Just joined SSE, What do I need to know re:tommy seeds

[COgarden]

I'm looking for any information current or former SSE members can give. What should I watch out for, both good and bad. I didn't join to score seeds, I joined because I'm drawn to the mission of the whole thing.
I have decided that I can use 4 or 5 slots in my garden each year to grow heirloom tomatoes specifically to maintain varieties that might be lost. I figure if I dedicate, say, 4 spots each year to tomato variety preservation, and I rotate those 4 slots every year, I should be able to carefully save seed for 16 varieties and never have seed that is over 4 years old. Is that a reasonable goal? How do I choose the varieties that I save? I'm not interested in offering a hundred varieties. I want to choose a small number to maintain and offer over a long period of time, even if, or especially if, there is limited interest in those varieties.

Kurt

[clay199]

I think that is a reasonable goal, four varieties a year. When I had a much much smaller garden spot I was attempting to save four.

As far as attempting to decide which varieties to save, that is a difficult decision. Tomatoes which only have one single listing, especially from those members who offer a lot of tomatoes might be a good bet. Listers who list only a couple of tomatoes are often like us who are attempting to maintain varieties.

Something I think equally important as to a single listing, and perhaps more so even, is how well that variety works for the person growing it. I plan on always having Kosovo, not just because I was one of the first who grew it, and not only because my friend Glenn Parker from New Zealand gave it to me, but because it is one of my favorites. That makes it easy to always find room to grow it. And likewise the variety I grew out of the PGRC, Black Tom, a breeding line variety languishing and forgotten since 1992. If you like it, it has a better chance of making it long term.

This coming year will be my first at offering seeds via SSE. I offered seeds through SODC before. I will attempt both.

[carolyn137]

I'm so glad to read that some of you are planning to go for the less well known but good varieties b'c nothing is accomplished by listing those that already do have several listers.

Remember that every single variety once had but one listing, the first time it was listed.

There are many that I've offered thru my old seed offers at GW that are no longer being listed, that I think should be listed, but I'm not in a position to do so myself.

SSE has reoffered some of them as listing for themselves, but there are many more.

And it's really too late now for me to mention some of those and get seeds to you, but remind me ion the Fall, and I'd be ever so glad to make a list. But remember, mkany of them are old seeds that need waking up.

Craig has also listed many that are no longer being offered. As time passes both of us, for different reasons, have cut way back on what we list.

As for me, it's time to let others take over an keep varieties going and listed.

Clay, Glenn sent me Kosovo very early on as well, with the hopes that I would list it, and I did, and look at the following it now has, which warms the cockles of my heart, whatever they are. And I sent it to TGS and Glenn at Sandhill and others, with again, the hopes that it would become more widely available, which is what Glenn wanted.

[Andrey_BY]

I really don't understand people who listed Brandywine or German Green and were one of 20 or even more people who offered these well-known varieties. Sometimes I can see even L.Q. for such popular varieties...
Now I have the same problem to select right varieties to list next year, because I'm gonna start main tomato varieties in 2-3 days (according to the Moon :wink: )

Glenn and everybody else who care about rare/non-listed varieties could write me in fall/autumn as well because I have many Russian tomato and pepper varieties in low stock which I have no opportunity to maintain all by myself in my kitchen-garden...

[clay199]

Andrey,
The listings change year by year. And the listers send in their information not knowing what others are going to list. And if the SSE is like the SODC, you send your information in the first time and it comes back in the fall on subsequent years on the listing sheet already, you just have to check it off. So whatever information you send in becomes set in stone.

[carolyn137]

Andrey and Clay ( at bottom)

Andrey, most folks who use LQ are indicating they have limited seeds available and the variety is not rare.

If a person feels that a variety is rare, which may not be shared by others, then they list it as MR.

I have never used either of those designations and don't intend to.

If I don't have enough seeds, which is the case with two I grew in 2004 and couldn't regrow them last summer, I get more seeds and then list. And both of those varieties will be grown for me by someone else this summer for seed production.

I also believe that a rare variety is one that is listed for the first time and I never put MR on those since I want the variety to be grown by everyone who is interested.

Different folks look at LQ and MR differently and many folks have no idea if a variety is rare in general or just to them.

And while I'm here, you referred to Ake in Sweden as one who you think is doing for the money b'c he says so little about his variety entries and you questioned whether he ever even grew them.

You are seeing only one Yearbook. You should have seen the several hundred entries by Thane Erle where he would say variety X, 3 inch red, and that was it. And he grew every single variety he listed. And there are many others who say little but also grow everything and are not in it for the money. Are some? Yes, but you'll get no names from me b'c it's my opinion and mine alone.

Clay, I was speaking for just myself re older varieties to regrow, and not for Craig, unless he reads here and agrees.

He's so darn busy with work right now, as well as transplanting his tomatoes, peppers and eggplant for Raleigh Farmer's Market sale, that we aren't even phone chatting at the frequency we normally do.

[clay199]

Carolyn,
I think you meant John.

[carolyn137]

I did mean John, Clay.