First? Last? Middle?

[Starlight]

Went out to check plants after storms last night and noticed I have a bunch of cherry plants from MMM making blooms.

While I was shaking water off, and thinking about bagging to save the seeds for this years swap I wondered this.

Weather I know can play a major part in the health and production of plants and fruits. Does anybody happen to know if it is better to collect and save the seeds from first flush, middle, or last fruits.

Does it make a difference in say taste or future productivity of the plants from collection times?

[MissS]

I always try to collect seed from the earlier fruits. They are less prone to cross-pollination from the bees. The bees are not out and about in the numbers that they are at the end of the season so there is less of a chance of them pollinating the fruits. There is no difference in taste, production or size of plants grown from early or late fruits. They all have the same genes.

[Starlight]

Originally Posted by MissS

I always try to collect seed from the earlier fruits. They are less prone to cross-pollination from the bees. The bees are not out and about in the numbers that they are at the end of the season so there is less of a chance of them pollinating the fruits. There is no difference in taste, production or size of plants grown from early or late fruits. They all have the same genes.

Great! I'll follow your advice. Thank you! Maybe one of these days, I'll learn all the ins and outs of tomatoes. Learning all the time and probably will into the beyond. Flowers are so much more easy than veggies. Thanks for the help. : )

[kath]

I also try to save the early ones because I have better luck bagging during cooler weather.

kath

[Starlight]

Cool! : ) What's great about the learning to do the early ones is that I planned on bagging these since they from the MMM swap and they are not super tall right now and I can put a net over the whole plant. Will be so much easier to do for all these wispy foliage plants now. Once I get the early ones then to save bagged seeds from them, then I can later let the other be a OP.

Thanks for chiming in too Kath! : )

[carolyn137]

And I do the reverse, and I know some others do the same.

It all depends on many variables as to where you live, what the pollinators are that do the X pollination in your area,what the weather is like in any one season, and on and on.

Below is THE best link I know of that explains NCP,Natural Cross Pollination, and when Jeff owned SESE he was doing all of his own tomato growing, and now I'm not talking about isolation and distances required,since he could do no bagging and was also commercial,which does make a difference.

My concern, as is true for many homegrowers,is knowing about the variables he discusses and then knowing which is more possible, pollinators when first fruits are there,and saving seeds just from late fruits, etc.

Another way I did it was to determine the degree of cross pollination for seeds saved early or late,and I did that with reports sent back from the many seed offers I made starting back in the late 80's.

And I think some of you who have already posted in this thread and paricipated in my seed offers here at Tville know that since I encourage everyone to report back in a germination thread which checks for leaf type and then do another so called performance thread in the Fall which checks for all other traits and how well someone likes a variety, and many also put up pictures..

Here is the link

http://www.southernexposure.com/isol...es-ezp-35.html

Hope that helps, and again,just concentrate on his comments about the variables, not so much isolation distances.

Carolyn

[AlittleSalt]

Star, here's another way of replying to your question. There's no science behind it. I save seeds from cherry tomatoes when they taste the best.

One exception happened last year. I planted 4 Matt's Wild Cherry plants (All from the same seed source) Two of the MWC plants produced hundreds of marble sized tomatoes. They tasted very good....tiny but good.

The other two MWC plants grew tomatoes more typical cherry tomato sized. They tasted exactly the same as the little ones - so I saved MWC seeds only from the two plants that produced the larger sized MWC tomatoes.

And then there's the tomatoes I saved seeds from that produced only a few or one tomato. The Star Cross seeds I sent you are an example of one that only produced one tomato.

Of course you know the rest of the story and why it's called Star Cross

[JLJ_]

Originally Posted by AlittleSalt

. . . an example of one that only produced one tomato.

Of course you know the rest of the story and why it's called Star Cross

JLJ <~~~ doesn't know the rest of the story

[greenthumbomaha]

I save seed early in the season due to disease pressure late in the summer. Last year was particularly miserable for foliar leaf diseases in my area and for many others on the forum as well. The August harvest is the heaviest and tastiest, but I usually have black spot/septoria/early blight by then in my garden so no point spreading the love.

- Lisa

[Starlight]

Originally Posted by carolyn137

And I do the reverse, and I know some others do the same.

