Green Bee

[NarnianGarden]

It would be great if someone could develop a tomato variety which is edible as soon as the fruits appear - much like with cucumbers!

[Fred Hempel]

I am not a measurements guy. I am a comparison guy, and Green Bee competes well. It does not seem to have an achilles heel.

Green Bee is an open vine and the plants are the best looking plants in my field.
I have a number of other hybrids I am growing and the Green Bee plants beat them all for vigor. There is also alot of hanging fruit, but I am not going to measure it. Cluster size looks to be 6-8 fruits per cluster right now in my field. But that might change.

The way I determine if a variety has good disease resistance, vigor and production is that I have a collaborator in Mexico who is a fantastic grower. He trellises and is very concerned about "commercial" traits.

If he says "I want thousands of seeds of X", I know that he has found X to be well above average in all important traits. He wants thousands of seeds of Green Bee.

Frogsleap is a master at efficiently stacking traits, via marker assisted selection. He is a real breeder, and he breeds like one.

I am a ecologist/evolutionary biologist, and I breed like one. My approach is to use lines with traits that are important in my crosses, but instead of tracking markers they may have to develop new elite lines, I rely on continuous HARD selection to develop lines with good vigor, architecture, disease resistance, flavor and yield. Basically, every summer I challenge my top lines in Ohio, in a field where they are exposed and abused. In the winter the top lines are grown in Mexico, and breeding lines are again exposed and abused.

In the end, my selections seem to produce lines with the traits I need. They won't have all the symbols (unless we assay for markers after the fact). But, I am not sure elite growers care that much about symbols and advertised disease resistance. They simply trial lots and lots of lines and look for performance in their fields, under the conditions in which they grow tomatoes.

Originally Posted by nbardo

Aside from flavor and texture, how are the plants? Yield growth habit cluster size etc? I know frogsleap was working on incorporating disease resistance with marker assisted selection. Does it have some of those traits?


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[Fred Hempel]

The fruits show subtle ripening cues. Once you get used to them, it is pretty easy to tell ripe fruits from unripe fruits.

The good thing is, that since there is almost no risk of leaving fruits on the plants too long, you don't have to worry about missing ripening cues.

The taste is not fixed until they develop the subtle color changes that indicate ripeness. You can see how subtle the changes are in the second photo I posted at the beginning of this thread. Once subtle colors develop, then the flavor is pretty much fixed and we have not been able to detect much difference in fruits that colored up a day ago vs. 2 weeks ago. They hang on the plant in suspended animation.

Originally Posted by ddsack

Agree on the pickling especially, my cherries have turned to mush, thought the crunchier ones were slightly better.


So how can you tell when they are ripe? Size? Number of days since setting out? Taste test? Is the taste fixed before they are full sized, so it doesn't matter?

[Fred Hempel]

Green Bee has been a big success for us this year. Anyone else have any positive or negative impressions to share?

[Fred Hempel]

Green Bee in Belgium

[Nan_PA_6b]

The link took me to a page that had nothing to do with belgium.

[Fred Hempel]

It may seem that way, but the photo of Green Bee was indeed taken in Belgium this past summer. I was trying to link only the photo, but I guess the whole page comes up.

Originally Posted by Nan_PA_6b

The link took me to a page that had nothing to do with belgium.

[Ann123]

We had exceptional good tomato weather, last summer, here in Belgium. Nice to hear that your that Green bee grew probably not to far from here.

[bad.kelpie]

I just ordered seeds for this tomato (along with Fuego Verde, Fuego Rosa and Bellota), I'm excited to try them all.

[Fred Hempel]

Originally Posted by bad.kelpie

I just ordered seeds for this tomato (along with Fuego Verde, Fuego Rosa and Bellota), I'm excited to try them all.

Thank you! Your seeds were mailed yesterday.

Be sure to let Green Bee hang until it develops subtle colors. It really gets better with extra time on the plant before picking. And there is no risk in letting it stay on the plant, unless there are heavy rains, which do cause some risk of splitting.

[bad.kelpie]

It doesn't rain here between May and October. I live in WA, but central WA is a desert. We have great tomato weather. I found out by accident last year that Green Tiger could be left on the vine for a really long time, and it just got sweeter.

I'm really looking forward to Fuego Verde.

[ScottinAtlanta]

I haven't grown your green, but I had good luck and lots of fun with Purple Bumble Bee this summer. A tasty and lovely fruit.

[Fred Hempel]

Originally Posted by ScottinAtlanta

I haven't grown your green, but I had good luck and lots of fun with Purple Bumble Bee this summer. A tasty and lovely fruit.

I'm glad it survived. I always worry about tomatoes grown in the south!

[Haraldsdotter]

I stumbled onto your site while looking for a paste tomato (marzano fire!) and ended up not only ordering those, but added 2 peppers and green bee - I’ve never tried a green when ripe tomato, and I hope to have them as ‘garden snacks’ next year

[Fred Hempel]

They are good as garden snacks, and the longer you let them hang, the better they get. Be sure not to harvest them too early! It is almost impossible to harvest them too late.

I think you will enjoy Marzano Fire too. We have known the flavor is good, but we are now pretty convinced it is a pretty reliable and productive variety throughout the country. Unlike some of our other OP varieties, it seems to perform very consistently and typically without many disease issues.

Originally Posted by Haraldsdotter

I stumbled onto your site while looking for a paste tomato (marzano fire!) and ended up not only ordering those, but added 2 peppers and green bee - I’ve never tried a green when ripe tomato, and I hope to have them as ‘garden snacks’ next year