Kardia Karpos

[Tormato]

Feel free to start posting results.

I will post a background (history/mystery) and my results in a day, or so.

Gary

[carolyn137]

I'm just bringing this nearer to the top b'c some of you who posted in my feedback thread said you'd wait to post about Kardia Karpos when the thread was up, and here it is.

I know Gary really wants to know what some of you got from the seeds I sent.

Thanks.

[Mark0820]

I grew one Kardia Karpos. It was PL with pink hearts (more blunt than pointed). Like some of my other varieties, it did not fair well in the weather we had this year. I have only had two tomatoes so far. It has good size and flavor.

It is loading up with fruit now, so it appears it would be a productive variety under better weather conditions. However, I'm not sure if these fruit will ripen before the first frost or not.

I don't have a scale, but my best guess is they were around 12 - 14 oz.

[Mark0820]

Originally Posted by Mark0820

It is loading up with fruit now, so it appears it would be a productive variety under better weather conditions. However, I'm not sure if these fruit will ripen before the first frost or not.

From the late fruit that set, I have a combination of blunt hearts and pointed hearts. I'm still not sure whether any of these late fruit will ripen or not. In a typical year, we get our first frost around mid October (but there is nothing typical about the weather this year).

[Mark0820]

Originally Posted by Mark0820

From the late fruit that set, I have a combination of blunt hearts and pointed hearts. I'm still not sure whether any of these late fruit will ripen or not. In a typical year, we get our first frost around mid October (but there is nothing typical about the weather this year).

One of my pointed hearts ripened, so I am in the process of saving seed from it (I already have seed from a blunt heart). There is a large pointed heart on the plant that I am hoping will ripen (to save seeds). It has turned from dark green to a light yellow/green, so it should blush any day. However, the night time temperatures are supposed to be in the low 30's for Thurs., Friday and Saturday, so I might have to bring it in the house and see if it will ripen.

[Tormato]

Mark,

On the ripe one, pink or red?

I should be able to post the background history/mystery on Thursday or Friday.

Gary

[Mark0820]

Originally Posted by Mark0820

There is a large pointed heart on the plant that I am hoping will ripen (to save seeds). It has turned from dark green to a light yellow/green, so it should blush any day. However, the night time temperatures are supposed to be in the low 30's for Thurs., Friday and Saturday, so I might have to bring it in the house and see if it will ripen.

I brought the large pointed heart in the house, and this morning I noticed a small streak of pink. Once it ripens, I will save seed. If I have room next year, I will plant a few of these seeds and see if I get pointed hearts or a combination of pointed and blunt hearts.

[kath]

I grew 2 plants this year and both had identical traits and both were PL and had pink fruits. It was a difficult year here in terms of weather and disease and they did get both EB and Septoria. Ten fruits were produced between the two plants which were pruned to single vines. The early fruits were very mealy- later fruits improved somewhat and I used them to make tomato puree. The fruits ranged in size from 6.8 to 18.2 oz. Later fruits cracked severely with the heavy rains we experienced. I did manage to save some seed so I'll grow it again.

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by kath

I grew 2 plants this year and both had identical traits and both were PL and had pink fruits. It was a difficult year here in terms of weather and disease and they did get both EB and Septoria. Ten fruits were produced between the two plants which were pruned to single vines. The early fruits were very mealy- later fruits improved somewhat and I used them to make tomato puree. The fruits ranged in size from 6.8 to 18.2 oz. Later fruits cracked severely with the heavy rains we experienced. I did manage to save some seed so I'll grow it again.

Kath, no problem saving seeds from the fruits you had on those two plants, but why not grow out some of the other seeds since the seeds that Gary sent me could have given pink or red fruits, mostly hearts, but also other possible fruit shapes as I'm sure he'll explain when he gets around to posting the background.

And I did send out 10-15 seeds for each person thinking that some would have the room to grow out quite a few of those plants from that seed, but I'm also sympathetic for those who didn't have that kind of room.

[kath]

Originally Posted by carolyn137

Kath, no problem saving seeds from the fruits you had on those two plants, but why not grow out some of the other seeds since the seeds that Gary sent me could have given pink or red fruits, mostly hearts, but also other possible fruit shapes as I'm sure he'll explain when he gets around to posting the background.

And I did send out 10-15 seeds for each person thinking that some would have the room to grow out quite a few of those plants from that seed, but I'm also sympathetic for those who didn't have that kind of room.

