This topic will be me trying to post the type of thing I like to see on here. I like seeing pictures of people’s gardens and plants. I’d like to see more pictures, especially from the professional growers. Feel free to comment here. I don’t really know what I’m doing, but I’m enjoying it.
I think I’ve worked out that my main goal for now is finding or breeding a tomato that will survive until the fall frost when planted in the spring. Less important there’s a whole bunch of other traits that I have in mind that would be useful like frost survivability, anthocyanin skin (supposed to increase shelf life), heat set ability, ability to thrive in poor soil, no need to be staked, and more.
This one here looks almost like it is trying to use some of its branches as legs to stay up off the ground. It’s from the going to seed mix from William.
This one is one of the more upright standing plants of the bunch. Especially for its height. We’ll see if that lasts much longer. From Williams going to seed mix.
I think this is from Joseph’s improved Wild Galapagos. I didn’t label them separate from his hummingbird mix though so I’m not certain. It looks much different from anything else.
This one here is from Casey Piscura’s frost survivors Grex. It stood out from the very beginning for its vigor and I planted it in the very first spot from that lot for that reason.
It had a ton of purple in the stem which Casey says is linked to its frost survivability. I didn’t realize that until after it was in the ground. It’s hard to tell now but the stem is not the light green color the other plants are. It’s my tallest plant but not the most foliage, and won’t be my earliest. Still, I will be keeping a close eye on it.
Exciting topic! Thank you for starting it. I love to see pictures too. I’ve planted lots of different varieties of tomatoes. I’m just looking for yummy tomatoes that do well here. I have lots of different ones that sounded yummy and also planted many from going to seed and some I got from our seed swap. I don’t have pictures because they’re still inside - it’s too cold to put them out in our zone. Funny thing that the ones closer to the grow light are much bigger! I’ll post some pictures here someday soonish.
I think most of the hummingbird tomatoes are self compatible. And I’m pretty sure all of the going to seed mix tomatoes are. I’m only basing that off of not seeing pollinators going to the flowers but the fruits are all setting. I did notice a tiny wasp looking thing today acting like it might land on a flower, so I could be wrong about that. Though it didn’t the whole time I was watching.
I did notice an entire flower cluster dropped on one hummingbird plant. If I notice that happening on another couple plants I’ll mark them down in my phone as self incompatible and I might try to pollinate them to each other.
Turns out the one that I thought was from the hummingbird mix with a purple stem is Better than candy from wild mountain seeds. They were the smallest looking tomato plants I planted and I wrote them off as a bust. But there’s one fruit so far with purple skin which is more than I can say of some other plants.
The going to seed tomatoes, hummingbird, and wild mountain seeds tomatoes are all earlier than my commercial red hybrid ones. Those cold climates breed early stuff. I think one from the going to seed mix was the first to set fruit.
I’m not sure what will croak and die of disease. We’ve had a ton of rain lately. Time will tell.
I culled this one. Something about it didn’t look right. I thought it was catching the same thing my potatoes had about 3 feet away. I think I took that picture a day or two before I culled it.
I’m trying the Florida weave on some plants. The commercial red ones seem to fit it pretty well. The wild mountain seed ones too. But the hummingbird and the going to seed mix don’t really want to be staked. Especially the hummingbird. They’re more bushy. Fine with me I didn’t really want to stake them anyway.
Some are getting yellow leaves. This especially the hummingbird plants. I don’t know if it’s disease or something else, maybe due to these hurricane scale rains we keep getting pounded with over and over. I don’t see much brown spots though.
I’m waiting patiently or not so patiently for the first ripe fruit. I check them everyday, but it’ll probably be a couple more weeks at least, maybe another month.
The going to seed tomatoes must’ve started producing tomatoes almost a month before most of my other tomatoes. The plants are still healthy and green. Unfortunately I didn’t find them to have much flavor in my garden. But that’s not saying much because most tomatoes are bland that come out of my garden. Probably the soil or something.
This one is probably the most interesting or the GTS mix. Orange with gold spots. Interesting flavor.
This is the best hummingbird f2 tomato. It tasted really good, best tomato in my garden. Kind of a citrus taste. All the other hummingbird tomatoes tasted bitter to me except one plant. So I pulled up those bitter tasting ones.
I think I decided the highest return for me in the short term could be to cross the Everglades tomato with the hossinator tomato.
After observing all of the different tomatoes in my garden this year the only other thing that stood out was to grow the seeds from the small orange hummingbird tomato. I might donate them to the cause.
Here’s the better than candy tomato I was looking forward to. Way more bland than I expected although I can tell it’s trying to be good. Almost like a grape crossed with a tomato. I don’t think it reached its potential in my garden.
I’ve been looking at pictures and I figured it must be that my plants are healthy enough to produce but aren’t healthy enough to unlock the flavor potential. Other people have these massive leaves on their plants and I don’t.
I’ll have to think carefully about how I want to proceed to improve my tomato flavor. I don’t want to compromise my soil biology. I also don’t want to go out and buy a whole bunch of amendments.
I might need to do a corn medicine on them. I also need to find out which cover crops don’t compete with tomato so I can grow them together.
It took a lot of reflection but I think I finally figured out I need to try to cross Cosmic Purple Rain x STM2255. Cosmic purple rain is described by Wild Mountain seeds in one of their posts as “extreme frost survivor”. It’s my thoughts that spring frost tolerance is possibly the single most useful trait a tomato plant could have in my climate that would increase tomato growing success.
I also YOLO’d straight into the ground a few of last years promiscuous project seeds and about 1000 seeds I saved from last years Hummingbird line. It’s probably 6 weeks or so until our average last frost. Hopefully we get another frost to thin the population and I have some survivors.
I knew I should’ve waited til at least March 1 to direct sow, I just didn’t. Oh well.
It got to about 21-22 degrees here 3 nights in a row. Some survived the first night but after 3 nights no survivors. I think some of them have yet to germinate but I’m not sure. Will keep an eye out.
I recommend direct seeding between 15 days before average last frost and up to the date of average last frost. I find that inch high seedlings often survive a light last frost. Multiple frosts is much more likely to kill tomato plants and I don’t think taller plants have as good of a chance in a frost. Tomato seeds do tend to have a few slower to germinate. Tomatoes tend to be able to volunteer, but volunteering seems to be less predictable than direct seeding. Doesn’t seem to work every year which leads to periodic extirpation of the population.
In my climate I haven’t yet had germination so early as to lose as many seedlings as you just have.
Thanks for the advice. I think our average last frost is late March. I’ll probably try sowing straight in the ground a couple of more times as April approaches. Especially seeds from cosmic purple rain.
I have more growing season to gain by focusing on heat tolerance than frost tolerance. I should pivot. No big deal.
I’ll be trying Sakata’s newest tomato called Firebird this year. Last year STM2255 and red snapper outperformed the celebrity plus for me. Just tougher plants.
One of the biggest drawbacks I realized when I was thinking about finding heat tolerance traits last year, is the exploding fruit traits that come along with the wild traits. The Florida Everglades tomato is supposed to be a great performer in hot weather but if you were to cross with it you would spend a decade selecting against exploding fruit. It doesn’t really perform up to my expectations anyway.
The standout plant last year is, what I think, was Joseph’s Improved Wild Galapagos. It was the only plant that survived with fruit into August. Bright orange pea sized fruit. It didn’t set fruit til long after I abandoned that tomato patch, maybe some kind of day length sensitivity? I didn’t even save seeds cause it was so late in the year I had lost interest. I need to grow it again and find out more.
I’ve got some others I wanna try too. Cheesemanae hybrids I think.
