|
|
Post by ferdzy on Jan 19, 2018 15:49:19 GMT -5
I bought some seed for Jaune Flammé a few years back that turned out to be quite crossed. Normally I would be "cross" about that, but the results were actually very good. It seems like Jaune Flammé crosses tend to keep the growth habit of Jaune Flammé (about 6 smaller tomatoes in a truss; very indeterminate; highly productive) while picking up the flavour and colour of the other parent. I had some that had a really great classic red beefsteak look and taste and I am continuing to grow these out, as that's hard to find in a smaller tomato. This year will be F4. I am looking forward to seeing what I get - so far it's been pretty stable. There were also some that were marbled yellow and red, again with a typical flavour for the larger bi-colour tomatoes. I didn't save seed from them, although maybe I should have. I do have a few seeds left from that packet. Maybe I should grow them out next year and see what else I get. How did these turn out? Smaller tomatoes with the beefstake look might be really cool. Well, I've kept growing them! It will be f8 this year. It was f8 last year too, but I didn't save any seeds. I only grew a couple of plants and they weren't the most impressive (although given that in general we only got about 25% of our expected harvest of tomatoes, I'd say they were pulling more than their weight. They certainly did better than many of the others we grew. But I digress.) I don't think that they are quite as beefsteak-like as they were in the first season or two. However, they continue to be a really tasty, pleasant tomato and I would like to have them as a named variety... I just need a name... I've been calling them Ferdzy's Favourite and that might be it. We gave a bunch of seedlings to a local market grower (friend) so I have seed collected from 20 plants (I think that was the f6 generation) and they looked pretty stable at that point. I really like them because they start fairly early and go all season, amongst the last to be killed by cold/mildew, and the size is right for me to put one on a sandwich. Edwin (Mr. Ferdzy) doesn't like raw tomatoes much (!) and I have to admit they are not my favourite thing either. But I do like a bit on a sandwich, etc. This way I am not constantly cutting into a tomato and then composting 3/4 of it because I can't eat it all by myself. They hold quite well, off and on the vine. I would really like to know how they would do in a greenhouse. Oh, I wanted to add that my friend really liked them too. His one complaint/comment about them was that they were a bit more attractive to pest insects than his other varieties. I was surprised as I've had no trouble, but I don't get pests like a market gardener either. It didn't seem to be unsurmountable. |
|
|
|
Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Apr 23, 2018 1:40:00 GMT -5
|
|
|
|
Post by reed on Apr 23, 2018 7:51:58 GMT -5
I don't spend much time following the more technical aspects of this topic, but it got me interested enough to start watching my tomatoes more closely. Many over the past three or four seasons have what I call semi-open flowers. As in they are open enough to be more than a little attractive to micro-bees.
I think three seasons ago I grew the hybrid (Brandywine x Rutgers) called Red Rose, it had those semi-open flowers. The ones I called Utah Heart, Utah Red Bottom and some of Tom's also had those flowers. Also interestingly enough, my own strain of Cherokee Purple did too.
Last year I saved a Red Rose descendant with potato leaves, I called it Big Pink. Another one with normal leaves and more wrinkled green tops that did not get disease as badly I called Big Pink (dr). This year all the plants in the respective pots from those seeds are uniform for leaf type.
Nothing surprising there but yesterday I noticed my Cherokee Purple pot has both normal and potato leaf plants. I don't remember right off which CP is supposed to have, I think normal but in any event I know it isn't both. I know I didn't get my seeds mixed up so something promiscuous happened last year or the year before.
I think with the help of those little bees promiscuity is already going on, rendering record keeping for my purposes mostly useless. From now on I'm gonna mix up my slicing tomatoes in one spot and my canning tomatoes in another. When I save seed I'll take a picture of the fruit it came from with a little description of phenotype and just call it (Tomato - as shown).
