Sgt. Peppers
 

I wrote about this in another thread but decided to start a new thread on the subject.
I am growing out a Sgt. Peppers plant from seed I recieved from the generous Marsha. My plant seems to have more Antho in it than is Normal with the whole plant having a wispy and very dark appearance. The stems nearly black with pigment giving it a very strange look.
Now that it is setting fruit, As opposed to the immature green hearts with antho shoulders that should be expected, the fruit are all antho blue at this point.
I know it is a fairly new tomato and therefore likely still a tiny bit unstable. Wondering if others who have grown it have found variation in the amount of antho pigment expressed
KarenO

even the oddly long sepals look black they are so dark.
All over dark antho hearts on a wispy black plant.

VERY interesting. Attractive too!!

Can't wait for more pics on the entire plant, full sized fruit and what it looks like cut!

And of course the taste results!

Greg

What a striking plant and fruit.

I must be confused because I thought the Sgt. Pepper's was also a longer pepper shaped fruited plant, like Snickers/Deep Space??? I may be lost, LOL!!!!

Appropriate that is thread - and the pictured tom - should be started so close to the 50th anniversary of the album.

I have two growing this year, but it's still too early for fruit; it's just blooming now. I have noticed, though, that the wispy vine is decidedly purple.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

I have one plant out now and Rob,who raises my seedlings for me sent me several extras which I distributed locally, so I'll be able to make some comparisons throughout the summer.

When I started this post, and lost it, I said I didn't know where my seeds came from, so I went agoogling and came up with this thread, and Karen, this may be the other thread you were referring to.

[url]http://tomatoville.com/showthread.php?t=37095&page=3[/url]

Towards the end where Sgt Pepper was discussed.

Carolyn

It was driving me nuts not remembering where I got my Sgt Pepper seeds from but I was able to do a fancy e-mail search via my mail system and this is what I found.

And yes,Tollie sent me the seeds.

(I packaged an envelope and put it in the mail this Saturday morning. You should get the envelope during this next week. Inside the envelope are seeds for Sgt. Pepper’s tomato and also Bammer’s Luck tomato. Both of these tomatoes should be pretty well stable. I do not foresee any continued segregation with either variety. Please feel free to trail these and send them out to whomever might be interested in making them available to people. If you like, I can send you some new varieties each year to trail and distribute. I enjoy the process of growing, breeding, making selections, and sharing seeds.)

Carolyn,who knows she will sleep better tonight having solved this problem,so onward she goes to the next problem to be solved.:)




Please keep in touch. If you ever see a tomato of mine that you would like to grow, let me know and I will send you seeds. Any seeds that I send to you are welcomed to be shared and distributed so long as I am confident that they are stable. I’ll let you know about stability of each when I send seeds. I do have a lot of stuff that is mostly stable. After growing some things this year, I should have a few to send you for next year that I feel confident about.

I presume the above is a quote from a message or email to you from the breeder Jason Hanes Carolyn.
Mine looks nothing like those shown on his website so
clearly it is still segregating, not surprising as It was released at F5 I believe.
KarenO

Karen, I am not growing any Sgt Peppers this year, but I did grow them the last two years. I'm guessing I started 6-8 seeds each time, and both years I had one plant that came up a plain pink heart with no antho in leaves or fruit. So I do believe it still is segregating, though all my antho fruit were very uniform and correct. What I don't remember is if I used my saved seeds or the original seeds from Jason the second year. I did not see any plants as dark as yours! Great find!

[QUOTE=KarenO;651698]I presume the above is a quote from a message or email to you from the breeder Jason Hanes Carolyn.
Mine looks nothing like those shown on his website so
clearly it is still segregating, not surprising as It was released at F5 I believe.
KarenO[/QUOTE]

Karen, the above is from an e-mail that Tollie,aka Jason Haynes, sent me in 2013.At his site he said to look for updates,but that never happened, so what you see today at his website was from 2013.

The fact that folks see differences in the antho shoulders should not be a surprise to anyone IMO since that is determined by exposure to sun as it is for all antho varieties.

Tollie was at one time a registered member here at Tville but he and a few others were banned since they all were connected at one place or another to someone else who I will not name.No,I didn't ban any of them, and actually thought that some of then should never have been banned.

Tollie participated at several message sites and others got their seeds for not just Sgt Pepper but also for Bammer's Luck and Sailer's Luck from him.

