Big Chief

[Farmette]

I have planted Big Chief, Regular Leaf and Potato Leaf, separately. I think there are going to be 1 or 2 potato leaf amongst the regular group. Is this normal?

[Suze]

The variety Big Cheef (not Big Chief) is PL and should be maintained as such. RL indicates either an instability or a cross. The gentleman who worked with what he decided to name Big Cheef deliberately selected for several specific characteristics, and one of those characteristics was PL foliage.

Results you get from any RL plants might be perfectly good, but should probably be called something else to avoid confusion, especially if you plan on redistributing any seeds or plants. JMO.

[Farmette]

I will have to check the note sent with the seeds to see how they were labeled. The gentleman that I got them from sent me both varieties.

[amideutch]

OK, lets see if we can get this straight. Big Cheef or Big Chief got it's start as a RL sport of Brandywine Sudduth found amongst Sudduth PL seedlings started by RIK aka bigcheef. He grew out the RL and saved the seeds and gave them to different members of TVille to grow out. See thread link.

http://www.tomatoville.com/showthread.php?t=1062&page=2

I grew out the RL F2 the following year and was unimpressed and I also got PL seedlings as well and did not grow them. PapaVic (Bill Jeffers) grew out the RL's as well but he selected the PL seedlings to grow and is now up to F4 or F5 at this time and has been using the name BigCheef who was the originator of the variety.
The following year after my initial RL growout of BC I replanted the F2 RL seed received from bigcheef and selected the PL's as PV had done originally which turned out to be much better than the F2 RL.
So Farmette the RL seed you got from me were from my F2 RL growout and the PL seed were from my F2 PL growout. So as Suze said it was unstable at the start giving RL and PL plants and most folks went with the PL and have continued to grow them out. My calling it Big Chief was more of a misspelling of Big Cheef. So hopefully this will detract from rather than add to the confusion.
Farmette, you may want to grow that lone PL that popped up in the RL batch as you may end up with one of the best tomatoes you ever ate as said by PapaVic on his growout. Ami

[Farmette]

Thanks Ami for the information. This makes everything much clearer. And thanks for the suggestion for the growout; I do plan on doing this.

[Farmette]

Ami:
Well, as it turns out there were quite a few PL's that grew out of the RL packet.
So, are you saying that I should not grow out the RL but the PL from the RL packet?
And I am wondering since I have PL from the PL packet you sent if those will taste the same as the other PL from the RL packet.
Is it possible to make an educated guess?
Thanks
Chris

[amideutch]

Chris. Since we are dealing with F2/F3 and if you have the room grow both the PL and RL from the RL packet and grow the PL from the PL packet and see what you come up with. Ami

[travis]

It seems that two individuals are listing Big Cheef in the 2010 Seed Savers Exchange Yearbook and both of their descriptions describe the same tomato - large, maroon or purple beefsteak tomato on a potato leaf vine. I also think the two listings are for F5 tomato seeds that have been shared between those two individual growers, albeit grown in the two different gardens for the past year or two.

The reason I mention this is because apparently the name Big Cheef has been assigned to a specific set of color and leaf shape, etc. traits found to be stable in this particular line at the F5 stage, and maybe anyone growing other leaf shapes and fruit colors from the same original F1 cross should use a name other than Big Cheef to identify their particular stabilized results. Just a thought and a gentle suggestion.

[amideutch]

travis, FYI the two individuals that listed Big Cheef in the 2010 SSE Yearbook are Bill Jeffers aka (Papa Vic) IN JE B2 and our own Suze TX AN S. I'm going to give you a link to a picture of the F2 plant and PV's post concerning it. That will pretty much explain and show how the names came about. Most of the information concerning Big Cheef came from Papa Vic at Tomatoland. I printed all the threads their as that is where the most information is at. I was one of the 10 that got the original seeds from RIK (Big Cheef) along with PV and others. Note the date on Papa Vic's Post below taken from Tomatoland as well as the photobucket link. Ami

by PapaVic on Thu Jun 07, 2007 10:12 pm

Hey, RIK!

