Cold tolerant tomatoes, right down Joseph's alley.

[12540dumont]

Joesph, it's so cruel. I just want to come there tonight and put blankets on them. Poor leetel maters.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Cruel? Let's not think much about the tens of thousands of corn seeds that were frozen in order to get the 42 ancestors that lead to Frosted sweet corn. I don't worry about the thousands of watermelon and muskmelons that failed to thrive in my garden. They had a fair chance.

The cruelest I ever felt was when I sacrificed my potato genome: So many varieties of perfectly decent potatoes, but I ate them because I couldn't stand the thought of propagating non-fruitful potatoes. Today I suffered in the neck-freezing wind, in order to plant potato tubers. I showed a slight bit of mercy... About 20% of what I planted were not fruitful last year, but I planted them anyway to give them one more chance.

Yesterday I made arrangements to use the South field again this year, with the understanding that I am not even going to try to grow anything in the South-East corner where the Johnson's grass is so bad.

I'm intending to hold off tilling last year's tomato patch until mid-June, just to see if any cold-tolerant or frost-hardy tomatoes grow as volunteers.

A week ago I planted Dave Christensen's frost tolerant strain of Painted Mountain. Yesterday I planted his "Eagle Meets Condor" which is a cross between Painted Mountain and the most cold hardy and northern adapted survivors of high altitude Andean and southern Mexico corns. I'm intending to use them as pollen donors to LISP Ashworth sweet corn. I am thrilled with the seed. For years I have been trying to incorporate Andean and southern Mexico races of corn into my sweet corn. One year a kid fed the entire Andes/Oaxacan breeding project to the goats. Perhaps this year I'll make significant progress.

[steev]

I hope you fed the kid to something useful.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Temperature this morning (May 1st) was 33 F.

Tomato D2 has slightly curled leaves today. Daytime high currently at 50F.

Moved flat out from under tree to take advantage of radiant cooling the next two nights.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Temperatures this morning (May 2nd) were 30 F ambient and 25.5 F radiant.

A1: slightly damaged.
C4: slightly damaged.
D2: significantly damaged. Still alive, but lost about half its leaves to radiant cooling.
D4: looks dead (It was a barely emerging seedling).

B1, C2, and D5 were not part of the experiment due to the seeds not germinating, or to seedlings dying previously.

I'll keep an eye on them for damage that appears later.

[kctomato]

So basically you're testing them to see how cold tolerant they are in the pots vs the ground?

[steev]

It's a bitch how unrealistic mere max/min temps are in relation to living things. It's really a great challenge to deal with, though often a PITA. Keeps us engaged, though, while we have the stamina to stay in the battle. Beats the hell out of golf, IMHO. Who am I kidding? No "humble", whatsoever; that's my opinion.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

May 2, 2013 21:10:28 GMT -5 kctomato said:

So basically you're testing them to see how cold tolerant they are in the pots vs the ground?

It's still 4 weeks before my last expected frosts and snow storms. Last year it was 7 weeks from this time that we had our last frost. I wasn't planning on planting the tomatoes out for another couple weeks, so they were not hardened off (against sunscald) and I haven't got the spot in the ground for them to go into prepared yet. [Changed plans mid-season, due to uncertainty about the status of my main field.]

But the weather forecast was perfect... just on the cusp of what I thought might freeze them, so I put them out as potted plants. They will be hardened off in a couple days and I'll get the ground ready to plant them, so by the time the next cold weather arrives they will already be in the ground.

I have two more sets of plants to play with... I'll plant one while the weather is still cold, and the other I'm holding until warmer weather with the intent to grow them out for seed. The previous frost was so severe that it killed some of the peas. That's a hard frost!!!! I wouldn't expect any tomato to survive that kind of a frost. Next year I might trial tomatoes under those conditions, but not this year with limited seed.

There are three parts to this experiment:

• Frost Tolerance.
  
• Ability to grow well in cold weather.
  
• Producing fruit in a short growing season.
  

[steev]

Yeah, this is a scary year. I could have planted summer stuff out a month ago, but it usually frosts another three weeks, at least. Phoo! I'm planting out corn, tomatoes, peppers, beans, and eggplant, and I'll take my lumps as they come, if so. I'd not farm, were I a control freak. All I ask is an interesting ride and decent chow.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

I had a neighbor that used to plant a patch of corn a month earlier than anyone else around. Four years out of five it would freeze to death, but that one year in 5 that it survived, he had the earliest corn in the valley. I'd sure like the bragging rights that go along with having the earliest corn!

[steev]

There is much to be said for "mostly I'm a loser, but not this year; neener, neener!".

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Low temperatures the morning of May 3rd were 38 F ambient / 34.5 F radiant.

B2, B3: Plants look vibrantly healthy.

A bit more damage has showed up:

A6: Very slight damage to one leaf.
C1: Very slight damage.
C5: Very slight damage.
D2: Looking very sad.

It's interesting to observe that the tomato that was the lightest green color was the one that was most damaged by the frost. And the darkest green plants showed no frost damage. I'll make more careful observations regarding color when it's light again: Might not be until Sunday though. I took plenty of photos before frost.

When I tilled my fields today, I did not till where last year's tomatoes were planted. I figure that I'll scan the area carefully over the next few weeks looking for volunteer tomatoes that thrive in the cold weather.

[DarJones]

Joseph, there is a correlation with the dwarf gene and thick leaves that survive better in cold temps. Are the best looking plants dwarfs?

The critical temperature with these plants is 28 degrees. They can all survive above that, but you will see significant damage for each degree below 28. About half of the lines I am growing are showing excellent cold tolerance.

LA3969 shows cold tolerance because the roots are more efficient at low temps. If you watch it carefully, you will see that the plants quickly recover from root zone cold temps. I suspect this line crossed with PI120256 would combine the best of both traits, i.e. excellent leaf tolerance to cold and excellent root tolerance too.

Earlinorth is a different trait. I don't show that it is significantly cold tolerant, rather, that it is able to set fruit at low temps. My plants are flowering already.

DarJones

[atash]

Dar, how are your S. lycopersicoides introgressions performing?

[DarJones]

I have 3 rows of cold tolerant lines in the garden, about 150 plants total. The S. Lycopersicoides lines are looking very good overall. I can see some very good traits in a few of them. Four of them have shown significant cold tolerance.

DarJones