Cold tolerant tomatoes, right down Joseph's alley.

[ilex]

Guess I should start with the easy and obvious ... eggplants. They don't mind that kind of weather. I also have S. torvum seed which is also quite cool tolerant and a common tomato rootstock.

Time to get hold of some other Solanum species and start ANOTHER project ...

[Earl]

Arbuznyi, Beaverlodge 6808, Beaverlodge Slicer, Bison, Canabec Super, Coldset, Earlicrop, Gold Dust (which turned out not to be GD), Glacier, Harnas, Early Chatham, Kibits, Oregon Spring Bush, Earlinorth, Polar Circle, Early Russia, Sub-Arctic Midi, Sub-Arctic Maxi, Uri67,Victoria and Vodar.

[12540dumont]

what the heck are they planted in?

[steev]

Holly, they're planted in soil, of course.

What I wonder is whether those translucent cloches are vented, and are those just weights on top.

[12540dumont]

Steev, next time I see you, remind me to spike your punch. It may slow you down some, enough so I can catch up.

[bunkie]

bwhaha...i thought they might be wall-o-waters, but look more like buckets?!

[steev]

A place I pass, near the farm, seems to cloche something (I think tomatoes) with big translucent yoghurt tubs. I've toyed with trying that with milk jugs, bottoms cut out, since I could leave them uncapped, but maybe overheating is really no problem. If that's the deal, tubs would be fine. It's been the fastening-down that has had me stymied, but a tub, a rock, andalay! I've got a bunch of translucent 5-gallon buckets; I'm gonna give this a shot!

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Today I planted the seeds that DarJones sent me for the frost/cold tolerant tomato trials. It is approximately 8.5 weeks before my average last frost date. I typically plant tomatoes out a week after that. We want to get the tomatoes in the ground a bit earlier than normal to see if any of them survive the cold weather and frosts.

I planted three sets of seeds, so that I can have one to plant way too early, one to plant too early, and one to plant after danger of heavy frost while it is still too cold to be growing tomatoes. I had a few cells left over in the tray, so I planted my earliest slicing tomato, and some seeds from plants that volunteered in early spring a couple years ago. These will give me a control so I can make comparisons to varieties that have done well for me in the past.

Label	Name	Notes
A1	Wheatley's Frost Resistant	2012. Has cold tolerance, but seems oriented toward late season rather than early spring. Survived 33F ambient. Slightly damaged at 30F ambient / 25.5F radiant.
A2	Tastiheart	2010 seed. 22F 2007. Survived 30F ambient / 25.5F radiant.
A3	Superbec	2012 Survived 30F ambient / 25.5F radiant.
A4	Spiridonovskie Red	o.s. Andrey. Survived 30F ambient / 25.5F radiant.
A5	Siberia	2012 Survived 30F ambient / 25.5F radiant.
A6	Sasha's Altai	2012 seed. Survived 30F ambient / 25.5F radiant: Very slight damage to one leaf.
B1	Purple Russian	2012 seed.
B2	PI 120256	Very Cold Tolerant. From Turkey. One plant slightly damaged by 30F ambient. One plant survived 30F ambient / 25.5F radiant without visible damage: Plant looks vibrantly healthy.
B3	Peron Sprayless	2012 seed. Survived 30F ambient / 25.5F radiant: Plants look vibrantly healthy.
B4	Nevskiy Red	o.s. Andrey. Survived 30F ambient / 25.5F radiant.
B5	Moskovich	2010 seed. Survived 30F ambient / 25.5F radiant.
B6	Matina	Old seed. Low germination after 11 days. Replanted on April 7th. Survived 30F ambient / 25.5F radiant.
C1	LA 3969	S Habrochaites introgression line. Tests very high cold tolerance. Survived 30F ambient / 25.5F radiant: Very slight damage.
C2	Kathas	Old seed. Plant Heavily. Zero germination after 11 days. Replanted April 7th. Zero germination.
C3	Kosovo	- Survived 30F ambient / 25.5F radiant.
C4	Jagodka	- Slight damage at 30F ambient / 25.5F radiant.
C5	I-3 Red	o.s. Andrey. First to Germinate (4 days). Survived 30F ambient / 25.5F radiant: Very slight damage.
C6	Earlinorth	LA 2006. First to Germinate (4 days). Survived 30F ambient / 25.5F radiant.
D1	Boney-M Red	o.s. Andrey. Survived 30F ambient / 25.5F radiant.
D2	Hybrid Cross	(Big Beef X Eva Purple Ball) X (Disease Tolerant Red). 2012 seed. Slightly damaged at 33F ambient. Survived 30F ambient / 25.5F radiant, loosing about half of it's leaves to radiant cooling. Looking very sad by third day.
D3	Bellstar	2012 seed. Jointless and was developed in Canada with a degree of cold tolerance. Survived 30F ambient / 25.5F radiant.
D4	Barnaulskiy Konsermyi Red	o.s. Andrey. Survived 33F ambient. Newly emerged seedling died at 30F ambient.
D5	Joseph's Direct Seeded	2011
D6	Joseph's Earliest Slicer	2012 Survived 30F ambient / 25.5F radiant.

I have created a
photo album for these tomatoes.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Oops. Trying to be too careful. Dropped the seed tray. The soil from cells on one edge of the tray jumped onto the next cell over. I scooped it back where it goes, but seeds might have moved. I'll save that replicate for the warm weather planting.

See: There's a reason why I don't normally label things. No matter how careful I am, chaos reigns and always wins in the end.

[12540dumont]

Chaos theory studies the behavior of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions, an effect which is popularly referred to as the butterfly effect. Small differences in initial conditions (such as those due to rounding errors in numerical computation) yield widely diverging outcomes for such dynamical systems, rendering long-term prediction impossible in general.

At our house this is known as the cats laid on the TPS, I dropped the tray, the neighbor's dog ran through the field stakes, Leo spilled tea on the farm book (looks like beer to me???) and I can't read what the heck that number says, we planted 13 varieties (so how come there are 14 trays?) Long live Chaos!

Joseph, you're in good company.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Butterfly effect indeed. I used to think that I was in control of the garden and it's genome. Nowadays I'm sure that I'm not. I'm just along for the ride.

[steev]

Yeeesss. I have a large packet of "Mixed Melon Seed", not F1, just leakage from inadequately sealed packets.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Steev: That was the first seed packet I ever planted. Guerney's Jumbo Packet of seeds which they sold for one cent. I guess calculating in the collapse of the dollar since then it would be equivalent to a quarter today. I started my gardening career by planting a jumbled up lot of seeds, and the older I get the more I am returning to that way of growing. I figure that it was their spillage.

[steev]

Indeed so; warehouse sweepings=bargain packs. Sometimes fun to be had, for sure.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

We are expecting near freezing temperatures the next two nights, (34 F, 33 F), so I put one set of the cold-tolerant frost-hardy trial tomatoes outside where they can maybe get frozen. They are 34 days old. I put them under a tree so that they won't get much radiant cooling. I stuck a min/max thermometer next to the plants. I expect to let you know how they did in a couple days. One thing that has been interesting to me about this set of tomatoes is that they are more full leaved than what I'm used to growing.