Glad you finally got here.

BTW, I'm growing one of your Sudduth x Uknown RL F2s you sent me.

This one is potato leaf.




Hope you don't mind me tagging it "Big Chief." If it makes really good tomatoes, I'll change the name to Big Cheef (with your permission). The RL sister wasn't growing nearly as well, so I yanked it.

PV
don't look back

PapaVic
- * Tomato * -

Posts: 870
Joined: Tue Feb 27, 2007 11:38 pm
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http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h2...VC-001S-11.jpg

[travis]

Thanks for the back story, Ami. I'm just going by what I read in the 2010 Yearbook which basically establishes the name Big Cheef as applying to the F5 version of this tomato thought to be stable for potato leaf and maroon or purple colored fruit. So it seems if someone is growing regular leaf and other than purple or maroon (whichever you want to call it) beefsteaks, they might want to follow that line to stability with another name.

[Farmette]

Yes, thanks for the clarification. I have now planted both the PL and RL from the RL seed as well as the PL plant from the PL seed. We'll see what happens!

[amideutch]

Here is a post of Bill Jeffer's 2008 Grow list where he makes reference to "Big Cheef" at the F3 stage. Maybe you ought to contact him and tell him he needs to change the name to "Big Chief" in the below post. Ami

Re: 2008 Grow Lists

by PapaVic on Tue Mar 18, 2008 11:25 pm
I don't do grow lists ahead of time. My method is more haphazard. When I get a notion, I open the "seed box" and rummage through the recycled cushioned envelopes sent by various seed vendors or the half-♪♫♪♫♪♫ organized notebooks full of baseball card sleaves filled with somewhat alphabetized seed envelopes. I take out a couple dozen seed packs at a time, lay them on a drafting table, and start filling starter cells with ProMix.

While I'm waiting for the ProMix to wick up the water from the bottom of the cell trays, I get a couple of sheets of graph paper and map out 48 or 72-cell grids, date the sheets, and give them an ID number. Then I start dropping seeds into the cells and fill in the map grids as I go, variety by variety, until I've seeded all available cells filled with ProMix. Some cells I drop three or four seeds into. Some cells I might plant ten or 12 seeds per cell. The denser cells will be potted up first.

Here's some seeds I've planted so far in 2008 ...

Sowed on Friday, February 29, 2008. All up and growing great with advancing first true leaves and starting second set of TLs. About half are potted up to 4-inch pots. 2 - 4 dozen seeds each of the following:
Moreton F1 < 60% germination from 1999 Harris seed. Looks healthy too
Scarlet Red F1 < extremely healthy starts
Ultra Sonic F1
Applause F1 < broad regular leaf early tomato replaces Bush Celebrity
Bush Big Boy F1
Bush Celebrity F1
Summerpink
Flamingo < OP pink sport of Mountain Spring

March 7, second round. I didn't plant as many seeds for each of these types as for the first round because these are ones I'm going to trial or grow-out for seed increase. Out of this group, Country Orange is being reluctant to sprout with only one propeller head up.
Country Orange
Daniels < thanks, Darrel
Green Giant (Victory Seeds)
Green Giant (Tomato Growers Supply)
Shah Mikado < growing this one in honor of all heirloom authorities everywhere
Marianna's Peace < Marianna's Conflict was delicious last year. This one has some 'splaining to do
Big Cheef F3 (Sudduth x Unknown) < prayin' for a dozen repeats
Brandywine x Neves Azorean Red (F2)
Spudakee < gets props for being tops
Yellow Submarine << this one has noticably lighter green cotelydons. Has anyone else noticed that?

[travis]

He sure seems to spend a lot of space trying out stuff. I wonder how many of those actually get a repeat appearance in following years.

[amideutch]

He has made several crosses and grows out a lot of varieties. This was just a partial list of his grow out for 2008. So I hope everybody has it staright on "Big Chief" and "Big Cheef". Ami

[BigVanVader]

I have seeds labeled Big Cheef Stripes. Is this a different variety or ?