Since Tollie said that further genetic segregation was not expected,then we have to look at what folks today are saying about it.

First, from Mariseeds,new for 2016

[url]https://www.mariannasheirloomseeds.com/heirloom-seeds-catalog/mariseeds-heirloom-tomato-seeds/oxhearts,-plums-pastes/sgt-pepper-s-new-2016-detail.html[/url]

Next, Karen Golden at Michigan Heirlooms who sells only plants, just scroll down to Sgt Pepper

[url]http://www.michiganheirlooms.com/TomatoBEEFSTEAK.html[/url]

Next, Neil,who is a longtime SSE listed member and a friend of mine and also a seed production member in the 2017 worthless,stupid SSE 2017 Yearbook ,my choice of words, and now I have to copy what Neil said in his listing of it.

85 days, indet, RL, with blue green leaves and stems, with a good yield of 6-12 oz pink oxheart fruit with purple shoulders, high anthocyanin, very good flavor.

So I don't see any indication of genetic instability,what I see is what we see with many varieties, that is, different folks growing the same variety in different years and different seasons depending on weather,soil,what zone and so many other variables can and do see differences sometimes.

Carolyn, who said earlier in this thread that she distributed seeds to a few local folks, as well as the one in the backyard in a large pot,so will keep in touch with them thru the summer to see what differences might show up.

Anybody who is growing it, please post a photo of your fruit and your plant. The point of my thread is to show that my plant is different than what is typical of this variety. If there is a "typical" in an unstable tomato.
KarenO

Karen, this is a very different plant and fruit than what I grew, and this is my second year growing it, because like Dee above, my first year I got a pink heart with no antho at all,(if it doesn't have antho, it ain't Sgt. Peppers) seeds from Jason himself, so they are clearly not stable as yet. Mine last year had the typical antho shoulders, pink under.
Yours has more antho than I have ever seen in any Sgt. Peppers.(Sorry Carolyn but it is true) I wonder if it will be pink under all that antho when it ripened. I sincerely doubt that it is due only to bright sunlight, especially since it is far bluer than just the shoulders.

Here are some current photos from my sgt pepper's.

My Sgt Peppers was grown from seeds from a swap marked F6 2015. The stems are dark like the picture that Alaine posted above. The fruit is small and all green.

I LOVE your Dark, dark, dark plant KarenO. If it's a good one, please save seeds!

Linda

I'm growing Sgt. Pepper's for the third year in a row and I was always very pleased with it - beautiful dark blue-pink hearts. Somebody whom I had given a tomato last year refused to eat it, he said "It's too beautiful to eat it!"

But this year, something strange has happened: I have large trusses of flowers, similar to a MF type, but when now I was back from my holidays, I saw that I don't have a single fruit despite all these flowers. And there is no more antho in the stem, not even a tiny bit. When I had put the seedling into the ground, the stem was so dark, you could recognize the variety at first glance. Now it's looking as all "normal" tomatoes...

How very strange that your Sgt. Pepper's has morphed into a MF with no antho AND no fruit :( If you'd been around, you could have buzzed those flowers.....

I hope your other varieties are being better behaved and more productive Clara!

Linda

[QUOTE=ginger2778;651845]Karen, this is a very different plant and fruit than what I grew, and this is my second year growing it, because like Dee above, my first year I got a pink heart with no antho at all,(if it doesn't have antho, it ain't Sgt. Peppers) seeds from Jason himself, so they are clearly not stable as yet. Mine last year had the typical antho shoulders, pink under.
Yours has more antho than I have ever seen in any Sgt. Peppers.(Sorry Carolyn but it is true) I wonder if it will be pink under all that antho when it ripened. I sincerely doubt that it is due only to bright sunlight, especially since it is far bluer than just the shoulders.[/QUOTE]

No need to apologize Marsha since my reading the several threads here and there it's clear to me that results can and do vary.

Did you get a chance to read all the links I gave above about Sgt Pepper since I think they tell a story.

I do not think that variable results indicate inherent genetic instability for I do think it's due to cultural variability in any given year and where it is grown in any given year based on all the variables I posted above.

Carolyn, who also notes that there are pictures of Sgt Pepper that have no antho at all . Now some might say no antho,not S Pepper, with which I would also disagree. From the get go when Dr.Myers first introduced some antho varieties,he said it was for nutritional value. I was sent actual fruits of the original P20 and had to spit them out. Reinhard Kraft in Germany had a huge antho project going and recently told me that he wasn't going to do any more with that project since the taste was not there.

