The First of Something New!

[digitS']

The seeds for the mother plant of the tomato plant that produced this tomato were sent to me by a very knowledgeable seed collector and gardener in 2011:

I grew 2 plants, and they were supposed to be Kellogg's Breakfast. I'd never grown nor even seen this variety before. One produced ripe fruit early, those tomatoes had a wonderful flavor and the plants just did very well! The 2nd plant had very late fruit. The 1st plant had red fruit - NOT the "required" orange. In 2012, I purchased Kellogg's Breakfast seed from Jung's and the plants behaved exactly like the 2nd plant in the 2011 garden. Okay, what was the 1st plant in 2011?

It was indeed a cross! I planted the 1st plant's seeds this year and had many regular-leafed seedlings but 4 potato-leaf seedlings! That seed was a cross between regular-leaf and potato-leaf plants!

I kept those 4 potato-leaf plants and that picture above shows the first fruit on any of them. The plants are all big, robust things with a good deal of fruit that will soon be ripening . The plants don't look much like their mother plant because that one had regular leaves but the fruit is just as I remember it !

The color is orange-red. The fruit is mild but has a true tomato flavor. The skin is tender. It ripened early in the tomato season here! Early enuf, anyway .

Now, I've got it! Well . . . really I've only got the potato-leaf characteristic that I can be sure of. The fruit color, earliness to ripen, flavor, and size (oh! it is 5 oz but there are many larger on the plant) may or may not be the same with plants grown from the seed of this fruit. I sure hope so . In 2014, I will probably grow another 4 plants and choose the earliest to ripen and save from it - if - the flavor etc., etc. are what I am hoping for.

I will be sampling the fruit from the other 3 plants soon. I suppose that if they are the same as this fine tomato, I will have a good deal of confidence that I have "something new" that will stay about the way it is ~ on into the future .

I'm a happy tomato taster and gardener this evening and here is wishing that each one of you can have experiences like this!

Steve

 

[thistlebloom]

Hey, that's great Steve! Will this be a candidate for your EG replacement? You'll need to come up with a name for it!

 

[897tgigvib]

Remember to save seeds from each plant separately and label your envelopes with good descriptions, almost like field note descriptions.

Yes, I've had similar experiences.

Continue doing your savings of seeds for a few years to stabilize it, and then name it.These you have now are f2 generation. the seeds in them will be f3 seeds.

 

[so lucky]

And name it carefully, Steve. You don't want another Bloody Butcher haunting you when you are rich and famous.

 

[Chickie'sMomaInNH]

call it Steve's Excitement or something to that effect. looks nice and meaty too!

 

[Collector]

Sounds like a great project, hope this endeavor pans out.

 

[digitS']

Uh, oh. Which of the 4 plants did this come off of . . :/. They all look the same. I remember bending and my hand going in, through the foliage . . .

Maybe I can spend a moment there tomorrow and see if there is any "landmark" to identify which of the 4 that tomato came from!

No. This is just a little too late to compete with Early Girl on that playing field. There was none but the 1 ripe fruit and the Early Girls are at full-throttle!

A name will require some thought. I have little brain for that at the moment . . . . zzzzzzzzzz

Steve

 

[897tgigvib]

"DigitS Z's" Tomato!

 

[digitS']

Guess what?

One of the 4 plants has yellow fruit! It is just about like its Kellogg's Breakfast grandmother. So, It has a red fruit mother and 3 red fruit siblings!

I guess the only thing I've stabilized so far is the potato leaf characteristic and that was easy . . . This was the plant with the big load of oddly shaped fruit and they are just now ripening. I'm not too happy with how late they are and I don't think their flavor is outstanding - ate one today.

The one from which I picked that first fruit from is right beside this yellow one. It is every bit as productive - the 2 outliers are not. That productive red fruited plant has really quite nicely shaped fruit with the good flavor of the mother plant so - think I'd better stay with that one. Now, I guess I just gotta keep culling out the plants with misshapened, late-maturing, yellow fruit until those never show up again . . . Gee, wouldn't getting a couple generations a year be nice??

Steve

 

[digitS']

Now that quite a few more yellow fruit has ripened, I can say that it certainly isn't 100% like a Kellogg's Breakfast. I'm still not sold on the flavor but also, they are yellow! Kellogg's Breakfast was more orange than yellow when it was ripe.

It would have been easy to guess but I've now read in a few places that Red is dominant over Yellow. So obviously, the yellow characteristic was "hidden" by the red mother plant. Her red offspring may or may not carry those yellow genes. There's no way to know except by grow those out to see if there's any yellow fruit on any of the offspring! If there is, I can toss this year's seed from the red plant and try seed from a red fruit from a 2014 plant.

Still no guarantee, of course . . . I wonder how long this is likely to take :/. I guess "likely" is 1 plant out of 4, or, 1 plant out of 3 with red fruit. Oh! I see how I might shorten this process. Keep notes on which plant the seeds came from (as Marshall suggests) and grow lots of these plants' "babies." YIKES! Do I dare fill my tomato patch with these plants next year & the year following??

Steve