Icicle Series from BC, What's up

[amideutch]

I noticed BC has added 3 new Icicle varieties to the Pink Icicle they carried before. Saw a listing for the Pink variety in the SSE yearbook but nothing for the new orange, yellow and black varieties. Did Tom Wagner leave his back door open or are these the real McCoy or some other varieties that got renamed. Ami

[frogsleap farm]

I was wondering the same thing

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by amideutch

I noticed BC has added 3 new Icicle varieties to the Pink Icicle they carried before. Saw a listing for the Pink variety in the SSE yearbook but nothing for the new orange, yellow and black varieties. Did Tom Wagner leave his back door open or are these the real McCoy or some other varieties that got renamed. Ami

I looked at that SSE listing and the accession # is 1322 and sourced to someone in MN who I could look up in my older Yearbooks, but that accession number means it was first listed in about the early to mid-80's.

OK, what's the association with Pink Icicle from the early 80's at SSE with Tom Wagner, who didn't list it.

I know you two read/post at Tom's website, I don't but was referred there by Google lately when trying to track down something.

Did he at some point back then acquire it and is now talking about it at his website, possibly by crossing it with others to get different colors via selections?

Or did Jere get it out of an earlier Yearbook and then they ran with it? I just pulled the 2003 YEarbook off the floor and PInk Icicle was offered by SSE itself back then, I didn't go back further, so Jere and anyone else who was an SSE member had access to it at least from 2003 and perhaps earlier or later, b'c I didn't go further ahead to look for it either.

And it doesn't even have to be an SSE member b/c I know of several instances where non-SSE members ask SSE members to request seeds for them, which I don't approve of, but that's another story.

I took a quick look at the 2010 and don't see any other icicles hanging anywhere.

[amideutch]

Carolyn, I only use Tom because he has varieties nobody has seen. I'm just saying where did these 3 varieties come from and it's strange they all appeared at once. And from what started out as a Pink all of the sudden mutated into a orange, yellow and black! Ami

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by amideutch

Carolyn, I only use Tom because he has varieties nobody has seen. I'm just saying where did these 3 varieties come from and it's strange they all appeared at once. And from what started out as a Pink all of the sudden mutated into a orange, yellow and black! Ami

What I know is that Pink Icicle was listed by SSE in 2003, I didn't look at back Yearbooks before that, and I didn't look at any others going formward until the 2010 where it's also listed. And the accession number does place it in the early to mid-1980's.

Then I went to the Baker Creek website and just looked at Pink Icicle and it said it was from the Ukraine.

Then I said to meself, OK, maybe it's the same kind of deal we saw with the Japanese Trifele ones, which aren't Japanese, and also come in different colors. So I looked that up at Tanias'a website and it looks like those came from Biotechnika, I'd have to confrim that with Tania, and that firm is located in Sr. Petersburgh, which isn't in the Ukraine.

There's a thread about the icicles at idig and several folks including Jere have psoted in that thread. So tomorrow I'm going to share with Jere what I know and ask him the origin. The other reason I want to post to him is that at the Home Page for the seeds there's now a couple of videos they did of Jim Weaver in PA, who is someone I know very well and it was great to see what he looks like now and what the expansion has been at his place.

Jim was the person who spent quite a bit of time straightening me out on the difference between Amish and Mennonites, he's the latter. Just a wonderful person who also wrote an article for OTV when Craig and I were publishing that. I first met Jim when I was doing a weekend presentation for Organic Gardening about heirloom tomatoes and Jim attended all of the presentations. And I was able to visit his home and tour his fileds and meet his lovely wife Alma. he still holds pepper ( over 200 varieties of hot ones as well as 30 sweet ones so the video said) and tomato festivals at his place each year.

So it's b'c of Jim that I also want to post to Jere in addition to the icicle ones.

[amideutch]

Carolyn, can always count on you to come up with information. Could well be a commercial variety. Will be looking forward to the response you get from the BC site. Ami

[carolyn137]

I posted to Jere at idig this AM and got a rather quick answer. I told him all the background I gave here and asked him on to square the info in the Yearbooks with the origin being the Ukraine.

I also spoke about his videos of Jim Weaver at the main BC site and also asked for a catalog to be sent me for the reasons given.

So that's the background and here's his answer:

Hi Carolyn,

Thanks for the post, I just put in a request so you get a catalog, of course you should get one, don't worry about ordering either, unfortunately right now are computer system does not have a convenient way to keep some one on the list very long.

