Sorry for the confusion, the Texas Wild cherry is not the one with the long styles. I should have broke my post into two posts.
The tomato plant with styles that’s comically long is an unknown variety, it came from a mixed tomato seed packet from HR seeds. If I get some seeds back from it I’ll let you know. It’s got some fruit on it, but who knows, I have really bad luck with tomatoes.
Our daily heat index is bordering 100 and will be pushing 110 again soon. I figured the flowers die from heat and drought but if I remember I’ll try to watch closer. I might also try to aid their pollination like you say or I might not.
As far as making manual crosses with tomatoes, everything I have seems like high effort and low reward so I’m not excited enough to actually do any right now. If I find something that really blows me away I might try but otherwise Joseph’s teaching really hit home with me and I just want to let nature do what it does.
In 2021 I had good success with some natural crosses between Mission Mountain Sunrise and unknown fathers. In 2022 I created 4 crossing blocks with Mission Mountain Morning which I created by crossing Mission Mountain Sunrise a potato leaf with Big Hill HX-9 which has better exsertion of the style and stigma. I did an additional 2022 crossing block with Mission Mountain Sunrise given its 2021 success. The result was pretty bad. In four of the five blocks I found no crossing. In the fifth I had crossing. A F2 potato leaf Mission Mountain Morning had extreme exsertion in the garden where I planted everything else closely together. Recently the grow out of those F1’s has been ripening which leads me to know a few things about what the fathers are. They were likely mainly beefsteak or large types. One was a blue skinned bicolor tomato (these are not rare in my garden). Another was a bicolor tomato. One was red. That suggests at least three fathers. There may also be yellow non-bicolor tomatoes which would suggest a fourth. I thought there were also small ones, but I am not certain now as the MMM x Sweet Cherriette is adjacent, and a few branches have grown over. My take aways are that if you want natural crossing you need to plant extremely close together, you need to have flowers capable of receiving pollen, and you need to have perhaps multiple fathers available to contribute pollen.
In 2017 I made crosses on an exserted stigma strain of Blue Ambrosia without emasculating which led to Exserted Tiger and likely a lot of unknown reds. However, I also added pollen manually and I think this worked great.
In the 2023 grow out I am doing direct seeded of Joseph’s project there are two potato leaf plants in one row and all the rows are extremely dense. I am curious to find out if those two plants are volunteers of Mission Mountain Morning or if they are Brad descendants from Joseph’s promiscuous tomato project. It is notably a likely possibility that the unknown Lofthouse potato leaf that was the mother for Mission Mountain morning may have been Joseph’s Brad but was in a mix from Joseph. In either case I will save some seed from those plants separately and grow a flat of it next spring to see if regular leaf seedlings emerge and what percentage.
Someone I know is growing the hybrid tomato called Talladega and it is setting fruit in this 95-100 plus degree heat. He keeps it where it gets about 6 hours of sunlight and evening shade, which probably helps, and he waters them everyday, but still. He’s the only one I know of that has tomatoes setting fruit here in this blazing heat. I expected them to taste bad but they don’t. Won’t blow your socks off but they’re decent.
Heat tolerance and heat tolerance breeding is something that may be important with tomatoes. My usual tomatoes seem to do ok with the heat we get so far. However, I did get a packet of Flamenco from Lee Goodwin’s J and L gardens in New Mexico a few years ago from his heat tolerant section. It is also available from Native Seed Search. It is a carrot leaved tomato like its ancestor Silvery Fir Tree. Silvery Fir Tree is nicely early season so it already has some potential for earliness which is important here. I have at least one crossed tomato forming on my Flamenco plant this year. Flamenco x (MMM x Galapagense hybrid). I suspect that any of the equatorial and or desert wild species tomatoes may be good sources of heat tolerance as well. If this Talledega hybrid does well in your area, and if research doesn’t come up with any problems with using it for breeding, it could be a good tomato to make crosses with.
After what I learned this year and discussions in this group, I’m gonna try to be much more targeted. I’ve got a couple hybrid varieties I’m eyeballing, a couple heirlooms, both hopefully I can baby, and I’m also gonna throw a bunch of stuff at the wall again. I’m gonna shoot for some hand crosses but loosely labeled and grouped.
