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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Aug 13, 2018 12:08:46 GMT -5
I shared tomato seeds this spring that I got from a collaborator. They were essentially paper towels containing dehydrated tomato juice and some seeds. I received a lot of complaints about them. The carbohydrates in the juice fed the microbes, leading to severe damping off. People didn't like that they couldn't count how many seeds they were planting. They expressed worries about diseases that fermentation helps to eliminate. I definitely won't be sharing non-cleaned tomato seeds again, no matter how precious the genetics. From a packaging standpoint, it was difficult to try to figure out how many seeds were in a lump of paper towel.
My fermentation method is to throw crushed tomatoes into a bucket. Let them ferment for a week to a month. Then use the garden hose to add water. I decant off the pulp. The seeds sink to the bottom. When I am left with only seeds, I dump them out onto a plate, and spread them out to dry. I end up with a clump of seeds. After drying, I rub it between my hands and the clump easily falls apart into individual seeds.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Aug 9, 2018 23:29:47 GMT -5
For that backcross, with emasculation, I get one pod for about every 5 crosses. Most pods only have one seed but a few have two. I'm not emasculating. Just adding pollen to whatever natural pollination might be going on. If I can remember, I'll drag some runner bean pollen in from a different field. Is there any point in attempting a wider cross? I also have flowers from tepary, lima, and cowpea.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Aug 9, 2018 21:34:30 GMT -5
The F1 hybrid and F2 tepary beans that I received from andyb are growing very well. One of the F2 plants is already senescing. That's wonderful! A short season tepary. I know that they are supposedly an ephemeral species, but in my climate, it's always been a race against the fall frosts. This plant is expected to beat the fall frosts by a couple weeks. There are two plants in this photo: One a typical tepary bean, and the other with yellowing leaves being extra early. I'm also growing a long row of F3 tepary beans descended from Andy's hybrids. They are likewise thriving. For what it's worth, I did a great job this year of weeding the F1 and F2 tepary beans. The squash patch is about to overtake them, but at this point, the beans have already won the competition. Tepary bean with precocious senescence.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Aug 9, 2018 21:22:44 GMT -5
The last few days, I have been attempting manual pollinations of the [common X runner] bean crosses. Some bush beans are flowering nearby, so that's what I'm using. There are also pole bean flowers nearby, but I'll use bush bean pollen preferentially.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Aug 8, 2018 13:33:49 GMT -5
I am really suffering right now... I was out in the interspecies tomato patch harvesting fruits, and tasting them. One of the fruits was super-nasty bitter. Ugh!!!! Spitting. Feels like I ate a raw green potato. Gag.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Aug 8, 2018 13:27:01 GMT -5
There is a short row of common beans growing about 20 feet away. Here's what the red-veined leaves look like:
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Aug 7, 2018 21:07:22 GMT -5
I took photos of the interspecies tomatoes. I think that these are self-compatible, because they set lots of fruit before the pollinators were active in the tomato patch. F2 fruits of [Domestic X LA1777]. They are growing in the general population on huge indeterminate plants. I think that these are self-incompatible. They only set fruit early in the season if I attempted manual pollinations on them. They are super early. The plant started out determinate, but then sent out indeterminate shoots. What the heck? They have an exerted stigma. They are growing in the Best-of-best patch. F2 fruits of [Domestic X solanum habrochaites]. So far, this one plant has produced more fruits than the combined output of a couple hundred interspecies hybrids. The pollen that was available for attempted manual pollination early in the season was F2:[Domestic X Solanum pennellii], so some of these seeds might be three species hybrids: [[Domestic X habrochaites]X[Domestic X pennellii]]. These have open anther cones, and exerted stigmas. They are F2 fruits of [Domestic X Solanum pennellii]. All the plants have pennellii-type leaves and green fruits, perhaps with yellow tones.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Aug 7, 2018 20:48:54 GMT -5
The earliest flowers on tomato plants can sometimes be fasciated. When that happens the anther cone is all jumbled up, and the style is exposed, thus making the flowers more susceptible to cross pollination. The fruits also end up with more locules, and are therefore larger than fruits produced from normal flowers later on.
At least in my garden, the longer the tomato plants flower, the more pollinators are attracted to them, therefore increasing the chances of cross pollination. Populations of bumblebees keep increasing all summer long. And the digger bees become active later in the season.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Aug 7, 2018 16:07:47 GMT -5
That plum tasting tomato sounds interesting. I tasted a tomato today from the habrochaites clade. It tasted like a domestic tomato, only magnified about 10X. Even though I don't like tomatoes, I usually don't spit them out once they are in my mouth. That one was a spitter!!!!