Sure, I could do that because I still have 7 of the original seeds left in addition to the 20 seeds I saved from the one fruit I managed to bag. I thought we were supposed to select the pink hearts.

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by kath

Sure, I could do that because I still have 7 of the original seeds left in addition to the 20 seeds I saved from the one fruit I managed to bag. I thought we were supposed to select the pink hearts.

An experimental variety he’s calling Kardia Karpas. Complicated background but look for PL pink hearts and he says anything else would be a guess. LOL

Kath, above is what I did write initially in the seed offer but after PMing back and forth with Gary it seemed possible that reds could also appear and different shapes.

And I Linda just commented about that in a post above where she got two other shapes other than hearts.

Whoops, I see I never coorected the spelling of these seeds in my seed offer; should be Kardia Karpos.

Ah well, I was perfect yesterday but not today.

And I just saw that Gary posted and said he'd give the history and maybe that will clarify some aspects of what the genetics of the Kardia Karpos seeds could give.

[kath]

Originally Posted by carolyn137

An experimental variety he’s calling Kardia Karpas. Complicated background but look for PL pink hearts and he says anything else would be a guess. LOL

Kath, above is what I did write initially in the seed offer but after PMing back and forth with Gary it seemed possible that reds could also appear and different shapes.

And I Linda just commented about that in a post above where she got two other shapes other than hearts.

Whoops, I see I never coorected the spelling of these seeds in my seed offer; should be Kardia Karpos.

Ah well, I was perfect yesterday but not today.

And I just saw that Gary posted and said he'd give the history and maybe that will clarify some aspects of what the genetics of the Kardia Karpos seeds could give.

Ok, I'm still confused- since Gary named a tomato Kardia Karpos and distributed seeds wasn't it in hopes of getting more of the same tomato?

Since I planted 2 out of the 3 seedlings that I got and they both produced identical plants with pink PL hearts I thought this was good news for Gary and what he was wanting to hear. Guess it was the "look for PL pink hearts" that confused me.

Glad to know he's still interested in hearing about all aspects of the other possibilities- I might have yanked them out next year if they produce red globes.

[Linda10]

Out of 5 plants, all were PL and pink. Three were hearts, one was oblate, one was round. All tasted about the same, around 7.5 but probably would have been better if it had more foliage.

By the time the fruit ripened, disease had just about killed the plants. I cut them back to within an inch of the soil level and one grew new foliage. That one now has a green heart developing.

Can't say too much for size since this was the worst year yet for me. Almost all my container plants were around 2 oz. Kardia karpos gave me around 3 oz fruit.

Sorry for the poor results.

[Tormato]

I started 17 containers with three seeds in each. All 51 seeds germinated, 50 PL, 1 RL. I kept the stockiest seedling in each container and clipped out the rest. I wound up with 16 PL plants and one RL.

I believe the RL likely was a cross, last year, with a cherry tomato (that was supposed to be SunGold, but wasn't). This RL plant produced large cherry/ small saladette red, tasteless, tough skinned fruit. I'm not saving any seed of the RL.

14 of the 16 PL plants produced pink, oblate beefsteaks, many of them irregular shaped. Weights were variable, about 8 to 24 ounces, quite a few of them 20+ ounces. Production was low, about 10-12 per plant. About half were lost to BER, stem rotting/dropping, radial cracking, concentric cracking, etc...The fruits were lousy, very bland and mealy. I'm saving seed from one plant, the one that had the largest fruit.

One of the PL plants produced very blunt pink hearts, about 6-12 ounces. So blunt, some would call them hearts, others would call them beefsteaks. From tasting about 10 of these tomatoes, only one had good flavor. I saved seed from only this one tomato. Some fruit were lost, but not as many as with the beefsteaks.

The last PL plant produced pink hearts, with variable shapes, 6-12 ounces. Some were blunt, some were longer, some were wedge shaped, some were concave at the pointed end, some were convex at the pointed end. These variable shapes are like what was produced from the PL plant from last year. While most of the tomatoes were bland, a few of them had very good flavor, better than the above blunt heart plant. The most elongated heart is a greenie still on the plant. I hope the weatherman's prediction of a possible frost in a few days is wrong.

History next.

Gary

[doublehelix]

Originally Posted by Tormato

I started 17 containers with three seeds in each. All 51 seeds germinated, 50 PL, 1 RL.

This is genetically impossible if you only saved seeds from potato leaf plants.

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