As far as patents and stuff like that I don’t plan on selling my seeds. Maybe you can explain what the possible ramifications are but it seems it would be insignificant if there’s no profit involved.
I am not sure. Definitely not a legal expert. Heirlooms are fair game though! I was worried I had included some things I shouldn’t have and then found out it was ok (by asking people who bred or were responsible). I would be hesitant to add a new hybrid from a big company as they are the ones most likely to slap a patent on something and defend it. Hybrids that have been on the market for years are probably completely ok. Though it never hurts to ask someone who would know (not me I don’t).
I can’t say I’m breeding tomatoes in any intentional way. I am far behind you guys and have only started bothering to actually look at the flowers themselves…
However, I just wanted to share my humble ongoing selection for direct seeded tomatoes (any darn tomato!) in zone 5.
The pics attached show the small patch where I planted lots of seeds in April. They started growing in June and some are setting fruit now. Already culled all but the most vigorous plants. Will save seeds from this bunch, mix with a few promising other “early” varieties and repeat every year.
I did the same with peppers but the results as for now are not even worth photographing:(
I would happily trade you seeds Emily for any of my other accumulated exserted stigma varieties.
Including: Blue Ambrosia, Big Hill, Exserted Tiger (bred by me), Exserted Orange (collaboratively bred and named by me), and Golden Tressette.
Same is true for Rylan’s extreme exsertion find if you see this Rylan and you saved seed.
On a related note: I finally deliberately crossed the unrelated lines Exserted Tiger and Exserted Orange in 2023. I’m curious to see if in the F1 in 2024 this leads to more exsertion, less exsertion, or about the same level of stigma exsertion. It would be interesting to try to create a mixed population with only exserted strains as founding populations. Not all exserted strains are equal either in my opinion. In some it seems like the trait skips generations probably due to environmental factors. My Mission Mountain Sunrise came from a potato leaf strain like that, that may be Joseph’s Brad but which I called something like “Unknown Lofthouse Potato Leaf Exserted” for a long time. When I crossed Mission Mountain Sunrise with Big Hill to create Mission Mountain Morning I recovered an extremely exserted plant in the F2, but in the F3 I wasn’t sure I was impressed and didn’t particularly find an exsertion favorite, though did save some seed- may have the year skipping behavior. Not sure how much that matters. As long as you have an occasional plant with extreme exsertion, growing close to other varieties, and you save lots of seeds from that plant when it does happen, you will likely get natural crosses in my experience.
I’ll check and see if I did but I might have mixed it in a package with other tomatoes. I think the exsertion had something to do with the heat where I live.
I found a package labeled “ex tomato”. Looks like I put a few different tomato strains in there that had exsertion but it’s not a whole lot, maybe 30 seeds. You can have them.
That is very kind of you! However, I have many thousands of seeds from exserted stigma tomato plants. My interest is mainly a curiosity about differences between exserted strains if any. So I would suggest keeping those and making sure to grow them out and look for natural crosses. Also plant other tomatoes nearby to encourage more natural crosses for 2025.
I have a question and I wasn’t sure where to put it. When a species such as domestic tomato is described as having 1% or so outcrossing rate, does that mean 1% of the fruits are expected to contain hybrids? Or 1% of the seeds? Or 1% of the plants expected to contain fruit with hybrid seeds?
Each of the seeds in any fruit, technically and theoretically in the case of tomatoes, could have a different pollen donor, though from what I understand.
So a percentage of the seeds is the only thing that makes sense.
I like to think of these things as “averaged over all fruits in all gardens”. Some fruits will have no crossing, others will have 10% crossing, but it averages out at 1%.
I feel excited about Hummingbird, my first 4 species hybrid. I named it after a dear friend that I met at the Heirloom Seed Expo.
By making the hybrid, I broke the self-incompatibility system AGAIN. But I get better each year at selection for that trait. And even if people only select for domestic-types, it contains more diversity that the heirlooms or modern hybrids, though no telling what that diversity might be. I’m hoping that weediness will arise from this population.
