Tomato Grow Out Possibility for Going to Seed?!

Possible one of the other plants might produce fruit that is a little better too. Flavor was pretty variable last year. I don’t think it is all genetics either. I think environment / site is a big part of it. Drier sites / less water may be better for the chances of good flavor.

That’s what I’m hoping for. Fruits on the other plants are more normal looking too. They are perfectly round and a bit smaller, but no ripening on any of them so far.


7 29 2023 the main field. Earliest tomatoes have formed and are green on the vines.

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This spring I planted seeds from the plant of The One! that was dramatically more productive of seeds and ended up with four plants. I planted them late, in June, but the tallest are knee high to me. Two plants have large fused type flowers on them.

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There are three tomato plants in the main grow out that I may need to cull. Two potato leaf tomatoes and a striped tomato. I suspect these three are domestic volunteers. The first two likely my Mission Mountain Sunrise (MMS for short) an almost stable line in the F6 and the latter striped tomato quite uncertain as to origin. One problem with direct seeded tomatoes is that there could always be a volunteer in there somewhere- if you grow tomatoes year after year! Last years experiment in this garden was a failed Mission Mountain Sunrise x Dwarf Tomato Project OSSI dwarfs crossing block. Failed as I found no crosses in the resulting MMS seed.

I visited the garden late last night and was able to see at least one ripe tomato before it got too dark. So the direct seeded tomatoes are ripe! If I had gotten them in just a couple weeks earlier they would have likely been producing for a couple weeks as have a few of the volunteers.

Picked a few tomatoes, the first three are now fermenting seeds and I did a small second picking today. I stopped watering the patch also.

Day 10 of Covid-19 second time. I got to stop quarantining. So I am up with my family, and I went out to the garden land. Of course, now the promiscuous project tomatoes are ripe. Or a lot are. I started a ferment, a bit messy but it worked well with my other grex. Half a five-gallon bucket full. If the yield is as good as last time, it might be enough seed. If not, next weekend might be another round. Frost will come eventually but it skipped September 1st this year without even seeming to think of it. Much smaller amounts of The One’s third generation descendants are ripe. Both as volunteers from the crossing block with the Mission Mountain tomatoes last year and where I planted them last year and this year.

The grex this year is being dominated by the gold spotted regular leaf red descendants of Brad from the 2022 polyamorous direct seeded mix- so three years of direct seeding, but a red and rather normal saladette tomato.

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Do you have any particularly interesting plants this year that stick out? I recall you wish that you would have kept a cutting from The One original plant to bring inside at the end of the season to keep it going.

I have a mysterious long tress orange cherry with black skin patches and great flavor. I put a few things into the seed mix from saved packets that I may have miscategorized and which I am not putting back into the seed mix for Going to Seed- including some other current and cherry tomatoes including a fuzzy one. This long tress orange cherry though. I am not sure where it comes from. Black skin patches are a trait known from the Lofthouse promiscuous project but blue are not- so they match. However, I don’t think the long tress traits have previously been expressed in the project in my garden. Cherry tomatoes have not been common and shouldn’t just spontaneously appear. So my conclusion is that this particular mysterious plant is of mixed origin. That something in the project in a prior year crossed with something else and segregated to this. Or I could simply be mistaken but it is nonetheless an intriguing occurrence and it segregated out of something! I am saving the seed separately only.

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I might have ~4 ounces of seed. I wasn’t able to weigh it, but it looks about the same as the bag I did of my Montana project seed.

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I feel fairly confident though that none of the cherries belong in the project. So I haven’t added them to the saved seed. Now if they happen to cross themselves in! That might be interesting.

Final clean weight was 5.4 oz on a digital kitchen scale tared with the same size bag.

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Just an item of less confidence. I just saved the seed from three cherries I picked off a different plant, brown seeds like some wild species including Solanum habrochaites have.

The tasty off shoot of the promiscuous tomato project I started from two plants in 2021 I called The One and Little Pumpkins have segregated and or crossed into at least four perhaps five distinct types. Red, yellow, Orange, and a cherry. Probably some are bicolors for a fifth. Many have a blue blush- though none what I think of as full strength blue. So possibly just say maybe the aft gene or one set or a similar gene from habrochaites doing some slight expression.

The red could probably be split into pink and red.

I’ve just sorted some keepers into blue red, blue orange, blue bicolor?, cherry with a hint of blue, and a yellow. Their seeds are now fermenting.

The cherry tomato gives me a bit of confidence that the fun orange / blue cherry is more likely to indeed be a part of this project and not some other project that got mixed in.

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Here are the tomato seeds!

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I really enjoyed the labeling of the tomato groups available. :joy:

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They have a definite Lofthouse-esque flavor to their naming to me. :joy:

It’s certainly going to make sharing some of my seedlings entertaining :rofl: Usually I start more than I can plant, and then share the “leftovers.” I may have to keep that flat out of sight when my more, er, conservative friends ask for tomato plants… “Oh, that flat? They’re, uh, spoken for.” Lol.

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Relabel that one “Mixed”

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I suppose that’s fair. Many of my leftovers are all mixed up anyway. But I’m tempted to just start most of my extras as Dwarf Project tomatoes and some heirlooms I haven’t grown out in a while, and keep the GTS and EFN mixes mostly for myself. I haven’t converted my friends to landrace/adaptive gardening just yet.