Cold tolerant tomatoes, right down Joseph's alley.

[12540dumont]

I know you guys are going to say this doesn't count, but the tomatoes on the south side of the house, planted in March (45 days before the last frost) have the first ripe tomatoes....

I think dwarf tomatoes would be great for Joseph, since he doesn't stake or cage. Dar, I'm glad to see your post, we thought you might have floated away.

I don't think I'll ever get the new HG down. Joseph, your corn and beans.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Jun 11, 2013 22:06:59 GMT -5 12540dumont said:

I know you guys are going to say this doesn't count, but the tomatoes on the south side of the house, planted in March (45 days before the last frost) have the first ripe tomatoes....

The first tomatoes of the season always count!!! Regardless of how they arrived.

Great looking patch of corn. My corn of that variety is about 3" tall...

[steev]

Good looking corn; mine is puny in comparison, but it's coming, and some of the beans are starting to kick.

[DarJones]

I finally picked several ripe Stupice yesterday. This is nearly 2 weeks after the first ripe Boney-M.

[12540dumont]

I served my visiting family from Minnesota the first ripe tomatoes. Sungolds. They were impressed. But only because their tomatoes at home are only knee high.
Joseph, Leo says corn will be ready Monday or so next week.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Here is what one of the better growing tomatoes from the frost/cold tolerant trial looked like a few hours ago. There were 7 plants out of 24 that are flowering. The biggest (and only) tomato fruit in the patch is about the size of a pea. There are huge differences between varieties. Some are growing robustly, while others are just sitting there. The dwarf varieties are not flowering yet.



Here is what my earliest slicing tomato looked like. It was damaged by frost because I put it out a bit earlier than normal. It is finally recovered and is starting to grow again.



For what it's worth, some of these tomatoes are violating my contract with the potato beetles. I allow the potato beetles to use the wild solanum in the garden on condition that they don't visit the domestic solanums. There are two or three tomato plants in the cold tolerant trial that the potato beetles found attractive. Ordinarily I would chop off those tomato plants, but I'm keeping them for this year. Tsk. Tsk.

[littleminnie]

My first fruit will be Sungold this year.

Then I think Azoychka. A very good variety so far for MN!

[Joseph Lofthouse]

This morning there was radiant freeze damage on some of my landrace tomatoes and corn. Watermelon took it hard. The nearest weather station reported 37 F for the mornings of June 20th and June 21st. I rated the tomatoes today. It seems wrong to give a high rating to a dwarf plant, because they don't compete well with weeds. Chopped up one of the cold tolerant tomatoes while weeding. "Oops, Sorry" as I often say. We won't talk about how many times I said that this evening while weeding the popcorn. Gotta sleep. Market day tomorrow.

My earliest tomato is already flowering, even though the plants only scored 1 out of 5.

[DarJones]

Joseph, odds are very high that your "earliest tomato" carries precocious flowering and/or Fruiting Temperature (ft) genes. They would set flowers regardless of plant condition. This may sound backward, but if the plant flowers even when it is in poor condition, then it should be carefully evaluated compared to other varieties that have healthier foliage. It should probably be crossed with another variety to combine precocious flowering and better cold tolerance.

Do you see some of the cold tolerant lines as potentially valuable in your climate?

At this point, I have eliminated all but one of the dwarf varieties (Krainiy Sever) from consideration for breeding work. I am still evaluating the intermediate size plants. Jagodka scores very high for heavy fruit set. PI120256 and Sasha's Altai score high for overall plant hardiness and fruit size, but are not precocious. Most of the sub arctic (whatever last name) are just plain sub par.

I know this won't mean a lot for your conditions, but I have identified a line in my greenhouse that is extremely tolerant of drought. It is a cherry variety. How did I find it? I deliberately quit watering the plants and watched to see who lived. This particular tray of plants is still healthy when everything around it is crumbling into dust. I think this would be a very good trait to have so may put aside a couple of plants to make crosses this fall. It will have to pass the test in field conditions!

DarJones

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Here is my current rating for the tomatoes... The score includes a number in parentheses to indicate if the score is higher or lower than last time. The flowering data is for 3 weekly evaluations. Earlinorth set the first fruit. It is currently about pea sized. I have added photos into this album.

