could just move the fenceposts on the garden and make it bigger and I did a ton of barley and wheat trials. Tomatoes seemed like they’d never be super tasty up here. I think this was a silvery fir tree, bloody butcher, Maya and sion sort of year. Oh, and rozovaya bella which actually tastes good, I should grow it again. Either Jory or Katja (heart shaped big sorta determinate seeming red) did a heavy surprisingly early yield both this year and the next, but wasn’t in the earliest half dozen.
Above poverty line with an unlimited garden, what an amazing place to be.
2021 I’d discovered the OSSI and permies forum, you, and Joseph. I tilled the south-facing pig-field, then free of aspen shade, and interplanted rows of earlies and promiscuous toms as pollen traps. First ripe tomato Sweet Cherriette July 8, followed by bloody butcher (which was the first to ripen two simultaneously), followed by exserted orange (on three separate plants at the same time!) and my grocery store green cherry. Then by July 20 I also had Cole from Annapolis, Silvery Fir Tree from Annapolis, Sweet Apertif from Casey’s, Matt’s Wild Cherry from Salt Spring seeds via a friend, so she’d saved the seed up here one year already, and I think a Brad. Mikado black would have followed soon after. That was the heat dome year, where for a week or two we reached what most of the US considers normal summer temperatures. Later the promiscuous toms followed, about half of them ripened at least one fruit. Summary of noteworthy ones from the year at Captcha Check
This was the year I learned saving seed cramps my tomato eating style, because the first fruits get labeled and taken inside instead of going into my mouth.
Did a lot of seed swapping online for greens and brown/blacks to cross into the promiscuous bunch next year, before I tight I was moving, and doubled my collection of seeds.
2022: planted nothing experimental, only tomatoes I expected to put in pots and breed from during the move. I’ve listed my successful crosses way above. Earlies were, in no order: minsk early, silvery fir tree, moravsky div, uralskiy ranniy, exserted orange, a karma either purple or purple mf, either gobstopper or galina but this was the year my sharpie didn’t stick to the labels, grocery store green. Zesty green which I think is an offtype of karma miracle, it just showed up one day. Sweet cheriette was a later early, definitely not the first. Of the promiscuous tomatoes there was a brad-looking one that came first. All the promiscuous tomatoes were in surprise shade.
Now: If you ask me for general impressions: native sun, bloody butcher, maya and sion, sweet cheriette, silvery fir will always at least ripen. I think minsk early too. Looks like grocery store green is joining that lineup but i might not put money on anything else. Silvery fir might be a few days later but it’s probably more reliable for reasonable yield. Taiga is the biggest tomato that’s ripened here but I wouldn’t trust it every year. Mikado black is the second- biggest; both are tasty. There’s no one reliable first, and the 2021 early trial had a bunch of nondescript reds come in about the same time (cole, glacier, etc)
Apologies, this is long and disorganized and written on my phone. If I had a real screen you’d get a real bullet point list 
For what I’m doing breeding-wise? Minsk early is my pick of the early round ping-pong reds, it has big seeds but is reliable and productive. Mikado black just squeaks into being early enough to produce, while still tasting good. The karmas are reasonably early and taste actually good. Exserted orange is early and reliable for me. Silvery fir tree is a rock and i think it’s pretty. All the above have some level of exposed stamen/exsertion here reliably so they’re easy to work with. I’m reminded of rozovaya bella. I didn’t realize my grocery store green cherry was so early. There are a couple tasty plants I pulled out of the promiscuous tomatoes. I want to mix up the above lot and see what happens. There’s something sketchy going on up here with solanum pollination where I don’t think my pollinators are up to the task and honestly? I think I’m going to focus on setting myself up for plants that will cross here over strict earliness. I expect that looks like using PL mothers, dusting RL pollen on lots of open flowers without radical flower surgery, and seeing what my offspring look like. Once I have a pool that crosses with my level of attention/skill/time, and that I know has flavours I like in it, I’ll take it from there.
Sweet cherriette is neat but I don’t want a single tiny ripe fruit and then a week staring at a huge mass of green fruit and then another single tiny ripe fruit, it’s early but then 90% of the fruit waits until everything else is going. And it’s so hard to cross with! I mean, I’ll play with it of course but I’m looking forward to getting my hands on your crosses eventually.
I’m really curious to see how my F1s and F2s do in terms of earliness here. Will anything be reliable to mid-July? Early July? As you see, my range of first tomato dates is so variable: July 8 to Aug 1 or maybe 2018 or 2019 was even later. If I can reliably get tomatoes in early July, that taste good, I’m probably happy. I’m just starting to do manual crosses, so I don’t know what to expect.
And I will of course keep testing 20-50 new ones a year, and folding in things that I love.
Also I will 100% join the tomato breeding commune with joint-use embryo rescue equipment.
