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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[clara]

All seeds that I had sown germinated (5). As I had great problems to walk during transplanting time (crutches and wheelchair), I only put 3 seedlings into the garden (2 different places, 2 into the soil, 1 in container). All were PL, pink hearts, very slightly ribbed, looking identical.

We had a very bad summer here; probably that was the reason why I didn't get many fruits (2 - 3 per plant). Both in the dirt were killed by late blight (as many other varieties), the last one is still in its container, but the season seems to be over. Taste was good for those fruits I picked a little bit under-ripe, fully ripe they were too mushy for me.

I'll give KK a new try next year hoping for a better summer. Following Carolyn's suggestion, I'll grow both, original and saved seeds.

Thank you once more, Tormato and Carolyn! clara

[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

[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.

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by kath

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.

No, he didn't name a specific variety Kardia Karpos. If he had and wanted to share it with others I'm sure he would have made a seed offer in the Seed Exchange.

Which is why I said to "LOOK for pink hearts" and in my thread on my own feedback thread I just put up I made a similar comment as to hearts and colors and said "whatever" as to possibilities, b'c that's what he had said to me in A PM and I think that was after I'd put up the seed offer. If it was Known to be pink hearts I wouldn't have said to look for pink hearts.

Sorry it was confusing but I'm hoping that you still have some of the other seeds I sent out and I do think the situation will clarify itself when Gary gives the background, which I admit was a bit confusing to me, and to him as well, so we shall see.

[Tania]

I am now confused too

What is the background of Kardia Karpos tomato? Is it stable?

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by Tania

I am now confused too

What is the background of Kardia Karpos tomato? Is it stable?

Tormato ( user name)

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


Tania, I posted this above which is what I wrote in my seed offer, so Gary said to look for pink hearts but as he also said andything else would be a guess.

So no, it's not a single stable variety at all as I think you can see from what Linda posted above as well.

Gary said he'd give the history and I'm sure he will and it is complicated but doesn't change the fact that Kardia Karpos is not a single stable variety, it's just the name he gave to the seeds that he sent me and the seeds can result in plants with different shaped and perhaps different colored fruits.



And Gary said abo

[Tania]

So there are the usual complications of sharing the seed that is not a single stable variety.

It sounds like Gary's goal was to get a PL pink heart?