Member discussion regarding the methods, varieties and merits of growing tomatoes.
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July 3, 2016 | #1 |
Tomatovillian™
Join Date: Jun 2016
Location: Europe/Serbia-Belgrade
Posts: 151
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StrongPlant-Breeding for the future
Hi I am so excited to be a memeber of this forum! This is only my second year since I've been focusing on and growing tomatoes.But I've been growing plants,from mosses to trees my entire life.And I love it,the plants are the most amazing creatures,and give us so much while taking so little.
This year has been great in comparison with the last when it comes to tomatoes and that's because I've learned much more about them than I knew last year.I've been focusing heavily on breeding and selection of tometoes.I grow all my vegetables withour any spraying at all,not even organic mixes and teas.This is because I want to expose plants that are truly the most resistant and vigorous.The selection is almost cruel in my garden-any variety that shows any sign of weakness or negative trait is never planted again.The ultimate goal is to develop several F1 varieties that show all of the qualities below.If you're wondering why do they all need to be F1,well this is because the heterotic organisms are almost always more healthy and vigorous than homozygous ones(heterosis).Besides,I will have all the pure lines since I developed them so getting the F1 seeds every year won't be a problem. Thsese are the traits I want all of my tomatoes to have: -High yields -Exelent taste -Disease resistance.This for me,is the most important thing,as I want to grow tomatoes without any chemical tratments. -Regular trusses.What I mean by this: This is an example of a regular truss.Maybe there exists a more professional term,but I just go with "regular".On the other side,this kind of truss form is highly undesirable since it's very hard to support such ones and prevent kinking: -Fruit uniformity.No double flowes.All fruit must be the same size. -Earliness -Vigour.Faster growth is almost always a good indicator of good genetics -Thick stems,to prevent breakage,and for the plant to be able to support the weight of the fruits -Ability to grow well with minimum nutrients -Drought tolerance -Humidity tolerance -Uniform ripening -Easy detachment for better picking As you might guess I want to create a monster one thing the palnts do not have to be resistant to are insects,since it would be too much time to breed resistant plants.I am working on several mechanical means of protecting the plants from them. This is what's growing in my greenhouse and outside this year: San Marzano.Wow.What a tomato.It's doing great in both greenhouse and ouside,this is going to be one of the parents for the next year cross. I have no idea what tomato is it,I call it "tiny",but I'm not growing it next year.It is quite small,has bland taste and is very prone to kinking due to it's higly elognated and irregular trusses. This is the F1 cherry tomato,the cross was from last year.It is almost completely free of disease,both outside and in the greenhouse.The taste is good,but the yield is quite low.Not bad,but I will not make this cross again. This is "Ildi".It has the "multiflora" gene.The problem with it is that it's very prone to late blight.Only the first fruit truss has this many fruits while all subsequent ones above it barely have any at all: I will not grow it again,but I've made a few crosses to try and create a variety that will have multiflora gene but be more disease resistant.Maybe that gene is not so great as it seems but I'm just not ready to let it go yet. This is a F1 cherry,last year cross between San marzano and another variety below.It's also problem-free as the above F1 one,but the yield is still a problem.There needs to be more fruits per truss.This one has better taste,however. This is Red cluster pear that contains the same multiflora gene as Ildi.And it has the same problem-late blight,almost no fruit above the first cluster...to me it seems that the plants with this gene cannot effectively support such huge number of flowers and fruits,because it leaves it without resourses to fight disease. This one is also an F1 last year cross.It has fused flowers,and the resulting fruit is also huge,but the entire plant is highly irregular,the leaves are twisted,the trusses prone to breakage,and the suckers always rise above the leaf node and become fused with the stem which makes them very difficult to pinch off without scissors. Yellow stuffer.Well this one is just for fun,really.And I am curious about it's taste. This cherry is very tiny,less than 1cm in dieameter on avarage.I'm not sure if it's Solanum pimpinellifolium,but it does have hairless stem and leaves.This one was one of the parents for both cherries above.While it's not that disease resistant as some others,it has the regular truss,easy detach and fruit uniformity(no double flowers) that I want in my tomatoes.These traits also seem to be highly dominant and override their undesirable counterparts. This one is the winner.I have no idea which variety is it,I got the seeds from my neighbour.It seems she saved the seeds,but the variety was definitely F1.This generation is F3,and I'm working on stabilizing it,since it's the only plant completely healthy outside,even though we had heavy rain this year. Indigo rose.If this thing ripens before winter,I will be amazed it's sure pretty to look at,but the plants lack vigour and grows the slowest of them all...it does have a very thick and stiff truss which can be quite useful to prevent kinking but I'd rather find another variety that has this trait. There are a few more but I planted them late and they are only now flowering... I am very interested to hear if any of you have grown tomatoes without any spraying and which varieties were they! Also,there is very little information about disease resistance in "pure" tomates,that is,the ones that come true from seed,such as San marzano menitoned above,so if any of you know something about this it'd be great. |
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