Perfecting your tomatoes

[AKmark]

We read lots of posts that speak of varieties of tomatoes that have been around for a long time/ heirlooms, and great hybrids that were made to capture specific traits, or not, by crossing varieties with different characteristics. I think making hybrids is easy, fun, and gets quick results, but perfecting a line by means of selective breeding makes sense too, since there is some variation between plants.

Anyway, what is the most generations any of you have saved seed from any particular variety?
Have you been able to alter the line, somewhat, from when you started your project?
Has your line lost vigor?

Interesting question AKmark! Since I'm not a breeder I can't begin to answer it, but I will be interested if someone comments on the lost vigor part of the question.

Ted

[joseph]

I have been saving my own tomato seeds for 6 years. I do not typically keep pedigrees or lines, and I allow promiscuous pollination, so I can't specifically address the original post. With that said, each year I have tomatoes that do spectacular, and I have duds. The duds are a dead end and are allowed to die without saving seed from them. The spectacular plants become the seed crop for next year. I plant around 200 to 400 tomato plants per year, so it is easy for me to play genetic roulette. I might only save seeds from the best 50 plants.

I am canning tomatoes today, weeks ahead of when my standard control tomato will be ready. In the beginning I chose an open pollinated tomato as a control. I considered it the best tomato available for my valley because it had been developed for the Campbell's Soup Company specifically for the farmers of this area. I do not save seeds from this variety. I buy commercial seed so that I can have a consistent measure by which to judge how my other tomatoes are doing.

I can't tell specifically if the spectacular tomatoes do better because of genetics, or because they are in a slightly better environment, or were less bothered by pest or diseases. If I was willing to save the seeds of each mother separately, and plant a sibling group, then I could compare that sibling group with those from different mothers and get a better/quicker idea of which families do better for me. I plant sibling groups of melons and corn. Sometimes a strength or weakness will be glaringly obvious: For example, in my popcorn this year we had a thunderstorm. Every plant in one sibling group fell over. I cut the tassels off of those plants so that they wouldn't contribute pollen to the rest of the patch. I'll allow the cobs to mature, but they will be eaten and not saved for seed.

I have selected each year for frost/cold tolerance, vigorous early growth, early fruiting, and productivity. I sure am happy with my tomatoes these days.

[ABlindHog]

Joseph
How many varieties did you start with?

[AKmark]

Thanks for the input Joseph, I always follow your posts and find your approach very interesting. If we end up back in caves, at least you will eat since your crops will have adapted to their environment. For me, changing my environment to suite varieties, I will probably not be as fortunate. lol
No seriously, I have found several varieties I love, I am just trying to figure out the best way forward.

[bower]

It is a very interesting question. I've only been growing heirlooms for four years, so I don't have the kind of data you're looking for, I'm curious to hear what others say.

For myself, if I find a variety that performs well or has desirable traits I will for certain save my own seed and continue to use it, unless as you suggested I see a loss of vigour or some other issue that would cause me to seek another seed source. For one reason, even commercial sources are not entirely reliable as to supplying 'true' seed. Crosses happen, mistakes seem to happen too, whether the source is a trade/swap or commercial.

[joseph]

Originally Posted by ABlindHog

Joseph
How many varieties did you start with?

I trialed around 400 named varieties... Heirlooms, OPs, and F1 hybrids. About 90% of them failed the survival-of-the-fittest test by not ripening fruit in my garden, or developing blossom end rot, or dying of disease, or being attractive to Colorado Potato Beetles.

Because the hybrids grew great for me I suspect that many of the plants I saved seeds from in the first few years were hybrids and that the population today has a lot of segregating hybrids in it.

This summer I planted about 100 plants descended from the same mother. The various plants have fruits anywhere between 2 ounces and 6 ounces. Some of the plants are low sprawlers, and some of them are more upright sprawlers. Next year I'll mostly replant seeds from the mothers with larger fruits and more upright vines.

I really like planting fruit-to-row. I might not know who's the daddy, but children tend to resemble their mothers so I can get a good idea which mothers are "the best" however I am defining that today. My pots come as 6 packs, so it's easy for me to plant a half dozen or a dozen seeds from the same mother and see how the sibling group performs.

One thing that I am getting better at is screening seedlings for quick vigorous growth. Because I have come to recognize that quick growth early in the season almost always translates into better production.

Joseph,

I had an accidental cross between a Limbaughs Potato Top OP and a Fourth Of July hybrid RL. It was only one of six tomatoes I harvested from the Limbaughs plant for seed. The hybridized seed would germinate RL while the non hybridized Limbaughs would germinate PL. The first year I planted out some of the RL seed, a few of the RL plants exhibited extreme hybrid vigor with very fast growth, great production, and very good taste. The tomatoes were larger than the Fourth Of July and smaller than the Limbaughs. I didn't try to stabalize the plant because I didn't believe the mix of genetics could be stabalized. Not all of the RL hybrids I planted exhibited the same hybrid vigor. I'm wondering if your process of selection by growth rate and vigor is only identifying plants in your garden exhibiting hybrid vigor.

