You may yet get to if I can grow enough seed for some crosses with Mission Mountain Morning in 2023 and share it through EFN and if they can ship it internationally with the big Brown Rugose Virus problems with international tomato seed. I keep photographing the tomatoes at one of my local stores. I wish I could send some in to be tested. It is not subject to the MTA from TGRC as I learned that doesn’t apply to derivatives.
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@Justin I’m from Finland, but we have almost the same variety of climates. Sweden just has some southern parts that are sligthly warmer with less severe winters and longer growing season, which might not be much longer, but in far north it makes all the difference. Summer temps (june-august) in southern Finland and southern to closer to central sweden are quite similar to southern to central coastal UK. Some inland parts of UK have cooler summers and southern coastal quite a bit warmer. Main difference is winter/spring that here really delays ground from warming up. Also sun is even weaker here, max intensity is probably about month behind so mid summer sun is as strong as late spring/start of summer in UK. But more similar in that also than compared to lower latitude high elevation climates that in temperatures might be similar.
Chernomor is quite stocky strong plant, about 1 metre tall for me. It’s possible that there are different variants that go by same name so can’t say for sure if it’s good from different seed source or in different climate. Large barred boar has probably been my favorite. It’s about as fast in terms of first to ripen, but it has lot shorter cropping period so that it has ripened most bafore even some faster varieties and still makes up to 5kg per plant outdoors. Haven’t had disease ruin fruits more than handfull in 3 years and taste is really good. Biggest drawback is cracking after heavy rains, but so far that’s been minor problem to use. Fruits are up to 500g and mostly 200-400g. Siperian early is good early season red tomato. Has been first normal size tomato to ripen. Slighly long cropping period, but fast enough to ripen most by end of august even with small transplants. Yantarnuy has been fastest after cherry tomatoes. It has 30-80g fruits and really heavy cropping to it’s size. Plants are smaller so needs to planted closer to have best yield.
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Thanks for all that Jesse! I will look into those varieties.
So my friend is from Luleå - pretty far North:
She says for her it’s robust, though in her region they have no late blight. So actually for me that may be a disadvantage, maybe it is prone to that? She said the only thing she ever has is Alternaria (early blight) which never hits the Black Sea Man while it sweeps through just about anything else.
However, she did acquire her seeds from someone who had been growing them locally for 20 years, so, that might have a lot to do with it!
I’m waiting to hear from her as to whether she has tried ‘Large Barred Boar’ and ‘Siberian Early’ to see how they compare for her. Maybe she just has less disease in her environment that you are it is just more resistant to the only disease she has to deal with, but weaker against the ones she doesn’t have?!
Anyone else have opinions about early fat tomatoes for cool low-light conditions?
That’s a bit futher north than me (I’m about 100km north of Helsinki) although it’s not that much cooler there than distance would suggest. Might need greenhouse for better success there. I only grow outdoors which does give some disease pressure. For growth chernomor is still good, I just have quite high expectations. I have trialled something like 50 varieties and chernomor ripens in the first wave of big tomatoes, but there are quite many that ripen atleast some days earlier some of which have flowered later than chernomor. I have had many supposedly early varieties that have ripened way later and been eliminated from my growing list so competition is getting harder. What I’m most interested is fast and uniform ripening and that’s where large barred boar is good. It flowered some days later than chernomor, but was faster to ripen. I think at fastest it makes ripe fruit from flower in 45-50 days that’s very good for such a big tomato.
I have been wondering what disease I have because many would immediately say it’s late blight (for some people late blight is everywhere), but I’m not as sure as potatoes seem to be fine. Tops do die at some point as they always do, but haven’t had any blight damaged roots. I definetely have early blight as well as some other recognisable diseases, but based on descriptions late blight should be much worse than what I have had. Worst year I had about half of new varieties have most of fruits damaged, but last year I had only two varieties have significant damage. One new variety and chernomor that I had grown before, but then for other reasons it didn’t grow as well so I gave it other change because I thought it might do better against disease.
Yeah she is also growing outdoors. Perhaps ironically being further North gives her advantage against disease!
That’s great that you’ve trialed so many.
What does ‘uniform ripening’ mean? Ripening all at once? If so, I guess I might personally prefer ripening gradually, so I can eat gradually. Though since my aim is to develop tomatoes for many people, maybe that is a useful trait for others… so I certainly would not discount it. This tomato is sounding very good.