It all depends on many variables as to where you live, what the pollinators are that do the X pollination in your area,what the weather is like in any one season, and on and on.

Below is THE best link I know of that explains NCP,Natural Cross Pollination, and when Jeff owned SESE he was doing all of his own tomato growing, and now I'm not talking about isolation and distances required,since he could do no bagging and was also commercial,which does make a difference.

My concern, as is true for many homegrowers,is knowing about the variables he discusses and then knowing which is more possible, pollinators when first fruits are there,and saving seeds just from late fruits, etc.

Another way I did it was to determine the degree of cross pollination for seeds saved early or late,and I did that with reports sent back from the many seed offers I made starting back in the late 80's.

And I think some of you who have already posted in this thread and paricipated in my seed offers here at Tville know that since I encourage everyone to report back in a germination thread which checks for leaf type and then do another so called performance thread in the Fall which checks for all other traits and how well someone likes a variety, and many also put up pictures..

Here is the link

http://www.southernexposure.com/isol...es-ezp-35.html

Hope that helps, and again,just concentrate on his comments about the variables, not so much isolation distances.

Carolyn

Thanks for the link Carolyn. Was to tired last night to read and appreciate it. Good link to read and your right, don't concentrate on the distances. Although that was good to know for saving seeds of rare or endangered tomato plants to keep a line pure and going.

Usually I try and save near to last fruits. I figured that if the plant could survive our heat, humidity and not get blights or show any signs of other disease than those plants would be best to save seeds from.

Originally Posted by AlittleSalt

Star, here's another way of replying to your question. There's no science behind it. I save seeds from cherry tomatoes when they taste the best.


One exception happened last year. I planted 4 Matt's Wild Cherry plants (All from the same seed source) Two of the MWC plants produced hundreds of marble sized tomatoes. They tasted very good....tiny but good.

The other two MWC plants grew tomatoes more typical cherry tomato sized. They tasted exactly the same as the little ones - so I saved MWC seeds only from the two plants that produced the larger sized MWC tomatoes.

And then there's the tomatoes I saved seeds from that produced only a few or one tomato. The Star Cross seeds I sent you are an example of one that only produced one tomato.

Of course you know the rest of the story and why it's called Star Cross

Learning to pick when tasting best is another thing I have been learning. I had so many new ones I tried last year. A few I picked to soon and had several that had so many colored stripes on them that I picked way to late and were sort of mushy inside cuz I didn't know about them.

I had a couple that did that last year, only produced one tomato to get seeds from. That was rough. It was a do I pick now or wait. Hard to decide when you haven't grown it before and don't really know what to expect. Since I had lots of foliage and no fruits I thought maybe that variety didn't like so much nitrogen.

I have something like that going on now. I have 4 Red Centiflor seedlings. All seed from same place, all sowed and grown under same conditions and 3 plants are nice big and full and one is barely about 4" tall. I did pot it up. Figured I would see what it would do. Maybe it will catch up and maybe will stay in a dwarf size.

I think one of the reasons that had me wondering about seed saving times, was from reading posts on here of folks with looking for plants that would survive and do well in their locations.

Originally Posted by greenthumbomaha

I save seed early in the season due to disease pressure late in the summer. Last year was particularly miserable for foliar leaf diseases in my area and for many others on the forum as well. The August harvest is the heaviest and tastiest, but I usually have black spot/septoria/early blight by then in my garden so no point spreading the love.

- Lisa

I hear ya. Last year was really miserable. Usually I have plants out early and then have to deal with high winds and too much rain and hungry emerging pests. This year I waited. So far, plants seem to be doing so much better and looking lots healthier.

Sept and Oct and Nov temps here cool off from extreme heat, so instead of having hundreds of plants suffering during 100+ heat and humidity am planting some things a bit later so hopefully by the DTM time comes around they will be producing during cooler late summer and fall temps.

[AlittleSalt]

It was supposed to be a Pink Bumblebee but grew a large not-round tomato instead. Star told me I should save seeds from it, and I named it after her

[Starlight]

Here you go JLJ

http://www.tomatoville.com/showthrea...ght=Star+Cross

There Salts thread and pics. : )