16,949 Garden Web Discussions | Growing Tomatoes

"But what you say cannot explain the preservation of shape and color of a variety over several centuries."

Sure it can. Humans are still invariably in charge of selection. If they stay in roughly the same climate, and select for conformity to what the variety is known to be, they can keep it the same. Somebody who grows something different would do one of two things. They'd either give it a new name to differentiate it from the variety it no longer resembles, or they'd call it the same name and you'd have differing strains of a variety that are not the same. (Isn't this common?)
There is genetic variation between individuals, even within the same variety, and if a person chooses to save seed from outliers, plants that exhibit the extreme of various traits be it size, color, etc. how can they preserve the uniformity and genetic diversity of a variety? Recently stabilized crosses have lots of outliers. The Big Sungold Select you sent me produced all sorts of variation in fruit size, color, and shape. Most of our heirloom varieties have crosses in their ancestry. How long do they possess the ability to occasionally throw out a plant with different sized fruit, shape, different color, or different leaf from one of the original parents? 10 years? 30 years? 50 years? 100 years? What if people save seeds from those "aberrations?" Are they still the same variety?
I live in Southern Colorado where the brutal sun will make a plastic water bottle in the garden crack like a brittle egg shell in a matter of weeks. There is no humidity here to buffer the plants from the sun's rays. My tomatoes live in alkaline soils and only had 5 inches of rain last year. My tomatoes know months of summer without any moisture coming in contact with their leaves. In the most brutal parts of July and August, my plants turn dark grey from the sun. They twist their leaves this way and that, trying to hold in moisture, trying to block the sun yet not get burned. During the 9 consecutive days we had highs over 105, I had several plants that still set fruit. All the gardening literature I've read says that's not possible. This is a place far, far from the subtropical origin of tomatoes, and I help them along, giving them the bare minimum to succeed, saving seed from those that are best equipped to cope with the heat, the sun, and the lack of moisture. Are the individuals who thrive in this harsh environment the same individuals that would thrive in upstate New York with 60 inches of rain, glorious humidity, and acidic soil? If I planted one variety, and successively selected for 50 years from plants that could set during high temps and which were productive and I didn't care about size of fruit, color, or preservation of the characteristics that defined a certain variety, are you saying the variety would still stay the same, absent of an outright mutation?

The Big Sungold Select seeds, as sent to me by Reinhard Kraft, were ones not bred by him, but were sent to Manfred Hahm, who has a seed site at Reinhard's website.

Reinhard grew out just gold colored ones but it turned out the initial seeds were crossed that I sent out, not knowing that and that was confirmed by Brad Gates, who also got the same seeds from Reinhard and Brad gave percentages of the different colored ones,

So it wasn't a stable variety from the get go but Reinhard didn't know that.

Yes, I know what the Co weather can be since I spent many years in Denver teaching at the med school at Colorado and 8th and also travelled to different parts of the state when time allowed for that/

At least the humidity is low.LOL I'd fly home via Chicago and when I got off the plane in Albany,NY I could hardly breath. Sigh.

And yes, I'm saying that many varieties have stayed the same for many decades without mutation or at least s msjor mutation that would make a major change.

Subtle mutations s do happen almost all the time but for a variety to adapt to local conditions, the sum of those subtle mutations can take up to thousands of years to adapt. as iI said above with the landrace Ethiopian Wheat story. Same with corn.

If you have five plants of the same variety in a row can one see differences, yes sometimes, as in differences with internode length, leaf shape, time to blossom set, etc., but nothing that would prevent a person from Iding a plant as the variety it's supposed to be.

Carolyn

This post was edited by carolyn137 on Mon, Dec 30, 13 at 16:15

And yes, please do mulch on top of your drip lines. Mulch actually lessens soil born diseases from splashing up onto your plants. Mulch conserves water and cools the roots in hot weather. Pine straw, dried grass clippings, chopped dry leaves, clean straw, applied a few inches thick will benefit your plants, lessen your water bill and will improve the soil.

During the summer days, with no rain, I give each tomato plant about 2 gal. of water each time. My garden hose with a shower head delivers about 4pm. so say I have 6 plants in one bed, I water that bed for about 3-4 minutes, once every 5 to 7 days. I also have a rain gauge. Any rainfall less than 1/4 inch per week does not count. No watering when there is 1.5" of rain or more .

Geosankie, both plants are in 5 gallon containers. It's the brandywine that is purple, not the sun gold. Sun gold is doing great other than the early blight :/

Sun gold is in Lamberts organic potting soil and brandywine is in MiracleGro regular potting soil.

Carolyn137, I am not convinced yet that the brandywine has spotted wilt virus as the purple parts of the leaves are not dying. I'm not sure what to do though. And how should I treat the early blight?

There are lots of dying leaves shown in the link I gave above.

TSWV is caused by thrips of a certain kind and if you did a Google search I'm sure you'd come up with more such pictures.

It's a suggestion, not a definitive diagnosis, since you say that your other plants don't have the same symptoms.

Since all of your plants were given the same growing conditions the purple can't be due to a mineral deficiency, and leaves can turn purple in cold weather as well, but it's not cold where you are right now.

