colourful extra early tomatoes?

[diane]

Every year I choose a few themes and grow as many varieties as I can find to see which do best.

This year I'm going to grow extra early tomatoes, and as I'm skimming catalogues, I've noticed that they are all red (or pink).
I wonder why that is?

I think I will see if I can enliven the extra earlies. Blues, stripes, yellows. Any non-reds I cross them with will be later, so it will take me a while to get my hybrids back to being extra early .

I do have experimental seeds of Blue Ambrosia from Lee Goodwin who crossed Bosque Blue (midseason) and Ambrosia Gold (early).
I wonder how they will be?

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Sungold F1 is typically a very early tomato in my garden. I don't grow it though, because I am all about disintermediation.

[Earl]

I have a few versions of dehybidized Sungolds but I think Blush and some others have the taste and brix similar to Sungold....

Not at home but I know there are many cherry types that are marbled or striped and in "general" cherries up to golf ball size at my location are quite early

[Earl]

I'm including a link to striped tomatoes

tatianastomatobase.com/wiki/Category:Striped_Tomatoes

[farmermike]

I am planning to make some crosses this summer between extra early determinate tomatoes, and highly-flavorful diversely-colored indeterminate tomatoes. Some of the determinate mothers will be Forest Fire, Silvery Fir Tree, (and a few others I received in trades), and the indeterminate pollen-donors might be, Berkeley Tie-Dye, Lucid Gem, Ananas Noire, Cherokee Purple, Striped Roman. I am assuming that the DTM of the progeny from these crosses will be somewhere in between the parents, and that in subsequent generations they will segregate for a higher percentage of indeterminate (vs. determinate) because that is the dominant trait.

My plan is to just look for the most determinate offspring starting with the F2, and continue with those lines until I have colorful extra early tomatoes.

I have never tried manually crossing tomatoes before, so I guess I need to learn how to do that. I suppose I will also have to start a later crop of the early mothers, so that their flowering and fruit set coincides with the later pollen-donors.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

One error I made with my first manual crosses was using the determinate short-season plants as pollen donors. So the manually-pollinated fruits on the later longer-season plants didn't mature.

Because determinate growth habit is a recessive trait, it's easy to select for. (About 25% of the F2 generation will be determinate.) Once a determinate plant is discovered, then it's offspring remain determinate unless they get cross-pollinated.

I have generally culled the earliest plant to produce fruits from the F2 of a cross, because they tend to produce the smallest fruits. It's the plants that mature about a week later that have been most interesting to me.

[diane]

Maybe we need someone from further south to send us some pollen for our early plants.

[keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.)]

Sounds like a great project!

I think someone brought it up before, but one thing i see happening with this is that in general the smaller tomatoes are the earliest. So are your goals to have any early tomatoes regardless if they are cherry size, grape size, currant size, etc. Or is there going to be a optimal tomato size your shooting for. I think in general Joseph say's for his climate he generally can't grow many over Saldette size, which is kindof a mid-size tomato. Since i'm in a similar climate i generally think the same is true. I have gotten a few large tomatoes from time to time, but not only were they long season, i generally only get one tomato off those kind of plants the whole season. A big tomato is great, but to only get one tomato from it the whole season seems a bit "too heirloomy" and pathetic in my opinion. If i had to settle for Saldette size that might be a good compromise between size and production (maybe aka. earliness).

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Here's what an F3 sibling group looked like. These are YTD harvest from all plants. That largest orange tomato is about the size and color of the mother of the cross. The 5th row from the right is about like the pollen donor of the cross. I figure that the smallest fruits were from plants where the two genomes didn't combine well together, (they are late, small fruited, and not very productive). My target is about like the row all the way to the left.

My definition of saladette is about 2 to 3 ounces. The maximum size I can expect from my garden is about 12 ounces.



Here's what the YTD harvest looked like even later in the season.

[diane]

Yes, that will make crossing easier. I rushed out to look at mine, but it hasn't any flowers yet. Of the 82 varieties in my main bed, only 10 have flowers
and one has a tomato. (Fruhe Liebe).

We are having a late season here in the NW. It's a good thing I didn't choose to trial late ones.

[farmermike]

I attempted my first ever manual cross pollination on tomatoes yesterday. I have 4 early determinate red tomatoes in a big pot together; Silvery Fir Tree, Forest Fire, and 2 no ID (one of those from seeds received in a trade with William). I clipped off all the open flowers, and emasculated all those just about ready to open. I got some nice hooked tweezers from the cosmetic section of the drugstore, which helped with separating the unopened flower parts. I also removed all but one sepal on each flower, so it will be easy to recognize which fruits have been hand pollinated.

Then I took my electric toothbrush out into my indeterminate slicing tomato patch and used it to buzz the flowers of Berkeley Tie Dye, Blue Beauty, Black Beauty, and Lucid Gem. I used a dark colored jar lid to catch the pollen that fell from the buzzed flowers. Then went back to the emasculated flowers and swabbed the tips of those stigmas around in the collected pollen. I'm not really sure if the emasculated flowers are receptive yet, so I'll keep trying to pollinate them for a few more days in a row. Does that technique sound right? Any suggestions from those with experience doing this?

I suppose I won't know if any of the crosses took (instead of being selfed) until I grow out the F1. I am assuming that the F1 plants will be indeterminate and red-fruited, since those are the dominated traits. I'm hoping I can find a spot indoors to grow out several F1 plants under lights this winter, and have F2 seeds for next spring.

[farmermike]

That's interesting, William! Hopefully something useful will come out of those dehybridizing Indigo Kumquats. The F2s I grew from that this year were pretty, but bland. I think I'll go back to the F2 again next year, if I don't need all my space for my own segregating crosses.

My attempts at crossing early varieties with colorful varieties seem to have been successful. I have a bunch of F1 seeds fermenting now. Forest Fire, of course, was the first to ripen and produced the most fruits and the most seeds. I think I'll sow some of the F1 seeds this weekend of Forest Fire pollinated with a cocktail of pollen from Blue Beauty, Berkeley Tie-dye, Lucid Gem, Black Beauty, and Berkeley Tie-Dye Heart. I should have F2 seeds ready for next spring and there ought to be a lot of interesting phenotypes to come out of these crosses. I may have to dedicate most of my tomato space next year to this project.

I'll have seeds to share this winter as well.

[farmermike]

William, summer 2017 I pollinated Forest Fire, Silvery Fir Tree (fern-leaved), Bison, and a no-ID determinate potato-leaf, with the cocktail of pollen from several large colorful indeterminate tomatoes. I never did get around to growing the F1s over winter, but I planted them this spring and I have some F2 fruits starting to develop already.

So, not terribly exciting except that I have confirmed that the crosses were successful because all the recessive phenotypes of the mother varieties are hidden. Interestingly, though, the offspring from Silvery Fir Tree still have leaves that are somewhat ferny, but less so than the pure SFT. I suppose that means that the fern-leaf trait is quantitative.

Several of the pollen donors had the anthocyanin fruit gene (aft) which literature suggests is dominant, so I expect to see "blue" skin in some of the F1s. I checked the immature fruits yesterday and none are showing the trait yet, but sometimes it takes some sun exposure to become visible.

I should have plenty of F2 seeds to share around this winter with anyone who is interested.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Jun 6, 2018 11:38:42 GMT -5 farmermike said:

Interestingly, though, the offspring from Silvery Fir Tree still have leaves that are somewhat ferny, but less so than the pure SFT. I suppose that means that the fern-leaf trait is quantitative

I concur.