Cold tolerant tomatoes, right down Joseph's alley.

[richardw]

Here peak season is about 5 for $1= 80US cents but thats regardless of size though.Thats very descent of you to gift vegetables

[Joseph Lofthouse]

There are two different phenotypes in Wheatley's (A1) in this trial. The fruits that have been harvested so far are off-type. The fruits that I have harvested so far are round, but the photo by Sustainable Seed Company shows plum shaped fruits.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Here is the evaluation of the tomatoes for August 9th.

Tag	Name	Flowering	Harvesting	# Fruits This Week	Total Fruits YTD	Flower To Fruit (weeks)	Notes
A1	Wheatley's Frost Resistant	__*****	_**	1	3	7	Fruit is off-type
A2	Tastiheart	___****	___
A3	Superbec	____***	___
A4	Spiridonovskie Red	__*****	_*_	0	2	7
A5	Siberia	___****	_*_	0	1	6
A6	Sasha's Altai	____***	___
B1	Purple Russian, RT	______*	___				I wrote in my notes that this plant produced fruit, but that seems wrong.
B2	PI 120256	______*	___
B3	Peron Sprayless	____***	___
B4	Nevskiy Red	__*****	__*	6	6	8
B5	Moskovich	___****	___
B6	Matina	_******	***	3	15	7
C1	LA 3969	____***	___
C4	Jagodka	_******	***	16	27	7
C5	I-3 Red	_____**	___
C6	Earlinorth	*******	_**	2	5	9
D1	Boney-M Red	__*****	___
D2	Hybrid Cross	____***	___
D3	Bellstar	___****	___
D4	Barnaulskiy Konsermyi Red, RT	___****...	__*	1	1	7
D5	Joseph's Direct Seeded, RT	______*	___
D6	Joseph's Earliest	_******	**_		14	7
E1	Joseph's Earliest, RT	___****	___
E2	Joseph's Earliest, RT	__*****	___
E3	Joseph's Earliest Slicer, RT	___****	___
E4	Joseph's Earliest Slicer, RT	___****	___
E5	Joseph's Earliest Slicer, RT	__*****	___
E6	Hybrid -- Mother Joseph's Earliest Slicer, RT	__*****	___

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Here is what the tomato harvest looked like for 2013-08-16 for the cold/frost tolerant tomato trial. My landrace tomatoes that were put into the ground as small plants at the regular time produced a few tomatoes per plant this week.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Here is what the tomato harvest looked like for 2013-08-23. I did a mid-week harvest of a few fruits which didn't make it into this photo. If I ever update the text I may add them in. The cylindrical shaped tomatoes in A1 match the seed catalog photo of Wheatley's. The other tomatoes in A1 are off-type.

[DarJones]

Joseph, can you give a rough estimate how much Jagodka exceeded your regular varieties in production? The pics look like double.

Matina seems to have given a good account of itself, about equal to the production of your regular varieties.

[steev]

I'm somewhat surprised at the number of tomatoes you harvest that I'd consider green; is that because you'll not revisit the patch before they'd be overripe?

[Joseph Lofthouse]

To date, one hill of Jagodka has produced ripe tomatoes about equal to the combined output of the earliest 40 plants of my usual varieties. The row labeled E are the earliest of my usual tomatoes, and planted at my usual time. The other field where I planted most of my usual tomatoes was a bit earlier this year (for my usual varieties) than the field hosting the cold/frost tolerant trial. I call it a hill, because I haven't actually counted how many plants there are: Somewhere between 1 and 3.

Jagodka is a highly unusual tomato for me, because it is looking like the entire output of the plant may be harvested as ripe tomatoes. It is nearing the end of production. Typically I harvest most varieties as green tomatoes at about the time of our first fall frosts. Jagodka seems much more determinate than the varieties that I typically grow.

The production of the usual tomatoes this week will finally catch up and exceed the production of tomatoes from the frost/cold tolerant trial. My usual tomatoes suffered severe frost damage this spring which killed about 50% of the transplants. Last year about 10% of the population died from frost. That's two years in a row that our last frost was on about June 20th.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

I'm picking this patch once a week, and using it as a photo opportunity. So yes, I am picking greener than I would normally pick tomatoes. Any blush of color at all is sufficient reason to pick it. Another week of growth at that stage and many of them would be rotted away. Also, I am having color balance problems with my cell phone camera so the picture from this week makes things look greener than they actually were.

In general, I figure that tomatoes keep better in a basket than on the vine, so I tend to pick somewhat greenish and ripen them under more controlled conditions.

Edit: It is fairly typical that my landrace tomatoes do not develop the ethylene red color that is so common in other tomatoes, so I may be picking the frost/cold tolerant tomatoes early because that's how I pick tomatoes. Green shoulders when fully ripe are typical of my landrace. For example: I consider these tomatoes to be fully ripe, and the color balance of the camera to be right on.

[steev]

Right. I do much the same, picking only once a week. If I didn't pick green-shouldered, I'd get nearly none of many varieties.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Here is what the harvest for the frost tolerant trial looked like on 2013-08-29. There was only one plant in the Jagodka hill. One thing I have noticed about these foreign tomatoes, is that they tend to sit more heavily on the ground than my landrace tomatoes... It seems like I have inadvertently been selecting for tomatoes with a stem architecture which keeps the fruits suspended in the air rather than letting them sit to rot on my clayish soil. Of note this week is that D6 is producing fruit again. It more or less died from a flea beetle attack, sent a shoot up from ground level, and is again producing fruit.



And my total tomato harvest for the week, minus whatever I saved for seed.

[DarJones]

Just noting that there don't seem to be any Jagodka fruit in those baskets Joseph. Did you by chance save seed from all of them?

It looks like you have a few new to you varieties that deserve some attention for next year.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Until this week, I pretty much converted all the fruits from the frost tolerant trial into seeds, minus whatever I just had to taste. As of today I have around 600 Jagodka seeds set aside. This week I was selective about what I saved for seed. Jagodka went into the baskets along with the other tomatoes, covered up by later additions. Today I'm making spaghetti sauce from those two baskets of tomatoes.

Definitely some great varieties to grow again next year. I'm still sad about not getting a proper frost tolerance test. The cold hardy part of the test worked out great though.

I think it clever that the two varieties that were most attractive to bumblebees (Jagodka and Nevski Red) were among the most productive. The idea of promiscuously pollinating tomatoes is ever with me. I converted my potatoes to abundantly fruiting by discarding 95% of my collected varieties. No reason I couldn't do the same with tomatoes: Make a decision and live with the consequences.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Here is what my cold/frost tolerant tomato trial looked like on 2013-09-10. Purple Russian (B1) was planted later, at my normal planting time, so I don't read much into it not producing fruit yet. Moscovich (B5) has likewise not produced fruit yet. It was planted early. The rest of the varieties have produced ripe fruit. No fruits for C2 and C3 because those varieties didn't make it into the trial. Nevskiy Red (B4) is the clear production winner for this week and last week, and it was highly attractive to bumblebees. Woo Hoo! I harvested the fruit from the attempted hybridization between B6 and E5. The other fruit that I attempted to manually pollinate can't be found (due to string falling off?). It's raining today, so I'm catching up on forum posts. I'm expecting frost any day now.

[richardw]

Is your main focus on spring frost tolerance and less on autumn tolerance Joseph.

My frost hardy Matts wild cherry have been outside now for a week,this morning they have experienced there first frost,though very light just on freezing point,there will be harder frosts on Sunday so that will be there first real test