Carolyn

Black Krim has been known to give a blunt heart shape, see the link below for a well known variety Brad's Black Heart.

You're in W MA and I'm in Eastern NYS not that far from you and I guess it might be best to say that IMO there is no such thing as local adaptation and this after growing 3,000 plus varieties and being raised on a farm, so up close and personal with tomatoes for a verrryyy longtime.

Folks have selected for larger size, for earlier versions of a known variety, for this and that and they never seem to genetically stabilize.

To me local adaptation means a landrace, such as Ethiopian Wheat and some rice cultivars and it took thousands of years of subtle mutations for those to adapt to local conditions.

Cold hardy? I guess it depends on how cold? Tomatoes were from the highlands of Chile and Peru where its a temperate, not a jungle environment,

Carolyn

Here is a link that might be useful: Brad's Black Heart

Re Brad's Black Heart

Tania says it's early and good-tasting, but not very productive.

My Black Krim was good tasting, but neither early nor productive. In fact the plant seemed miserable. The first BK was bought from a nursery too late in the season and was probably root-bound. It almost died, but I coddled it and it produced two tasty tomatoes. I saved the seeds and a friend grew them out and gave me two plants the following spring. Something happened and the young plants seemed to stop growing in her cold frame and everything else overtook them, but they eventually caught up and fruited. I think I will skip them next year.

My Purple Cherokee was early and tasted great, but that wasn't very productive either.

Perhaps Indian Stripe would be a good black tomato to try.

Linda

yeah i noticed the pale leaves its only on that one plant and its the biggest so maybe its using more nutes than the others. i had given some bird guana a couple days before the picture, it didn't seem like it helped so i gave it some fish emulsion today.

Yellowing bottom leaves are normal, trim and remove from the garden area as they might be blighted. Mulch plants to avoid dirt splash as it can damage leaves. I grow 'better boy' in cages with three stems (two are the lowest suckers) and remove 1/3 to 1/2 of all leaves to provide better air circulation. Very productive.

Earl I could not find you over there, I would like some MWC as well, can trade an extra pack of super sweet seeds I received.

Never mind I found the exchange Carolyn was referencing thank you.

Thanks for the feedback KCKook. Don't doubt your gardening abilities, though, based only on last year. We don't do that very often, thank goodness. But our summers down here just south of you are typically hot enough to stop fruit set. About the only thing that will set during July and August for me are cherries.
I've asked at the farmer's market what varieties they grow, and they are nice enough to share, but it seems silly to grow the same varieties when I can get those at the market. And none of the tomato farmers live in the city. We live in the heart of the urban heat island, and are several degrees warmer than the suburbs. It doesn't help.
I've ordered my Omar, so I'll let you know how he does. And I think he needs an Arkansas Traveler to keep him company.

Anyone have some spare seeds of an Omar for trade or the like? My wife's family on her Dad's side are from that area.

JD

Here is a link that might be useful: Pierce Farmstead

Wow! These look "fantastic-o"

Has anyone tried them? I wonder if they would be better than Red Robin - although I wouldn't be able to save seeds.....

Linda

Park's is sold out already per their website.

I can say that 6 hours of sun , in zone 9 Texas should be enough. Part of the sunlight is used as heat energy by the plants. In zone 9, TX, they will get lots of energy AND also consider the amount of indirect light in bright long summer days. Actually 6 hours is considered FULL SUN. I do garden at PNW, cooler weather with just about 6 hour of sun.

hard to grow large fruit from a small fruit plant

Mine have done the same. Green fruit that set early sat forever. Now they are all ripening at once since the weather has turned milder. Not many new blossoms or fruit though on the top of the plants. I figure maybe 30% production compared to the last few years. Flavor of Black Krim is not as good as usual. BooHoo.

bump:

Those were the days, my friend,
we thought they never end.
we couldn't wait for that mato to turn red..
and suddenly the fall fell upon us
..
when life becomes memories , it becomes of more value.
I dream of spring again.

how about you ?

My new task (dream maybe?) is a volunteer tomato that came up where I had tossed some kind of tomato in to the edge of the woods. Probably a "tomato on the vine" from the grocery store.

It grew so well and had lots of fruit, even though it was neglected and had too much shade. It had a really good taste, better than my old standby's. But my old standby's didn't have much flavor this year due to the coolest, wettest summer we have ever had.

I saved the seed from several fruits with hopes that I will get at least one plant that duplicates that one!

It just seems so risky to place even modest confidence in saved seeds from an unknown variety. Much of my delema is to retry remaining purchased seed packets which grew untrue or just toss them and reorder from a new source. I'll admit I have saved seeds from a few fruits that produced unexpected results just to see if I could get similar results but I never want to risk that with more than a few plants.
Each of us has different goals that we are setting for the coming year. I'm somewhat pleasently surprised how my cherry tomato season ended and I'll likely continue to plant ~200 plants, same as the past 2 years. My main shift will be to grow fewer heirloom varieties with simple red or pink color. I'll likely keep black varieties constant and include a few more newer striped heritage varieties- those seem to be the ones that I'm dreaming about.