Crossing Tomatoes, My Method

[digitS']

OooHHHh!

I see spots in front of my eyes!!!

.

.

.

.



Risky business - me with twizzers . I can try and you can click the spots .

digitS'

 

[Chickie'sMomaInNH]

heh, i can't look at that pic for long without my eyes going buggy! but it does remind me of something i tried to learn many years ago in biology class. guess i was too fascinated with all the colors to pay attention to the lesson!

careful with those tweezers Steve! we know how those achy bones can interfere while working on tedious things (and i'm not anywhere as old as all of you!)

 

[digitS']

. . . (and i'm not anywhere as old as all of you!)

I'll be careful, Chickie's Moma.

And, I'm glad you worded it "all of you" .

Steve

 

[Chickie'sMomaInNH]

heh, i have my own issues with my hands. when it comes to lousy weather or doing tedious things all day that involve my hands, they start to ache for days after. typing doesn't seem to bother them unless i don't have the right setup. i stopped doing a lot of my favorite crafts because of it-especially in the winter. :/ i certainly wouldn't make it as a surgeon. so i don't think i will be doing any cross pollination of tomatoes like Marshall does.

eta, i can actually blame this on video game playing as a young kid up till the early 90's when i was still using my Atari with the joystick!

 

[digitS']

. . . It is often better to use a potato leaf as the female crossed with regular leaf as the male your first few times. Because, if your cross pollination worked, the seeds will make DADDY'S regular leaf, and that will let you know if you did it right, and if you plant many of them you will have an idea of the percentage of properly cross pollinated seeds you have. Should be 100% of them. Until you get 100% a few times stick with regular leaf pollen on potato leaf stigma using the anther cone transplant method.

I think I invented this method, but hey, if I can anyone else can. Probably long before me!

Uh, oh!

I just let a person know that the seed he gave me was from a cross-bred plant. Now, I may have offended him and I still have some kind of genetic mess to sort thru.

Here's the deal: one plant grown from the seeds was supposed to be a Kellogg's Breakfast (regular leaf). Its fruit was red! Kellogg's Breakfast has yellow fruit.

Anyway, the fruit was wonderful. The plant was healthy. The fruit ripened very early. All these things that I really want with plants in my tomato patch. But, was this plant marked wrong, was it contaminated seed of a different variety, or was that seed the result of a cross?

This year, I've sown seeds from that Question Mark plant. I just moved the seedlings into 4-packs. There are 2 potato leaf seedlings amongst the regular leaf babies! Okay. Obviously, that mother plant was the result of cross pollination. But, what have I got????

Since about 25% are potato leaf, doesn't that mean that the regular leaf Question Mark plant . . . . . ? . . . well, what does that mean about her? Are either my regular leaf seedlings or my potato leaf seedlings going to breed true? Will I have a real mess trying to grow plants from the seed from either of these?

Steve :/

 

[897tgigvib]

Digit, what your friend gave you, at least the one that you saved seeds from. N ow you planted seeds from that and your plants are F2. In the F2 generation, recessive traits show up at a rate of 25%, dominant traits show up at the rate of 75%.

HOWEVER, among those that show the dominant trait, regular leaf in this case, 50% will CARRY the recessive trait. Thing about that is you can't tell which ones until you grow them out.

That HOWEVER above is exactly why dominant trsits are more difficult to stabilize.

Since recessive traits ONLY show when the gene is r/r, recessive traits are stabilized right then when they show from the F1 generation on.

=====

What you would probably enjoy having waaaaaaay up north where you are is a NICE EARLY KELLOGS BREAKFAST.

You can select for it!!!

=====

Actually, you should PROFUSELY THANK your seed supplier, for this may be the start of a new variety of Kellogs Breakfast

KELLOGS BREAKFAST NORTH!

It should not matter much which leaf form your new variety will have, long as it has kellogs breakfast type fruit, smaller will be ok, and is markedly earlier.

=====

Digit, it just may need to be crossed again with kellogs breakfast if you can't get the similar very unique kellogs breakfast tomato flavor.

 

[897tgigvib]

You ask what exactly do you have, Digit.

I will presume your seed source person in good faith harvested seed from a Kellogg's breakfast tomato.

The seed you got shows all symptoms of being F1 hybrid. The Kellogg's Breakfast plant your seed source harvested from apparently had a nearby potato leaf tomato plant which supplied pollen...one way or another.

I do not know what variety, but can I hazard a guess that it may have been a variety similar to Stupice?

If Stupice is the pollen parent, that would be a WONDERFUL cross!

=====

In attoning and making friends again with your seed source, perhaps you can send your source some F2 seed and let that person select their favorite from among the segregation assortment also, while you select for your favorite(s).

You know, it is also cool to enjoy an assorted sibling variety if it appears that all are good. This deal of uniform varieties is nice, but we easily forget that sibling assortments are also nice to enjoy. They do F2 and beyond mixes with some Pansies and at least used to with Petunias.

 

[samthedog]

Why don't you use a plant a half dozen of your F2 population (multiple plants) and cross the best 2-3 plants back to what you thought you had in the first place - It's a population Backcross. For most folks, F2's are pretty diverse and most gardeners are not going to grow a population size big enough to do much.

In any case, it's fun to look at diversity.

 

[digitS']

I've been out in the greenhouse for a few hours, potting up peppers.

The flavor of those tomatoes 2 years ago was unusually mild for a red, but they were red. I described it as "smooth" and "wonderful!" The first one I had on August 22nd. I remember that they came on real strong from there on out.

It may not seem to you that this would be something "early" but that is plenty early enuf . Having a beefsteak 3 weeks before frost and even longer with our lingering autumns in recent years, is a very good thing. I can enjoy the little tomatoes for a couple of months and the beefsteaks can come into the house green and ripen on the counter, after the frost.

As I said, there was another plant with a Kellogg's Breakfast label and it barely made it in with a ripe tomato before frost. I ordered seed from a catalog company for KB and grew those in 2012. Those plants grew and produced a fruit just like the "other" KB plant in 2011. The Question Mark was something different in earliness and color. Yes, I would say the flavor was very similar. However, I was seriously confused by the 2 plants in 2011 and didn't expect such difference. I didn't know what I was looking for - not even the KB color!

Sam, I've never done any hybridizing, as you can see in the earlier posts. I really question my ability to do it. I'm not known for a great deal of digital dexterity :/.

I've got what I've got . . . There is still seed from the Question Mark plant. I can save seed again. There's no trick to that. I've been saving tomato seed since well back in an earlier century .

Steve

 

[canesisters]

Digits, how do you save your tomato seeds?