I wish could start a tomato breeding commune now! I have a laminar flow hood from FungiPerfecti.com from 2009 but I need a dissecting scope. I took a plant tissue culture course, and we rescued a wheat embryo in 2012.
Artisan seeds offered some internships, or some such last year and I could see burning some vacation time on that.
I finally managed to make a cross with Mission Mountain Morning x Sweet Cherriette after all these years last year.
I think you’ve mentioned Exserted Orange before and every time I am sort of like “wow really a tomato I grew from the F2 in my garden for a few generations?” I don’t remember if you said you got it from EFN or Snake River as they both ship to Canada. I think EFN got F3 2020 seed and Snake River Got 2020 and F4 2021 seed or something. I want to make it a priority to cross Exserted Orange and Exserted Tiger with Mission Mountain Morning in 2023. Then Snake River was going to grow some 2022 seed and I opted out so I could make more crosses and I did. Though not with Exserted Orange though I did grow some not-isolated F5 plants and they likely crossed with something else if I saved any seed.
Keep in mind that the F1 can sometimes be downright boring and the F2 is where the magic happens, but sometimes it takes a huge grow out!
That is super cool, both the course and the embryo. There’s nothing like that near me. I’m going to avoid a long digression on synthetic wheat here.
You know how when Fukuoka started doing his thing, eventually people just came and started working with him? Maybe a tomato breeding commune will, in fact, arise the same way.
We have a fair bit of internship support for learning the business end here but not so much for the fun parts.
That is super exciting news about sweet cherriette! I’m impressed that you’re not growing it out this winter as we speak. I ended up just dropping the sweet cherriette anther cones on things since nothing up here apparently produces pollen except zesty green, and the only thing that fruited was zesty green. Which is PL. Fingers crossed.
My exserted orange source was EFN, though tbh crossed F5 sounds like more fun. And this year I get to grow out my own pollen-trap exserted orange, which is exciting! Since it actually makes reasonable fruit I win either way.
Maybe it’ll get boring eventually. At this point I’m still at the “scream happily and dance around because I get to play with something no one has seen before” stage. I imagine if I get through to several F3s with nothing interesting that will fade.
How big is a huge grow out? I’m interested to see which of my projects my attention follows, I know I have a lot on my plate.
Some @MarkReed tomatoes are on my list and I’m afraid they’re going to take one look at my climate and immediately die.
I am not perfectly sure how big a huge growout is. I suppose one could do the math sort of thing and calculate like how many seeds of the Mission Mountain Rising project F2 of MMM x Aztek I need to grow to get potato leaves, blue, exserted, Dwarf, bicolor back in one package.
Oh I already managed to grow the F1 of MMM x Sweet Cherriette so I have both F1 and F2 seed to plant. Now that one I want earliness, potato leaf, blue, and bicolor back.
I sort of with the new job situation have more difficulty doing much of a winter grow.
PL and dwarf at least are easy… do you actually know rough mechanism or ratios for blue, exserted, bicolour?
As for earliness… waves hands
I had no idea you’d grown that out! Do you have pictures?!
I keep thinking about hydroponics as the solution to the F1 winter grow-out, but I’ve noticed a couple crosses behaving very oddly in there. Definitely not bred for it. Peppers love it though.
Hmm one out of a fairly large number usually has the stigma I am looking for. Blue is simpler than it should be, just a numbers game. bicolor I think is super simple. Earliness has got to be like yield a bit what did the plant genetics prof call the term for that? Though it is simple enough to pick out.
I don’t know about pictures it was an F1, so it was a boring little red cherry on an indeterminate plant.
Did you grow these in 2022, or you still have seed he sent out? I’ve just been packaging up the seed orders from my form and I can still add more if you want the Mark Reed tomatoes that survived in my summer. Also I have lots of hopi tobacco.
That will be fun to see how they do in BC.
Blue and bicolour are single gene or few-gene system or? Is there a cheat sheet for this stuff somewhere, I swear I found a resource once that listed lots of common tomato traits but that was before all this blue and stripey nonsense.
I have seed he sent out, giving the little guys a year of adaptation halfway sounds much kinder. And tobacco! Maybe I should fill out one of your Google forms <3 How were your peruvianums this year?
I wonder how many growing days we actually have any temperature overlap at all!
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Unfortunately i didn’t plant any in a greenhouse, and the half a dozen I planted outside died like most of the others from blight. I was a little distracted by other things in the early summer (oaxaca and too much work), so I didn’t actually watch their disease progression, all I knew was that everything was dead and I couldn’t find any Peruvianums in the tomato row, but I had planted them. This year I’ll plant a few in a greenhouse, I missed the melon surprise flavor.
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I’m so sad that it’s going to take me how many years to taste them! Maybe one of the best parts of a hypothetical gathering is getting to taste stuff!