Thanks for the info about the Icicle tomatoes, all my info comes from letters sent between our former Russian speaking employee and various companies and collectors throughout the former Soviet Union, so unfortunately we don't have a way of getting answers right now, besides the notes the employee left us, that we believe are correct, at least according to the people that sent us the seed from overseas.

Jim and his family are amazing, his farm is incredible and a real joy to visit! We visited twice this past summer and they were quite gracious to show us around and talk heirlooms!

One of the first letters I ever got from Jim, he wrote to comment on my politics, he is also a big peace supporter and a vocal, champion for small farming.

Tim Stark is also amazing, we met him at Weavers and are putting up his videos soon! What a great guy!

[amideutch]

Well, we know they came from the former east block countries. Probably CV's, Maybe Andrey might know something. Ami

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by amideutch

Well, we know they came from the former east block countries. Probably CV's, Maybe Andrey might know something. Ami

I just did a response to Jere and told him that I found just one description of Pink Icicle in a Yearbook, the usual SSE listed ones have little information, and it's from Lloyd D in the 1992 Yearbook where he said det and a pink globe.

It seems to me that anything that has icicle as part of the name would give an elongated fruit, so I'm going to ask Joanne or Shannon at SSE when they have time if they can dig up the original description of this variety.

And of course I'll also e-mail Andrey, b'c that gets him here faster than PMing, to see what he might know b'c with so many different colored icicles I agree that they were bred in the former USSR, now the CIS.

I'm just not sure of Pink Icicle which could be the one they started from and not bred overseas based on the YEarbook info.

Radar shows the blizzard is moving in, so fingers doubly crossed for no power loss.

[roper2008]

Well I hope they taste good, because I ordered the pink, orange, yellow
and black.

[Tania]

The Icicle series came to Baker Creek from Valeriy Popenko from Kazakhstan, along with 'Gribnoe Lukoshko' (Mushroom Basket) and Brave General seeds. Valeriy's seed website can be found here: http://www.popenko2007.narod.ru/. The Black Icicle was selected by an Ukrainian breeder D. Terentiev. I am not sure about the pink and orange ones.

I got this info from Valeriy Popenko himself.

Tania

[carolyn137]

Tania, I hope you don't mind if I transfer that information to idig where I've been conversing with Jere.

So the Black is from the Ukraine and the others are from Kazachstan.

You know that I'm not good at all with the Russian language and while I saw Lucky Cross and Sara Black in English, I was looking for a picture that looked like the Pink Icicle at BC and didn't see one.

Could you indicate which numbers are the Brave General and Mushroom one as well as the other icicle ones?

Is he a breeder of tomatoes?

Thanks so very much.

[Tania]

Carolyn,

Gribnoe Lukoshko is #130
Icicle Orange (Sosulka Oranzhevaya) - #90
Icicle Pink (Sosulka Rozovaya) - #91
Icicle Black (Sosulka Chernaya) - #145

Brave General is not listed in Valeriy's public catalog - he may be out of seeds this year or had limited quantity.

Having said that, Baker Creek website says they got it from Valeriy Popenko (his name was misspelled though):
http://rareseeds.com/brave-general-tomato.html

Tania

[Tania]

Carolyn,

All 'icicles' may have been bred in Ukraine - I will ask Valeriy for more information about the pink and orange ones.

Valeriy Popenko is not a breeder, but he has been growing tomatoes from more than 30 years in both Kazakhstan and Altai (Russia).

Yes, of course you can share this information with Jere!

Tania

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by Tania

Carolyn,

All 'icicles' may have been bred in Ukraine - I will ask Valeriy for more information about the pink and orange ones.

Valeriy Popenko is not a breeder, but he has been growing tomatoes from more than 30 years in both Kazakhstan and Altai (Russia).

Tania

Again, thanks for both posts and I'll wait until you're able to contact Valeriy.

And you could post in that thread at idig as well as I could and post the relevant information. I had mentioned that the icicles were being discussed "elsewhere", and this is elsewhere, so you could refer to that if needed.

I just like to know the history of varieties, as you know, and I'm still wondering about the Pink Icicle in the SSE YEarbook with the low accession number which means it's been around since maybe the 80's, so maybe you can ask him about that as well, meaning, was it available then?