Wow, well Chernomor coming in the top 2 sounds good! What was the other one and were its tomatoes as big? Or did this become irrelevant because many trials since then?
I don’t have the time for long ripening period. All should be done by end of august ideally. Some years early september might be ok, but never very warm (even over +20C then is bonus). 2021 season was done by 20.8 and that was record hot summer. That year I also had ground temperature at +6C late may followed by record hot june. It’s definetely getting warmer, but there also seems to be more drastic changes. I also want to direct seed. Long season I can get with something that stores well. I have had fresh tomatoes till november now. Haven’t had varieties that could store longer yet. Or I had one, but it was so terrible against diseases. Chernomor wasn’t top two, more like bottom 2, but that’s only by disease resistance. Golden nugget cherry tomato was other that didn’t tolerate well, but that was so fast that last year only last 10% of fruit got damaged. That I will use in crossing next year as it was so fast and it’s also part parthenocarpic (or atleast it doesn’t make seeds early in the season) which makes first half of crop seedless. Based on my observations seedless fruits ripen about 1 week faster than seedy fruits later so it will extent my cropping season earlier (which is good). I already crossed it with siperian early. I did want to use chernomor in crossing in some way, but at the moment I will hold it. Next year I will have about 50 new varieties to test and cross
That’s the biggest benefit I find here where it’s so cold: I really don’t have a big disease or insect burden. A lot of things don’t survive -40, or six months of snow.
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Oh sorry, I don’t know how I did that but I read the part I quoted before kind of backwards! How silly of me!
Ah I thought it was a typo when you wrote that first but now you write it again I’m not so sure. Do you not mean ‘Siberian Early’? I.e. Sibirskiy Skorospelyi?
https://tatianastomatobase.com/wiki/Early_Siberian
Interesting. Why do you still want to use it for crossing?
Yes, siberian early. We tend to use hard p so I just automatically write it like that. Chernomor I was thinking of crossing because of genetic range and I think it’s earliest purple I have had, not that there has been many. I think I might have some in next years trial so I’ll see after next year if I want to use it anymore.
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Has anyone tried ‘‘Mountain Spirit Bi-color’’?
The description reads:
From Casey: "Medium to large, beautiful yellow-red bi-color tomato. Born by creating a hybrid swarm of popular heirlooms and selecting for vigor, crack resistance and productivity. These tomatoes have heirloom quality flavor or better but with much better productivity. Wild Mountain Seeds in Carbondale, CO at 6400’ have been using selection pressures such as frost, drought and late blight to find superior heirloom plants with hybrid vigor. Through intense selection they have drastically increased early fruiting, crack resistance and yield.
So they should be late blight resistant. They’re really expensive! Curiously I could find almost nothing about them on the internet. I did find one photo I think, aside from the one provided on that site, and both make it look more like a landrace or ‘variety’ than a ‘hybrid swarm’, which is how they market it. I mean, looks fairly phenotypically homogenous.
The same guy made ‘Mountain Miracle XL Pink Hybrid Swarm Tomato’ (and ’ ‘Oh My’ Black Hybrid Swarm Tomato’) which is also on that website, also same high price of $15 and with a 62% germination rate. I am yet to understand the logic of the pricing! The wording of the description for this one is different than the other one though I can’t work out any difference in the actual meaning. Also this one clearly states “A true ‘Mountain Miracle,’ this large pink heirloom [“new heirloom”] is…” which to me seems to directly contradict the title ‘hybrid swarm’! As does the photo of two almost identical tomatoes. I even start to wonder if they’re using the term ‘hybrid swarm’ just to market them to people who are expecting more diversity than they may offer, or, to put a fancy title to a variety that just isn’t quite stable yet? But anyway, I am really curious about these tomatoes, has anyone tried them or know anyone who has? How were they for disease resistance and earliness? They certainly make the sound good.
The more pricey ones are new. To help pay the person more who spent so much time to develop new varieties.
As near as I can tell, Casey Picura is or was a close follower of Joseph Lofthouse’s work and uses his methods circa 2016-2017 but never signed on to the wild hybrid Solanum habrochaites / Solanum penellii high percentage hybrids we’ve been working with ever since. That is understandable because the hard green extremely unpalatable species and their early generation segregants are not even a possibility for everyone to work with. I’ve gathered that Casey is a market gardener and that would mean his produce needs to be saleable. I’ve never bought a packet because of the high prices and earlier methodologies thinking we were on to something more exciting with our interspecies hybrids. That doesn’t mean they haven’t found or created some exciting tomatoes.
