Help - Heirloom tomato problem did not sprout

15 years ago

Greetings, I am new to GardenWeb and looking forward to gleaning some great wisdom from you all!

We have saved our various seeds for about 20 years - this year, none of our heirloom tomato seeds came up (not one cell). This was the first time this has happened to us. We do have a few more seeds, but not many and it is getting rather late in the game to start them. Has anyone else had this issue with their tomatoes? I don't know if they crossed with another variety last summer or we had some pesticide drift issues - I just don't know.

We had Brandywine and San Marzano. Also we purchased a "Super Italian" a great sauce plum from Lily of the Valley Nursery outside of Alliance OH several years back - I know the business was for sale - I have to check if they are still there. The plants did very well from them

Any suggestions, words of wisdom would be great. My husband is perplexed & heart-broken that our seeds have been compromised in some way.

Take care & happy gardening!

Sharon

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Comments (3)

jessicavanderhoff
15 years ago
That is too bad!! I'm so sorry!

I have read here at gardenweb that sometimes saving heirloom seeds from the same genetic line over and over can eventually cause weakened/sterile seeds. Hopefully someone with firsthand experience can tell you more.

You may want to try posting in the growing tomatoes forum. That forum is very active, and you may get a faster response there.

In the meantime, whatever the reason, if you've waited a week or so and you've got no sprouts, I would order new seeds. There are lots of online retailers, including ebay, and I would be happy to point you to some of the ones I like if you're nervous about online ordering.

Sorry-- I would be heartbroken too :-(
jessicavanderhoff
15 years ago
Oops-- nevermind-- they were saying inbreeding weakness happens with corn, but not with tomatoes.
sherryk
Original Author
15 years ago
Jessica - thanks for responding. I hadn't heard of tomatoes weakening, but seriously, anything is possible. Thanks for pointing me to the tomato forum - I guess I should have posted there first, then I read the note about not posting the same thing to multiple boards & just went with heirlooms!

I do appreciate your kind words - we will probably just buy new plants at this point. Isn't this weather amazing?? I can't remember it this hot for this many days in April! Hopefully, we will have a good growing summer with enough rain water falling for our plants!