I do use a process similar to yours for growing the plants I intend to plant in my garden. I plant twelve seeds of each variety in identical growing conditions. I wind up with six germination cells with two seeds in each. After they put on their first true leaves, I eliminate the weakest plant in each cell. I then up pot the remaining plants into larger grow pots. After about four weeks of growth, I eliminate three of the remaining plants. At plant out, I plant the two strongest plants, giving the third plant away. It works for me.

Ted

[ABlindHog]

Joseph
I read in another thread that you don't particularly care for tomatoes. Do you select for flavor and other characteristics that are important to tomato eaters?

Mike

[joseph]

ABlindHog;429051:

I am chagrined that I do not have a formal tomato tasting program. I can justify that in part because any vine ripened tomato that I grow in my garden tastes better than what is routinely available at the grocery store. If I think that my tomatoes taste horrid, I probably couldn't offer an honest opinion about what I think about the taste of grocery store tomatoes without running afoul of the forums profanity filter. I also justify not having a taste testing program because tomatoes are so difficult to grow here that I'll take anything I can get regardless of how horrid I think it tastes. I have taken lots of tomatoes to the farmer's market for the past 3 weeks. Many of the farmer's that grow in my valley have not yet brought their first tomato to market. People come back for more, so I figure they must be OK. Perhaps its just a case of "Any tomato is better than no tomato".

Every year I chop out a few plants that I think have particularly distasteful fruits, but I certainly don't taste every fruit before saving seed from it, or even taste the fruits on every plant. I suppose that now that I have a landrace that produces abundantly early enough to escape the frost that I aughta start tasting the fruits. Uugh!!! Not looking forward to that. I taste every cob of corn that I save seed from, but I adore the taste of corn.

There are also mechanical things that are important to tomato eaters and their farmers. I have been selecting for those traits all along. Skin thick enough that it doesn't rot in the garden and can survive the trip to the farmer's market, no blossom-end-rot, no-catfacing, non-splitting, not-susceptible to the local blights, rots, and invertebrate animals, etc...

[AKmark]

Joseph, are you trialing new varieties, or just going forward with the ones you have?

I have crossed many late season to select early season varieties, and have planned on selecting individuals out in the generations to come. I am also trying to get two generations in one year. I took seed from a cross earlier this summer, and now have a plant from those seeds with flowers, and hope to collect my f2's to sort through next summer.

I am also crossing my favorite late season varieties to compare, in the future, to my future inbred lines for vigor, yield, and taste.

[joseph]

This year I planted approximately 300 tomato plants. About 30 of them are new varieties that I am trialing for the first time. There is one variety that I am giving a second chance because someone twisted my arm saying that I shouldn't toss out such a great variety so quickly... I'm expecting to toss it this fall. So about 90% of my patch came from my own saved seed.

The new varieties that I am trying were selected specifically for the promiscuous pollination project because they have open anther cones, abundant pollen, or are highly attractive to bees. They are failures as varieties for my garden. They are indeterminates and are just now starting to set fruits 2-3 weeks before my fall frosts are expected. The fruits are unlikely to mature even if covered. In other-words, they failed the survival-of-the-fittest test. I'm used to that. More than 90% of tomatoes that I trial do not produce ripe fruit for me. I attempted to make crosses of them with my favorite super-early highly-determinate line... Unfortunately I made a poor choice regarding which plants to use as the pollen donors. I should have used my short-season tomatoes as the mother. Instead I used the long-season plants as the mothers. Ooops. They are not even close to ripening fruit. Once my error became obvious I re-attempted the crosses, but it was late in the season by then, and I haven't paid attention to see if the attempts were successful. I might could dig the mother plant and move her to a greenhouse to finish ripening the fruit. Might have blown it for this year.

I am expecting to save the following varieties before the end of the season:

Earliest Ot'Jagodka -- Collected from the earliest fruits from a few dozen plants.
Best Ot'Jagodka -- Collected later from the most vigorous plants with the biggest fruits.
Fruit-to-packet Ot'Jagodka -- from 2 plants that were earliest with larger fruits, and from 2 plants with even larger fruits that were later.
Earliest Saladette Landrace -- Highly determinate sprawling plants. All lines that fit this phenotype were combined into a common lot of seed.
Earliest Slicing Tomato Landrace -- Determinate 6 to 10 ounce fruits. All lines combined into a common lot of seed.

I may save a later slicing seed lot, depending on when frost arrives.

Then there is a variety that has been a long time favorite. It doesn't fit the above phenotypes. I'll save it as a variety. It is indeterminate, but very early and it produces all season long. Fruits are slightly larger than saladette size.

If any obvious hybrids show up I may save them as fruit-to-packet, and I may save a lot of seed for "Anything interesting". I'll save any successful crosses separate.

[joseph]

As an example of perfecting tomatoes... These represent the fruits from about 20 plants, all of them descended from the same mother. I only saved seed from about 1/5th of the plants in this sibling group. {The ones I thought performed best.) There are differences in the size of the fruits from plant to plant, and in earliness, and in productivity, and in vigor, and in vine form. This is the seed lot that I am calling "Best Ot'Jagodka". I don't know if the differences in phenotype are due to slight differences in environment, or treatment, or if it is natural variation within the variety, or if some hybridization occurred. The mother plant was extremely attractive to bumblebees last growing season. I would love it if some of these fruits are the offspring of natural cross pollination.

Best Ot'Jagodka 2014: