Early tomatoes

[jmsieglaff]

When looking through various seed sources you note most early tomatoes, generally < 60 days to maturity are red or pink. Is there a genetic reason or just a reflection of breeding work and preference of those doing the breeding to those colors?

[Cole_Robbie]

I would guess it's the consumers of the product who are influencing what you see for sale. Most people prefer red tomatoes, largely because most people have not experienced tomatoes of other colors.

I grow Taxi as an early yellow slicer. It's open pollinated. Orange Blossom F1 from Johnny's has been my early orange slicer.

[KarenO]

Yes and many early tomatoes offered in catalogs are F1 hybrids and red is dominant. Agree though that catalogs offer what sells and what people want traditionally is red. Many people don't even know there are tomatoes that are not red and are shocked when they see my blacks, GWR, bicolours etc. I do Think that is slowly changing with more catalogs and garden centers beginning to offer some heirlooms and more color options.
KarenO

[AlittleSalt]

I agree with red being what a lot of consumers want. Red, smooth, perfect shape, etc. I found myself thinking like that years ago. Then I started reading and learning. Shiny is another example. A waxed vegetable is shiny and will sell easily, but it doesn't mean it's going to taste good.

[jmsieglaff]

That's kind of what I thought. I can see myself down the road trying to cross some good flavored early red/pinks with a favorite black and try to trim a couple weeks off the ripening for a tasty black fruited tomato. Karen--what's the tomato in your hand in your picture?

[KarenO]

[QUOTE=jmsieglaff;439793]That's kind of what I thought. I can see myself down the road trying to cross some good flavored early red/pinks with a favorite black and try to trim a couple weeks off the ripening for a tasty black fruited tomato. Karen--what's the tomato in your hand in your picture?[/QUOT

Hi there,

That's an unusually big 24 oz Cherokee purple I grew about 3 years ago.
Generally Cherokee purple fruits run around 8-12 oz for me here.
Tasty!
Karen

[Fusion_power]

If you decide to try to breed an early variety, these notes will help.

1. You need 2 critical genes, precocious flowering, and ft (fruiting temperature 40F)
2. Precocious flowering is in Stupice, Glacier, Bloody Butcher, etc.
3. "ft" is in Earlinorth
4. There is a linkage between fruit size and days to maturity, smaller matures earlier.
5. I would use Jaune Flamme' crossed to Bloody Butcher to develop an early orange.
6. I would use Black Krim crossed to Stupice to develop an early black.
7. I would use Little Lucky crossed to Bloody Butcher to develop an early bicolor.

You might have to play around with Earlinorth a bit to figure out if "ft" is needed. I think it will benefit significantly if you can work it in.

If you want to develop a medium size early variety, consider using Sub Arctic Plenty or Sasha's Altai.

[b54red]

Last season my earliest tomatoes were Berkely Tie Dye Pink and JD's Special C Tex both of which are black. In years past some others that have been very early are Kosovo, Carbon, and earliest of all Fish Lake Oxheart. I quit growing the so called "early" varieties touted in the catalogs because they frequently were only a few days earlier than some others and the taste was usually not so good.

Bill

[jmsieglaff]

Originally Posted by Fusion_power

If you decide to try to breed an early variety, these notes will help.

Thanks! Tomatoville is a great place. This is something I could see myself trying in a couple of years. I'm excited for my squash breeding project over the next few years and am still growing a lot of established heirlooms/open pollinated varieties. One thing I'll have to do is trial some those very early varieties. The one concern I do have about doing a tomato project at some point is the F2 grow out, my garden space isn't too big and I like to always grow a variety of tomatoes for eating--that would be my limiting factor. And I don't want to tell our kids the backyard is being turned into a farm and my wife already says I spend enough time in the garden, so probably a community garden plot isn't an option.

[bower]

You will find other colours of early fruit among the OP's from Russia and adjacent regions.

Orange 1 (aka Belarus Orange) is a very early, heavy bearing orange determinate with decent sized fruit. Zolotoe Serdtse is quite an early orange too, although it was later than Orange 1 for me this year. ZS seems to be more tolerant of being planted out in the cold than it was of being cramped in a beer cup while waiting for weather to warm - was much later for me under the latter treatment.

Chernomor (aka Black Sea Man) is pretty early and sets in cold weather; Amazon Chocolate PL (a small fruited variant?) which I also grew this year was even earlier to ripen. And Black Early is one of the earliest fruiting varieties I have grown, just a few days later than Stupice. All of these three are beefsteak/ slicer type fruit.

Quite a few people have named Pink BTD as one of their earliest and tolerant of cool weather - it wasn't early for me here, and perhaps 'cool' is a relative term, depending on what's usual, and 'early' too, depending on how short your season is. Early for others can be late for me! It was certainly delicious though, once it got started.

When I say a plant fruits and grows in cool weather here, I mean it does just fine when day temps are between 60 and 70 F, and tolerates cooler nights (down to about 48 F) without any visible stress, and occasional days or couple days that don't get up to 60F. Quite a few varieties can be stubborn about that 70 F mark, and won't set any fruit until temperatures go above it.

[jmsieglaff]

Originally Posted by bower

Quite a few people have named Pink BTD as one of their earliest and tolerant of cool weather - it wasn't early for me here, and perhaps 'cool' is a relative term, depending on what's usual, and 'early' too, depending on how short your season is. Early for others can be late for me! It was certainly delicious though, once it got started.

I always see PBTD being brought up in a variety of threads--from ones talking about flavor, production, now earliness. Seems like one I need to grow sometime soon!