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Aug 6, 2018 1:19:46 GMT -5
Nifty! Do you remember if the white flowered ones corresponded to seedlings with high cotyledons? Yes they did. There is still one of the high-cotyledon plants that hadn't flowered last I checked. Also of note, is that the plants with cotyledons at soil-level had red-veins in the leaves, while the plants with high-cotyledons had veins the same color as the rest of the leaf. I figured when I first noticed the red-veined leaves, that it might be another indication of successful crosses.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Aug 6, 2018 1:06:19 GMT -5
The F2 [domestic X S pennellii] plants are highly variable in vigor. They all have pennellii type leaves.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Aug 6, 2018 1:00:24 GMT -5
Thanks for the recent grow reports and commentary.
So far, I have collected about 40 fruits from the F2 [domestic X pennellii] plants. All fruits collected to date have been green-fruited perhaps leaning towards yellowish. I am getting enough fruits that I eat some of them. One of them tasted more like a plum than a tomato. Yay!!!! I might actually find a tomato that I can stand to eat.
I inter-planted about 4 [domestic X pennellii] plants with 4 [domestic X habrochaites] plants, and early in the season I attempted manual cross pollinations among and between them by collecting pollen into a black spoon. They seemed to shed plenty of pollen when the flowers were at the right age. Now the bumblebees and digger bees are active in the patch, so I have stopped attempting manual pollinations. I am collecting plenty of fruits from the patch. I screened the plants for early flowering and exerted stigmas while they were still growing in the greenhouse, so I was about to put the best of the best into the kitchen garden where I can pay more attention to them.
I planted hundreds of the inter-species hybrids into a field. About 15% of the plants appear to be self-incompatible, and to have exerted stigmas. I am allowing natural cross pollination in those fields. The self-incompatibility genes are dominant, so there appears to be a lot of self-incompatibility going on. There is a lot of flower drop without setting fruit -- for example, if a plant has self-incompatibility and a stigma that is inside the anther cone, then it doesn't get pollinated. Also, if a plant is self-compatible, with an exerted stigma, but the anther cone is pressed tightly against they style, then pollen can't get out to pollinate it, and if the flower isn't attractive to pollinators, then it might not get pollinated. The pollinators are really clever... They will often fly right past plants with tightly closed anthers, without bothering to land in order to check them out.
I planted the F2 hybrids about 8" apart, which allowed me to put hundreds of plants into a single long row. I'm whining about that now, cause the plants have grown huge, and it's hard to tell where one ends and the next begins. Oh well.
There is a formula to estimate fruit size for F1 hybrid tomatoes. I don't remember it exactly, but mid-way between the sizes of the parents, but much closer to the size of the smaller parent. So far, the largest fruits I have collected from the inter-species hybrids are about 1.3 inches in diameter. That's still a huge improvement from the .3 to .5 inch diameters of the wild species. When I was doing hybrids among domestic tomatoes, it seemed like about 10% of the F2 generation had fruit-size approximately the same as the larger-fruited parent.
I'm growing a patch of S corneliomulleri. The plants tend towards pea sized fruits. One plant has fruits that are twice the diameter of any other plant. Woot! Something to watch.
I'm also growing a patch of plants that I call BC1 which may be F2 of [S habrochaites X [Domestic X S habrochaites]]. I'll use fruit size/color as an indication that a backcross was successful.
There is so much going on with the self-incompatible, beautifully-promiscuous tomato project, that I hardly know what to write about. It sure is nice to see so many bumblebees of so many species. And other pollinator species as well. I was in the garden of a collaborator to inspect 2 tomato plants from this project that she is growing for me. There are too few flowers on 2 plants to attract bumblebees, so they aren't getting pollinated.
I did a lot of inter-planting of the different wild species and interspecies hybrids, to try to facilitate crossing between them. My tomato patches are a huge jumble right now!!!!
Thanks again for working on this project with me, and for inspiring me with your ideas and successes, and for sharing germplasm.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Aug 1, 2018 19:43:11 GMT -5
Andy's Common X Runner hybrids are just starting to flower. Two plants flowered white, so I figured that they were not inter-species crosses, and I culled them. Other plants have scarlet flowers.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Jul 24, 2018 11:17:06 GMT -5
Are chances just as good replanting the top couple of inches as it is to replant the whole thing? Seems like it to me. In the spring, I sometimes gather together bits and pieces of carrots that were tilled under a couple times since fall, and put them into a bed for seed production. They seem to do as well as the whole roots. Besides how much carrot seed to you really need? When a plant might produce thousands of seeds.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Jul 22, 2018 21:45:23 GMT -5
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