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@WilliamGrowsTomatoes sent me a dozen varieties to expose to my foggy windy blight infested lovely field, so I could find the survivors and send him back seeds. These are them today for the record-- No sign of blight, and they look short but pretty happy. I hope they stay healthy long enough to ripen a few tomatoes!
Lizzano F2
LA1375
The One!
Lizzano F3-- tiny
I just liked these roots.
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Those look quite healthy!
The LA1375 also known as PI 365967 Solanum pimpinellifolium is the only tomato I was able to obtain that may confer some tolerance to the brown rugose fruit virus. So not the one I was expecting to do well there! Though it might be a coastal accession and might be from a similar environment. Current tomatoes sometimes produce horrible, flavored tomatoes in cool weather and good flavored in warm so the flavor in your cool coastal environment might be of particular interest. It is the tomato I was crossing with the cross of today which I abbreviated (MMM x Brown Rugose) and made 24 crosses with, 26 for the year so far.
With the F2 and F3 Lizzano- there is a very important question which this experiment may answer! The dehybridizing Lizzano seed someone sent me seemed to all be a micro-dwarf (the F3 seed) and the F2 seed is seed I grew of Lizzano F1 to confirm if it indeed segregates out rugose dwarfs! If so it might be very useful in breeding resistant dwarf tomato project 2.0 tomatoes. This could be the case as Lizzano F1 is a small tomato for hanging baskets or patio planters and could have a rugose dwarf as one of its parents.
The One! is probably most likely a great grand-child of S35, S36, or S37 from Joseph’s selections several years ago. If not it is a great great grand child of the first year Joseph shared the elite segregates of the promiscuous tomato project with me. It’s grandparent in 2021 had excellent fruity flavor open flowers and exserted stigmas and its parent in 2022 had at least ordinary to good flavor. I did not particularly expect it to be healthy for Julia!
Well so far they are all pretty healthy, even the brandywines! Last year around this time I left for a week and came back to plants that had seemed to melt down to the base. So hopefully for this project, something like that happens again and we can test them.
LA 1375 looks more like the Peruvianums than a pimp to me. Looking forward to the fruit. I have one in my greenhouse, here is that one
I learned a lot last year about what a Solanum pimpinillifolium can be. I had too narrow of a concept of their leaf diversity!
Galahad F1 is homozygous for the late Blight resistance genes ph2 and ph3. Im now at F5 and found some very good pink beef selections. I improved it with selection the brix to 7, they taste very good. The F1 have a brix of 5 and is red.
Grow in 2023 these F1 varieties:
Medusa F1 (heterozygous ph2 an d ph3)
Darkstar F1 (heterozygous ph2 an d ph3)
Hot Streak F1 (heterozygous ph2 an d ph3)
Summer sweethard F1
Darkstar F1 is very productive.
Also have experience with some very strong OP varieties:
Primabella
Rondobella
Resibella
Philamina (very good tasting)
Sunviva
Vivagrande
Mountaineer Pride (homozygous ph2 and ph3)
Mountaineer delight (homozygous ph2 but no ph3 and not strong enhoug)
@Karin , i dit not know Red Pearl is a F1, i was thinking its OP. Dit u found a lot of segregation?
Im also make my own Hybrids with late blight resistance. And hope to found a selection with very good taste.
Red Pearl x Rondobella is very good tasting, but today I read that Red Pearl is not OP variety?
Im now looking for a plum variety for sauce like Plum regal. Someone iw growing these?
The earliest huge tomatoes I’ve ever seen were some my allotment neighbour grew this year. They were Country Taste F1 and had a very good (but not excellent) flavour. I don’t know anything about the parentage, but I have saved some seed for my own tomato landrace project.
Would that “friend” be me? Yes they do extremely well for me all the way up in the far North.
Still my favorite tomato variety.
This year, due to 7 weeks of constant rain we got LB for the first time and I cut down all plants the moment it hit, sorry I could not observe LB resistance. As I want to be able to grow toms in that area (next bed) next year too so I didn’t want oospores all around me (both mating types are present in Sweden, for what I’ve read, so you do get oospores as well if you’re taht unlucky).