Tag	Name	Earlier Frost Damage	Score/Notes	Flowering
A1	Wheatley's Frost Resistant	**	*** (+1) Attractive to Colorado Potato Beetle.	__*
A2	Tastiheart		** (-1)	___
A3	Superbec		* (-1)	___
A4	Spiridonovskie Red		**** (+1) Attractive to Colorado Potato Beetle.	__*
A5	Siberia		*** (+1) Attractive to Colorado Potato Beetle.	___
A6	Sasha's Altai	*	*****	___
B1	Purple Russian	-	* (-2) Recently transplanted.	___
B2	PI 120256		**** (-1) Attractive to Colorado Potato Beetle.	___
B3	Peron Sprayless		**** (-1)	___
B4	Nevskiy Red		*****	__*
B5	Moskovich		* (-2)	___
B6	Matina		*****	_**
C1	LA 3969	*	*** (-1)	___
X2	Sungold	**	*** Recent Frost Damage	_**
C3	Kosovo		* (-1) Recently transplanted. Accidentally chopped off.	___
C4	Jagodka		*****	_**
C5	I-3 Red		**	___
C6	Earlinorth		**** (+1)	***
D1	Boney-M Red		****	__*
D2	Hybrid Cross	***	***	___
D3	Bellstar	***	***	___
D4	Barnaulskiy Konsermyi Red	-	** (-1) Recently transplanted.	___
D5	Joseph's Direct Seeded	-	* (-1) Recently transplanted.	___
D6	Joseph's Earliest Slicer		***** (+1)	_**
E1-E6	Joseph's Landrace	*****	* Recently transplanted. Recent frost damage.	__*

[Joseph Lofthouse]

I hope to eventually evaluate other traits such as fruit ripening, and overall production.

I have two goals with tomatoes that are somewhat in conflict with each other... First is to harvest tomatoes earlier in the growing season. Second is to get an abundant harvest of canning tomatoes before frost. My earliest tomatoes sacrifice productivity, and my later tomatoes risk losing the entire harvest to fall frosts. I'm not looking for Big Beautiful Perfect Tomatoes for the farmer's market. There are too many growers close by in warmer micro-climates who grow in high tunnels.

I am excited about this project, because I would use season extenders like wall-o-water, or floating row covers if it would make a difference. But adding those sorts of extra protections onto frost/cold sensitive genomes hasn't been very productive for me. Mechanical frost protection on top of a cold/frost tolerant genome might be really clever!!!

So far the lines that look most promising are those that sailed through the early frosts without damage, and that grew robustly (rated 4 or 5) and are precocious to flower. Subject to change depending on productivity and fruit set, my current favorites are: Earlinorth, Matina, Jagodka, Bonie-M, and Nevski-Red. A couple of lines were not given a fair chance because they were transplanted into the field later.

I am growing what may be a natural hybrid this spring... It came out of a packet of "Joseph's Earliest", but it was regular leaf instead of potato leaved. It could also be mixed up seed. I planted it where I can keep an eye on it to see what it becomes. This plant is the most precocious of the second set of tomatoes that were transplanted into the field.

My tomatoes routinely experience drought before I plant them into the field. It is difficult for me to water them acceptably. (I realize bigger pots would help...) I typically transplant tomatoes into the field before the irrigation system is operational, so the drought associated with transplanting can result in heavy losses. Once established in the field, the combination of once a week irrigation and clay soil keeps them in good shape until the first week of September when the irrigation company shuts off the water. At that point we are within a couple weeks of frost so drought is a good thing to stop production and ripen fruit.

[nathan125]

Joseph: My first tomato is about to be harvested. It is a Beaverlodge slicer, transplanted to the garden Mother's day. not sure when i started it but it's quite early for my area. I will give you some seeds if you like...

Read more: alanbishop.proboards.com/thread/6988/tolerant-tomatoes-right-josephs-alley?page=7#ixzz2X1LIxAWk

[Joseph Lofthouse]

I uploaded the video walk through of the cold/frost tolerant tomato trails to my YouTube channel. If there are two plants side by side, about a foot apart, the smaller plant is from the second planting.

[DarJones]

can you make it public Joseph? I don't log in to youtube.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Jun 23, 2013 16:21:08 GMT -5 DarJones said:

can you make it public Joseph? I don't log in to youtube.

It's now public.