Cold tolerant tomatoes, right down Joseph's alley.

[jondear]

Apr 30, 2014 20:30:05 GMT -5 DarJones said:

Joseph, you noticed something that was documented nearly 100 years ago. There are three cotyledon types in tomatoes. Wild species tend to have types 2 and 3 and domestic tomato tends to have type 1. This is very important because it appears that cotyledon type determines whether or not two varieties can be crossed. So while it appears that only size is involved, the effects are very broad up to and including breeding effects.

Immature seed can be smaller than normal which can make them look like the wild species. Well developed normal seed can have shapes from teardrop to tetrahedron to round.

I have several wild species seed that are smaller than grains of sand. They germinate and grow with few problems, but I always take extra care not to plant them too deep. As you may guess, these are the species - S. Chilense and S. Peruvianum - that are most difficult to cross with domestic tomato.

I noticed a big difference in cotyledon shape in potato plants from tps.I wonder if any of this relates to potatoes as well...

[DarJones]

Potatoes come in diploid, tetraploid, pentaploid, and hexaploid versions with tetraploid most common. Each set of chromosomes increases the size of the seed.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

I scored the plants on May 5th. Not posting a report this week. Weather has been mild. Two of plants from my population got eaten by something. Seems like a big predator like a mammal or bird. Cold/frosty weather predicted for the next week. Will wait to plant out the next batch of plants until after it warms up again.

[steev]

You saw no tracks? Aside from hornworms, I don't think much wants to eat tomato plants but deer.

[DarJones]

groundhogs will eat tomato plants.

[kevin8715]

These tomatoes sound pretty interesting. In my climate a couple of store bought tomato plants and sungold have overwintered here. However, I would like one that is more productive in cooler temperatures.

[steev]

I've no experience of groundhogs; yonder won't come "Sally with a snigger and a grin, groundhog grease all over her chin" in Cali, so far as I know.

The Great Central Basin (Joseph's stomping grounds) kept lots of critters out of the Left Coast.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

The tomato plants didn't get eaten... More like bit off, found to be unpalatable and abandoned in pieces.

Here's photos of the folding tomato leaf trait...

...

I suppose I was prescient way back then...

Dec 17, 2012 20:47:41 GMT -5 Joseph Lofthouse said:

In my garden, with clear night-time skies, I routinely get radiant freezes on tomatoes when the air temperature (5 feet above ground level) gets down to 36F, and sometimes the leaves will get freeze damage at up to 40F. These freezes often occur without the formation of dew/frost, so I guess that would mean direct freezing of the plant tissue. Because these are radiant freezes, and not air temperature freezes, it's very common that the only leaves that freeze are those that are facing most directly towards space. So interior leaves don't freeze, and leaves that are flat-face to the horizon don't freeze, just those that are facing towards the sky. Wouldn't it be interesting if one of the plants that comes out of this project had a mechanism like sunflowers which follow the sun, only in this case, tomatoes that moved their leaves at night to face the horizon. Or how about fuzzy leaves that would shade the surface of the leaf from radiant cooling.

[steev]

Samplers; feh; so pointlessly irritating.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

I evaluated the tomatoes for the cold/frost tolerant trial on May 9th. Not much change since planting other than a few plants are missing or croaked. The previous 3 days low temperatures were around 39-40F at night and daytime highs were in the 50s. There was no radiant frost due to the overcast/rainy conditions. I have another set of tomatoes to replace some of the missing plants. I'll put them out during our next warm spell.

Code	Name	Score	Notes
F1	Tastiheart	-	-
F2	Kosovo	-	MIA
F3	LA 3969	-	-
F4	Barnaulskiy Konsermyi Red	-	MIA
F5	Joseph's Direct Seeded	*	Very small plant.
F6	Matina	-	-
F7	Nevskiy Red	*****	Good early growth.
F8	Jagodka	****	Good early growth.
F9	Joseph's Earliest Fruits 2013	**	Lower score.
F10	Joseph's Earliest Large Fruit 2013	***	Lower score.
F11	E6	**
F12	A1 off-type	-	Not Available.
F13	LA 3969	***	Lower score
F14	Jagodka	***	Planted months ago. Large, but it's a wonder that it survived this long.
L1	Landrace	*	Potato leaved. Best plant of the lot after transplanting. Eaten. Looks like it will recover.
L2	Landrace	***
L3	Landrace	***
L4	Landrace	**
L5	-	-	Eaten. Will not recover.
L6	Landrace	***
L7	Landrace	**
L8	Landrace	**
L9	Landrace	**
L10	Landrace	**
L11	Landrace	-	MIA
L12	Landrace	*
L1	Landrace	*
L13	LA 3969	****
L14	Jagodka	**	Planted indoors in about January. Amazing that it survived this long.

Here's a weather report courtesy of wunderground.com for the nearest weather station. It covers the time from when they were planted until they were evaluated.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

The national weather service has issued a "hard freeze warning'. Seem like the perfect chance to test out the frost/cold hardiness of some of the tomatoes from the cold/frost tolerance trials. Here's the test subjects before the cold.

[steev]

"We, who are about to die, salute you". The survivors will be seen as prime breeding stock.

[12540dumont]

I ought to report you to the society for prevention of cruelty to tomatoes. But then I'd have to turn myself it for failure to administer sufficient water....

[DarJones]

IMO, a hard freeze will kill all of them. What I am finding is that you can make a lot of progress at improving tomato growth in the 32 to 45 degree range, can get them to survive 28 to 32 degrees, but anything below 28 degrees is pretty much fatal.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

The tomatoes seemed to do fine last night. The temperature probe 5 feet above ground read 35F this morning. The probe laying beside the tomatoes read 30F. It was a crystal clear night with plenty of radiant cooling. Sorry I accidentally deleted this morning's photo which showed frost on the hairs of the tomatoes. Two plants were wilted in the morning. They are marked with red dots. By evening when I took the following photo they were looking fine. I'm intending to plant this set into the garden tomorrow. The closest two rows match the variety names (1 to 12) posted earlier G1 is in front right, counting up towards the left then the second row on the right is G7. I concur that I don't need frost tolerance in tomatoes as long as they grow vigorously in cold weather and set fruit in spite of the strong radiant cooling at night. Frost tolerance would be nice though to give me that extra bit of a safety margin. The back two rows are my landrace tomatoes.

Before Cold Weather:


15 Hours After Cold Weather: