Post by gilbert on Sept 3, 2014 23:53:37 GMT -5
Hello,
I started my first tomato landrace today. I have a community farm, with three hundred tomato plants of about fifty different varieties. I just saved a bunch of tomatoes from the plants that succeeded, smashed them up with a home made device on my drill, and fermented them. (Succeeded is defined by the tomato in my hand. I can't correlate fruits with plants really well, since the tomatoes are in a huge sprawling jungle and have lost their labels, and volunteer workers come through and harvest them all into a big pile. However, I did try to save most from types which were highly represented, and I mixed in some recognizable types from my garden. Taxi, black cherry, and Siberian were the best recognizable varieties.) Today I went out to clean them. As I did so I thought about all the different pressures which will tug the mix in different directions.
First and formost, there will be no green tomatoes in the planting, unless they are one of the kinds that over ripen to yellow. Since the labels were largely lost, green tomatoes are not being harvested. I imagine that when we go to save the green tomatoes before the frost, I will notice some that are soft green and get some then.
Colorado weather will eliminate lots of tomatoes right off the bat, which is good and intentional. Many varieties have trouble setting fruit here.
We harvest twice a week, and harvest anything which is near ripe, to avoid rot, bugs, and damage. I only save seed from fruits which are fully ripe when picked. This will select for ones which ripen quickly from green to full color. I am not sure if this is good or bad. If I harvested less often, it would select for ones which hung well on the plant.
Plants which are more upright and open will be more represented, since they are less likely to rot, and more easy for us to find.
Plants which are not favored by pill bugs will be favored.
Because I wash the seeds by swirling them in water and pouring off the mold and skins, I will be selecting for dense heavy seeds. Growers who rub the seeds in a strainer and shove the mushy junk through the screen will select for larger seeds.
And then of course there are all the random things which can push it one way or another: which tomatoes get smashed in transport, since they will get used, etc, etc, etc.
I plan to get fruits from other gardeners in my gardening group, and especially get some from a man who plants hybrids in the area, so that I will get some segregation in the next year. I may also save some seeds from "locally grown" tomatoes at local stores. The only sorting I will do is roughly by size; really tiny tomatoes will go in a group by themselves, but anything large cherry size and over will go in the main bucket.
I started my first tomato landrace today. I have a community farm, with three hundred tomato plants of about fifty different varieties. I just saved a bunch of tomatoes from the plants that succeeded, smashed them up with a home made device on my drill, and fermented them. (Succeeded is defined by the tomato in my hand. I can't correlate fruits with plants really well, since the tomatoes are in a huge sprawling jungle and have lost their labels, and volunteer workers come through and harvest them all into a big pile. However, I did try to save most from types which were highly represented, and I mixed in some recognizable types from my garden. Taxi, black cherry, and Siberian were the best recognizable varieties.) Today I went out to clean them. As I did so I thought about all the different pressures which will tug the mix in different directions.
First and formost, there will be no green tomatoes in the planting, unless they are one of the kinds that over ripen to yellow. Since the labels were largely lost, green tomatoes are not being harvested. I imagine that when we go to save the green tomatoes before the frost, I will notice some that are soft green and get some then.
Colorado weather will eliminate lots of tomatoes right off the bat, which is good and intentional. Many varieties have trouble setting fruit here.
We harvest twice a week, and harvest anything which is near ripe, to avoid rot, bugs, and damage. I only save seed from fruits which are fully ripe when picked. This will select for ones which ripen quickly from green to full color. I am not sure if this is good or bad. If I harvested less often, it would select for ones which hung well on the plant.
Plants which are more upright and open will be more represented, since they are less likely to rot, and more easy for us to find.
Plants which are not favored by pill bugs will be favored.
Because I wash the seeds by swirling them in water and pouring off the mold and skins, I will be selecting for dense heavy seeds. Growers who rub the seeds in a strainer and shove the mushy junk through the screen will select for larger seeds.
And then of course there are all the random things which can push it one way or another: which tomatoes get smashed in transport, since they will get used, etc, etc, etc.
I plan to get fruits from other gardeners in my gardening group, and especially get some from a man who plants hybrids in the area, so that I will get some segregation in the next year. I may also save some seeds from "locally grown" tomatoes at local stores. The only sorting I will do is roughly by size; really tiny tomatoes will go in a group by themselves, but anything large cherry size and over will go in the main bucket.