|
|
|
|
Post by reed on Apr 23, 2018 15:55:57 GMT -5
Nothing surprising there but yesterday I noticed my Cherokee Purple pot has both normal and potato leaf plants. I don't remember right off which CP is supposed to have, I think normal but in any event I know it isn't both. I know I didn't get my seeds mixed up so something promiscuous happened last year or the year before. Potato leaf is supposed to be recessive. So the crossing event was the year before! So you have an F2! That makes sense also because "I think" if they were F1 they would all be the same. The F1 must have grown last year without me knowing it. Also, I only save seeds from one or two of the best fruits from the best plant of each variety. I don't remember specifically what was special about the plant and fruit(s) I chose for seed last year but maybe it was related to it being a hybrid. All that might explain how a statistically unlikely event could have occurred. |
|
|
|
Post by Joseph Lofthouse on May 7, 2018 0:34:15 GMT -5
A few notes about the self-incompatibility project... I grew only one F1 plant of (potato-leaved Brad X S habrochaites) in the greenhouse. I vibrated the flowers plenty. And pollinated it with mixed pollen from itself and other F1 plants. Among the 24 G2 seedlings I'm growing this year, none of them are potato-leaved. If the plant was self-pollinated, we'd expect about 6 potato-leaved plants. Yay! Self incompatibility exists in the F1, which is to be expected, since functional genes have been restored. In the field, I grew multiple F1 plants of (potato-leaved Brad X S habrochaites) along with other F1 crosses between (domestic X habrochaites) tomatoes. Potato-leaved plants showed up in that population, I'm interpreting that as a sign that two plants with potato-leaved alleles cross-pollinated. Here's a photo of one of the second generation from (Brad X habrochaites).  Also, the most alluring mystery in my garden right now, is whether I am growing a cross between Big Hill and Solanum habrochaites. Big Hill has an exerted stigma. Last summer, gilbert planted one Big Hill plant surrounded by 9 habrochaites. Hoping for some natural cross pollination. He shared seeds with me. Based on leaf shape, and unusually heavy suckering, it looks like there may be a few crossed plants! Yay! That was my highest priority cross for this year, and it may have already been done! The plants are about to flower. Flower shape will be another big clue towards determining if the cross was successful. It was a high priority cross, because I only started out with one habrochaites plant. I need more S alleles in my population. Perhaps the domestic tomatoes contributed one. And the S pennellii crosses may contribute others. The Big Hill X habrochaites cross would contribute enough to keep the project viable. The BC1 plants are throwing off phenotypes that are unexpected to me. Almost looks more like S corneliomulleri than S habrochaites. (The two patches were only about ten feet apart.) Are any of you growing BC1 seeds? They would have been included with the other packets of "Interspecies Tomato Hybrids". If yes, can you post photos? |
|
|
|
Post by keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.) on May 7, 2018 9:06:29 GMT -5
I have a few BC1 seeds i plan to start but have not done so yet. Maybe today or tomorrow?
|
|
|
|
Post by Joseph Lofthouse on May 7, 2018 13:18:00 GMT -5
Here's a photo of example plants that got me wondering if the BC1 plants might have crossed with S corneliomulleri. I only had one S habrochaites plant for my original domestic/wild cross, so when I attempted to hand pollinate it with pollen from it's children, I only got 8 seedlings from lots of attempts over an extended time. (The self-incompatibility trait slightly incomplete? Or possibly some corneliomuleri or peruvianum pollen got to them.) So last year, I grew the plants I'm calling BC1 (which I was thinking were 75% habrochaites) in the next row over from the corneliomulleri plants. This spring, some of the seedlings are looking much more like corneliomulleri than habrochaites. Sure, there is always the possibility that I got seeds mixed up. I guess we'll see. If they grow huge and rambunctious (like habrochaites), while looking like S corneliomulleri, then that would be a good sign that they hybridized. If they struggle and grow small little plants (like corneliomulleri) that would indicate mixed up seed.  High resolution image |
|
|
|
Post by Joseph Lofthouse on May 7, 2018 14:50:36 GMT -5
Do your BC1 plants look to be segregating or are they all pretty similar? Do any of them look like my three BC1 seedlings? It's complicated... The pedigree of the plants is as follows: LA1777 (a single plant) Donated pollen to four domestic plants. I used pollen from (Domestic X LA1777) to try to manually pollinate LA1777. Pollen from S peruvianum and S corneliomulleri was also present in the greenhouse, and on the pollination tools, so may have been the actual pollen donors. I got 8 plants, which I called BC1. I planted those together in a small patch in the field. S corneliomulleri was growing about 10 feet away. S habrochaites was growing in the same field about 70 feet away. Seven of the plants looked phenotypically similar. One looked different, so I saved seeds from it separately. I