Just remembered two antho varieties that I think most folks don't know about since it was so many years ago they were made available and I've grown both. There are some perks for being as old as I am since I usually can remember more of,well, back then,etc.:lol:

[url]http://tatianastomatobase.com/wiki/Purple_Smudge[/url]

And I've grown the orange fleshed variant as well.

Back then it wasn't called antho, but if you read the history you'll see the reference to sun as being involved in phenotypic expression.

Carolyn

Some pictures of my two plants this summer, both of which have produced heart-shaped fruit with blue shoulders, but only when they are exposed to sunlight! My seedlings were quite dark in the stems while in constant light, but the stems faded as the plant grew taller and more shaded in the interior. The initial fruit on the first truss always had blue antho shoulders, but all color was lost as the plant grew taller and shaded these fruit. No difference in taste between lower fruit and ripe fruit from the top, with antho expressed.
KarenO- that is an amazing coloration. It looks as dark as the OSU Blue parent from which it was derived! I would definitely save the seeds, make note of the flavor, and document it well here and over in Xanadu, where Jayson Hanes regularly visits. Last picture is of OSU Blue....

[QUOTE=Labradors2;651900]How very strange that your Sgt. Pepper's has morphed into a MF with no antho AND no fruit :( If you'd been around, you could have buzzed those flowers.....

I hope your other varieties are being better behaved and more productive Clara!

Linda[/QUOTE]

Linda, I'm very curious what will come out of this plant! Above all: Some tomatoes! If I had been there, I would not have buzzed the flowers because the plant is placed in a spot where is always at least some wind and another variety close-by has an amazing fruit set.

Yes, all other tomatoes are doing fine. Only one has died during my absence, but it was already looking sick before I left.

Here are few more pictures of semi-ripe Sgt. Pepper's from my two plants. These fruit have various degrees of pigment in the shoulders. For curiosity, I cut away a little blue skin and confirmed that the pigment is indeed only in the skin, and not in the meat of the tomato. At any rate, the flavor of this variety is superlative :yes:

My Sgt Peppers plant has two tomatoes, both green and heart shaped, but showing no sign of antho, yet there is antho in the stems!

Linda

Linda- are the tomatoes at the bottom of the plant and shaded?

Dark lanky viney wispy plant continues to set all blue hearts
None ripe yet, as they grow start to show some green on the bottoms which presumably will turn pink when ripe. (?)
KarenO
Continues to cause comment and concern among folks at the comm garden where it's is growing. :)
:lol:

Keep an eye on this one, and save seeds!! I've never seen a blue heart before!!!

My plant in 2016 had blue shouldered pink hearts (not blunt). You have something way different.:blues:

Looks like the stems are a bit greener now. Making lots if fruit.

[QUOTE=Spartanburg123;655580]Keep an eye on this one, and save seeds!! I've never seen a blue heart before!!![/QUOTE]

as Karen said

(as they grow start to show some green on the bottoms which presumably will turn pink when ripe. (?)


They will Karen,they will.

I've seen so many pictures of this variety here and there,but never a blue permanent heart. Non heart all blues all the time, yes.

And my original seeds were from Jason Haynes,aka, Tollie, quite a few years ago as I've posted before, but fresh seeds last summer from one of the seed producer folks.First time I'll see it is this summer,so fingers crossed.Meaning I hope I get a heart, not a beefsteak as others have,see all the links on that that I posted in another thread about this variety.

Carolyn

[QUOTE=Spartanburg123;653011]Linda- are the tomatoes at the bottom of the plant and shaded?[/QUOTE]

Sorry for the long delay!

Yes they are at the bottom of the plant, so a bit shaded. Perhaps that's it!

Can't wait to taste them, but it will be a while.......

Linda

Edited to say that I just took another look and there is a fruit near the top of the plant in full sun - still no antho!

[QUOTE=ginger2778;655632]Looks like the stems are a bit greener now. Making lots if fruit.[/QUOTE]

sorry for the sideways pictures, I will try to remember to take in landscape.
Most of the bright green normal looking leaves showing in the pic is the plant next to it but there is more dark green in the wispy rolled leaves than there was and the stems are not quite as black as they were. Still a very strange looking plant and not what I have seen in other's examples who have shown pictures.
KarenO