Cold tolerant tomatoes, right down Joseph's alley.

[12540dumont]

Dar's California tomato patch.

Flowering, no frost, boy I hope they taste good.

The gopher's have eaten 4 tomatoes:
Da Apprendere - Cortona
Bear Creek - Dar

I replaced them with ones I had in 4 inch pots in the sprout house.
1 is potato leafed and of course the tag fell out.
There was a Sioux Cosmo, a Piccardy, and a Campbell 54. I'm still hanging on to one Sweet Beverly (just in case).

Although these will not be frost tested. It's hot and dry here. It's so dry that we cannot get the hay out of the field. The harvester will not pick it up. So, I'll compare for sunbaked early in the season.

Attachments:

[atash]

May 6, 2013 0:59:48 GMT -5 DarJones said:

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

Thanks for the report. S. lycopersicoides is my top bet for real cold tolerance, because the species itself is hardier than any true tomato. Tom sent me a link to a photograph in habitat showing it very clearly growing higher up than snow-dusted mountains in the background, in decidedly alpine-looking terrain. And the owner of chileflora thinks it survives temperatures around -8C in habitat. The frost can last up to a week at a time, and it might get hit with 3 such frosts a year, which would be comparable to here. Plus, interestingly, the precipitation--mostly snow!--falls in the winter. Meaning it must be more tolerant of cool damp conditions than any true tomato.

It is far more disease-resistant than domesticated tomatoes, although that is hardly a surprise.

It also happens to be an outbreeder, which could be an interesting trait in tomatoes, and therefor has showy flowers perched at the top of the shoots. Solanum habrochaites also has these traits.

The fruit is black. No info on edibility.

[DarJones]

atash, it is inedible. Tastes horrible.

[kctomato]

May 8, 2013 7:30:54 GMT -5 DarJones said:

atash, it is inedible. Tastes horrible.

But when did that ever stop anyone?

[steev]

When they were too strong-willed to buy into "it's good for you", that's when! When its alleged "goodness" was out-weighed by its blight upon one's limited existence. Feh! A pox upon "food supplements" as a solution to a lack of real food.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

I planted the first lot of tomatoes into the field today: The same ones that survived the cold weather a while ago. May 10th is about 18 days before our median last frost date. It's about 29 days before I typically put tomatoes into the field. I'm expecting snow, and hail, and frost before then. It's about 41 days before the last frost date last year. The 10-day weather forecast is for lows in the 40's. Two of them might be cold enough to generate radiant frosts if the sky is clear. The plants have been outside since May 1st, and may have experienced as many as 5 ambient or radiant frosts in that time. They have not deteriorated or received additional (visible) damage due to the cold nights.



I planted them six feet apart on a grid pattern. When I plant the next lots out, I'm intending to plant them next to the existing plants.

The soil was warm to the touch, even down 5" deep. A pleasure to plant in.

I made a video after they were planted. Too tired to edit and post it tonight. Bad lighting. Bright sunlight. Might just keep it as an archive. Not much to see. A bunch of tomatoes buried until only a few of the uppermost leaves were showing.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

We had another radiant cooling frost. The nearest weather station reported 37 F on the morning of May 24th. The tomatoes look unharmed. LISP Ashworth sweet corn received radiant freeze damage to leaves on about half the plants. Frosty sweet corn did not have any noticeable damage.

Doesn't seem like a good year to be running frost tests on tomatoes. I planted my landrace tomatoes out yesterday. That's two weeks earlier than I normally put them out, but it's been a warm spring so I'm taking the risk.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

We had a radiant cooling frost on the morning of May 31st. Ambient temperature reported by a neighbor was 39F. My landrace tomatoes were significantly damaged. I was busy planting, so I didn't examine them closely. Since they are not part of the cold tolerant trial I can deal with them later. The tomato from this trail labeled (Big Beef X Eva Purple Ball) X (Disease Tolerant Red) is really suffering. Some of the other tomatoes are growing great. They have thrived in the cool early spring weather. Others are barely alive. I took detailed notes, and made a video. I may post details later. It's my busiest gardening time of the year other than the emergency fall-frost harvest. I want to get my warm weather crops planted, because every delay now is one less day for them to mature in. I am still one week away from when I normally plant tomatoes and peppers into the field.

Frosty sweet corn did fine. LISP Ashworth took it hard again. What's up with that? Tomatoes surviving a frost better than corn? Sheesh. This plant selection stuff is sure messing with my world view.

In the afternoon of May 31st I planted out another duplicate set of tomatoes for this trial. I planted them about a foot from their like-kind. There were a few that were missing from the first planting due to not germinating or to being eaten by bugs. The morning of June 1st the neighbors reported heavy frost and ambient temperatures slightly cooler at 37 F and 38F depending on the neighbor. Dew point was reported by the local weather station as 25F. The talk of the farmer's at market was regarding how frosty the fields and the market grounds were. I have not been able to look at the tomatoes, but if they were damaged, they will still be damaged next time I get out to to the tomato field.


So much that i want to post about. So tired. Thus for now, so long.

[littleminnie]

I might as well report on my tomatoes and cold tolerance. My greenhouse was destroyed in the winds on 5/11 and so all my plants have been outside since and it has been very cool and rainy. Certain varieties withstood this way better- I am talking about still in the pots. Many of them looked so bad from the weather I couldn't bring them to market and instead gave them away.