called that BC1-off-type. I'm growing 24 plants of BC1-off-type, they look like the classic S habrochaites phenotype (selfed?) and there is no obvious segregation. I shared seeds from the seven plants as BC1. I suppose that technically, they could be called G2 BC1. It gets really messy trying to name things when promiscuous pollination is involved and you don't know who's the daddy, or even what species. LOL! Anyway, the G2 BC1 plants have a lot of segregation going on. Here's a photo. The two on the right look like classic LA1777. The ones on the left look more like corneliomulleri (sorta). Corneliomulleri typically has alternating leaflets, and habrochaites typically has pairs of leaflets. The plants on the left have paired leaflets (like habrochaites), but with the corneliomulleri leaflet shape and texture.  And while I was taking photos, here's what the greenhouse looks like. About half of these plants are domestic varieties for the farmer's market, and the rest are inter-species hybrids for my growing pleasure.  |
|
|
|
Post by richardw on May 7, 2018 14:58:04 GMT -5
Looks good, ever get white fly in there Joseph
|
|
|
|
Post by Joseph Lofthouse on May 7, 2018 15:54:54 GMT -5
Looks good, ever get white fly in there Joseph I haven't had insect problems in the greenhouse. I wonder if part of it is that I spray-irrigate, so bugs are constantly getting washed off the leaves. And I only grow in there for about 4 months of the year, so life-cycles get disrupted. I used to get huge white-fly infestations on outdoor grapes, but that was towards fall, after the fruit had been harvested, so I didn't worry about them. |
|
|
|
Post by Joseph Lofthouse on May 7, 2018 15:55:59 GMT -5
I should plant more seeds of BC1 because it looks like my three seedlings are the habrochaites type and I would like to recover the cornelio-muelleri type as well. I still have most of the packet, it now seems much more interesting. I planted more seeds a few weeks ago, when it started looking like something weird was happening. I'm smiling, because I thought that the off-type plant would generate the more interesting population. |
|
|
|
Post by gilbert on May 7, 2018 18:18:59 GMT -5
I'm excited to hear that you might have got a Big Hill Hybrid!
You mentioned in an email to me that you'd be using the uncrossed Big Hill as your main production tomatoes. That made me a little nervous, given that the Big Hill I save seed from (the only one which survived) was the smallest and weakest plant in my garden last year, and all the seeds I planted seem really runty. Do your plants look healthy and normal?
On the other hand, the runty plants I've got this year may be due to an issue with the potting soil; I'll post more in my thread about that.
|
|
|
|
Post by gilbert on May 7, 2018 21:26:12 GMT -5
Questions; what is S corneliomulleri? What is it like? And, are any of the wild species being used in the project toxic, and to what degree? Should I be worried about planting them around children/ pets?
|
|
|
|
Post by Joseph Lofthouse on May 7, 2018 22:02:23 GMT -5
You mentioned in an email to me that you'd be using the uncrossed Big Hill as your main production tomatoes. That made me a little nervous, given that the Big Hill I save seed from (the only one which survived) was the smallest and weakest plant in my garden last year, and all the seeds I planted seem really runty. Do your plants look healthy and normal? The seed you sent is growing wonderfully for me. There is a flat of 72 seedlings that look marvelous, and about 9 older plants that look great. Big Hill has returned home, and it's liking it. It was bred and selected (unintentionally) to grow great in coconut coir in a greenhouse that is barely heated at night. Thanks for the grow report. This isn't the first time I've heard comments along the lines of runty seedling (or subject to damping off). Definitely something to work on. Hmm. In looking back on it, I'm surprized that this cross even happened, the original seedling from which the Hill clade originated was very slow growing that first year. These days, it's likely that I would cull such a slow growing seedling. |
|
|
|
Post by Joseph Lofthouse on May 7, 2018 22:16:35 GMT -5
Questions; what is S corneliomulleri? What is it like? And, are any of the wild species being used in the project toxic, and to what degree? Should I be worried about planting them around children/ pets? Solanum corneliomulleri is part of the peruvianum complex of wild tomatoes. It is pretty distantly related to domestic tomatoes. The accession I grow makes a small clump perhaps a foot tall and two feet across. It has barely eked out a meager existence at my place, but has managed to make seeds for two generations now. I've eaten fruits of S peruvianum. They didn't make me throw up, or have a stomach ache, which are the classic symptoms of nightshade poisoning. The fruits are not attractive so that they'd entice an animal to eat them. I'd guess that the leaves of all tomatoes are poisonous, but they taste nasty, so mammals don't feel inclined to eat them, and if enough are eaten they are emetic. Solanum corneliomulleri fruits  Solanum corneliomulleri plant  The flowers are quite promiscuous, which is why I am growing them, for possible inclusion in the self-incompatible tomato project.  |
|
