I’d like to hear about other people’s experiences with @Joseph_Lofthouse 's Hummingbird F2 Tomatoes from the Experimental Farm Network.
I planted about a dozen of them very crowded together; that makes selection difficult, but I didn’t have much space and I wanted to maximize the diversity represented in this generation. They all seem to have a very branched, vining, crawling growth habit, which makes selection even more difficult!
So this year, I’m just selecting any ripe fruits that taste OK; today I went out, tasted fruits, and if they tasted OK I picked and saved seeds from the rest of the fruits in that tress.
I planted them near my standard tomatoes in hope that there would be some further crossing, but I noticed that they all seemed to have small closed flowers; is that to be expected? Will large open flowers re-emerge in later generations?
I also noticed that some of the plants seem to be getting various fungal diseases on the leaves, which my standard tomatoes are not getting. It doesn’t seem to check their vigor much, and I remember that the Matt’s Wild cherry tomato (which these rather remind me of) would also have that issue. Something to select against in future years.
The fruits are mostly on the small side for standard cherry tomatoes, some only a bit larger than a big pea. There also seem to be some plants that are ripening green/not ripening; I won’t be selecting any of those. The colors on the others are red or orange. I think some plants aren’t producing any fruit.
The genetics of Hummingbird are 50% pimpinelifolium (small pea sized fruits, and small, highly branched vines). Then it’s about 8% habrochaites, 8% pennellii, and 35% domestic. The genetics of the F1 skewed heavily towards pea sized fruits, though I only saved seeds from cherry tomato sized.
I’m most excited about the plants not producing fruits, cause they might be self-incompatible.
It’s possible for the population to produce large fruits and flowers, and robust vines, if enough plants are grown.
Last year, Hummingbird was rather prolific about spreading pollen into the polyamorous tomatoes.
@Joseph_Lofthouse So if I plant out the seeds of these plants, I should get large, open flowers on some plants eventually? My goal is to get a population that is stable for good taste and general vigor/tolerance of my conditions, and then cross them with various heirloom tomato lines.
Has anyone eaten the fruits of this generation in large amounts?
The pimpinelifolium that grows wild in my garden are like that too except that the vines are giant. I don’t mind if they grow out in the weeds, but I’ve been trying to cull them out of the garden because as seedlings I can’t tell them apart from tomatoes that descended from them after a random cross several years ago. I’m having to start seeds from the descendants to transplant and treat all volunteers as unwanted weeds.
The descendants come in a wide range of color and size, but the best flavor ones are red or yellow, and about the size of a marble. Larger ones don’t taste as good, smaller ones are more just like the old pure pimpinelifolium and also don’t taste as good.
This year a red one and a yellow one showed up that are amazing in flavor. Sungold and Matt’s wild cherry are spitters in comparison, I grew them both for the first time this year, just to see. I wish mine were a little bigger but for the flavor, I can overlook that. As compensation the entire truss ripens at the same time which makes it fun to clip one off for a snack.
This has been going on for six or seven years, I wonder how long it takes for them to actually stabilize. Next year I’m going to plant lots of the little yellow and red ones and anything else that looks vaguely pimpinelifolium like will be culled immediately in hopes of replacing the wild population with them.
Actually, since the Matt’s wild cherry and Sungold are in there too now, to be safe I’ll have to pull out all volunteer tomatoes next year, unless it’s potato leaf.