Did poorly:
Caspian Pink
Marglobe Select
Sungold
Brandywine var.
Bush Goliath
Sweet Seedless hybrid
KBX
Cow's and Opalka


Ok:
Persimmon
San Marzano
Amish paste

Did well:
Azoychka*
Aunt Ginny's
my Brown F2
Early Glee
Eva Purple Ball
JD's Special C Tex
Jersey Giant
Malachite Box*
McClintock's or whatever it is that is supposed to be it
Northern Lights
Paul Robeson
Stupice

[steev]

My max-min thermometer claims that temps dropped to 30F last week; apparently just a cold air mass moving through at some point, as nothing was frost-killed. This seems to happen all through Summer, on the farm. It's a very dicey environment; sub-freezing shots during otherwise frog-frying weather. I've heard of people's tomatoes being killed as late as June 20th.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Report from about June 5th. I walked through the tomato patch and gave each plant a score. It is somewhat arbitrary and capricious, but gives a sense of what is growing well, and what is suffering badly.

Tag	Name	Earlier Frost Damage	Score/Notes
A1	Wheatley's Frost Resistant	**	**
A2	Tastiheart		***
A3	Superbec		**
A4	Spiridonovskie Red		***
A5	Siberia		**
A6	Sasha's Altai	*	*****
B1	Purple Russian	-	*** Newly transplanted into field.
B2	PI 120256		***** Vibrant
B3	Peron Sprayless		***** Vibrant
B4	Nevskiy Red		*****
B5	Moskovich		***
B6	Matina		*****+
C1	LA 3969	*	****
X2	Sungold	-	***
C3	Kosovo		**
C4	Jagodka	**	*****+
C5	I-3 Red	*	**
C6	Earlinorth		***
D1	Boney-M Red		****
D2	Hybrid Cross	***	***
D3	Bellstar		***
D4	Barnaulskiy Konsermyi Red	-	*** Newly transplanted.
D5	Joseph's Direct Seeded	-	** Newly transplanted.
D6	Joseph's Earliest Slicer		****
E1-E6	Joseph's Landrace	*****	*

I was only going to award 5 stars, but a couple were much better than others to which I had already awarded 5 stars.

[DarJones]

If I read between the lines, it looks like several of the new lines are set to outperform your locally selected varieties. Just a caution that some of the Russian stock is strongly dwarfed and precocious.

My thought is that intercrossing the most cold tolerant should result in improved cultural traits while maintaining the cold tolerance. I want to bring in some disease tolerance too, but that is a long term project.

I'm speculating that you are going to be the earliest to market with ripe tomatoes this year.

DarJones

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Over the years, I have scrupulously avoided exposing my tomato population to frost. I have previously treated them as intolerant to even the slightest frost. Every year I lose a few plants to frost. Last year I lost like 10% of the patch to frost on June 20th. But I haven't previously set out to test for frost tolerance. Perhaps I have been selecting for ability to set fruit in spite of low night-time temperatures. Last year there was one cultivar that survived the first fall frosts. It hadn't ripened fruit yet, so what's the point?

What I didn't write much about, is that I planted out something like 60 of my landrace plants, and they nearly all suffered mightily to light frosts. They are in a different field 1/2 mile away, that seems somewhat warmer, because the LISP Ashworth corn didn't get frozen in that field, but about 75% of the Ashworth plants were damaged in the field with the cold tolerant tomato trials. [Less than 3% of Frosty sweet corn in the colder field were damaged.] I'll pay more attention next time I rate the tomatoes to not discriminate against dwarfs. It is so disconcerting, to walk into a field and for the corn to be heavily damaged while the tomatoes are looking fine. I normally plant main season corn a month prior to planting out tomatoes. The Ashworth that was damaged was part of an extra early cold tolerance trial along side some other corn that I am testing for cold tolerance. I plan to rate the tomatoes periodically throughout the season. Date of first harvest will definitely be a consideration.

Because of the way the mountains are shaped, my garden is cold compared to gardens only 20 miles away, and a lot of growers have taken advantage of the USDA's 'High Tunnel' program, which I will not. So they get the advantage of two weeks earlier season in the spring, and the advantage of a greenhouse, so I'm unlikely to be first to market with tomatoes, but it would be nice to take any tomatoes at all to market before September.

Hmm. Crossing tomatoes? That could be interesting. It would be a first for me.

[DarJones]

I picked 5 ripe tomatoes today, 3 - Boney M and, 2 - Barnaulskiy Konservnyii. This is 65 days from transplant. This was the coldest and most changeable spring I've ever seen in this area. We had temps down to 32 degrees 5 times in April and May 12th got down to 36 degrees. My plants thrived through it all, but days to maturity were obviously stretched a bit.

DarJones

[Joseph Lofthouse]

One of the tomato plants from the cold tolerant trial is flowering! Earlinorth. Two of the plants have a lot of flower buds: Matina, Jagodka.

My typical schedule would put tomatoes in the ground about 4 days ago. I put them in earlier this spring, because it seemed like a warmer spring. (It only seemed warmer, the frosts came as normal.) They still haven't started growing well after being transplanted. About half of them succumbed to a combination of transplant shock and frost.