Some New Tomatoes

[PVP]

I'm starting to get some ripe tomatoes and want to share pictures with y'all.





These are sister lines of F3s, Green Giant x Yellow Submarine. Both the green and the yellow are ripe as shown in the pictures.

The green is about 50% larger on average than the yellow. Both have clear skin. The yellow is about 50% more productive than the green. The green is far better tasting than the yellow.

The green appears truly green ripe in that the shoulders remain green as green can be while the blossom end breaks only to white when the fruit is soft and ready to eat.

All the vines are potato leaf, indeterminate, long lived and healthy. The only disorder I see is a small spot or two of Early Blight and then only on the bottom leaves which the plants soon outgrow.

Darth is growing many F2s of this cross and will see yellow epidermis, clear epidermis, golfball size and larger, hopefully some green when ripe, and already has one vine producing pear shaped fruit. JayTee has a vine producing plum shaped fruit with helicopter rotor blade sepals that are very attractive.


Bill

[PVP]

Here are two sister lines of F3s, Indian Stripe x Sun Gold from seeds JayTee sent back from Connecticut.

The one labeled "reddish" gets a bit redder than the one labeled "bronze" and the redder one is larger on average than the bronze.

The bronze cherry tastes better than the redder one and the bronze one has much greener gel and grows on a vine that has the distinct Sun Gold aroma.

The bronze one has ladder trusses like Sun Gold and the redder one has the more normal or "non-pimpinellifolium" truss arrangement.

Again, both Darth and JayTee are growing way more examples of this cross than I did. Darth has nearly 50 F2s and I think JayTee has a half dozen or more F3s. We hope to find larger fruit in some of the sibling and Darth is looking for some good brown examples for his chefs.

Frogsleap also has been growing this cross in 2009 and 2010, and I believe he may have had one go gene jumping to an expression of striped skin. We'll see what happens.


Bill

[PVP]

These are F1, Tigerette x Cherokee Purple.

Tigerette is a determinate dwarf with lutescent rugose foliage.

The F1 vines are very compact but indeterminate and loaded with tight clusters of red, somewhat egg shaped globes with faint striping apparent. I'll post pictures of the green fruit clusters and the lutescent foliage of the Tigerette parent next week.

I have two lines of Tigerette. One has yellow fruit with gold stripes and yellow flesh. The other has red fruit with gold stripes and red flesh. This cross is Cherokee Purple pollen to the yellow fruited Tigerette flower.

This cross is intended to and should produce dwarf, determinate bush, and compact indeterminate lines with both lutescent (chartreuse green) foliage and normal green foliage, and obviously all kinds of fruit colors and stripes.

Darth and his crazy chefs should have fun with this one.


Bill

[PVP]

Last year, I grew out some seeds I obtained from Neil Lockart for Golden Cherokee. Out of 16 - 20 seeds I planted, 3 came up potato leaf (PL) and the rest came up regular leaf (RL).

I planted the best looking PL plant and got a lumpy, red tomato with soft pink fruit. The tomato looked like it wanted to be a bicolor until it turned almost completely red with blotchy yellow shoulders.

I planted the two best looking RL vines and got one that was true Golden Cherokee - gold tomato with red blush and red streaking in the flesh. The other RL vine gave clear yellow tomatoes with just a faint pink blush and a spot or two of pink in the blossom end of the flesh.

This year I planted two vines from seed saved out of the clear yellow 2009 tomatoes and now, from 2 RL vines, I am getting what you see in the pictures. One clear skin green-when-ripe and the other is clear skin yellow fruit.


Bill

[PVP]

Okay, I was scrolling through the NCSU Cultivar Lists a couple years ago and ran across "MoCross Surprise" which was said to be a hybrid of Mozark x Sioux. I believe this also is what was sold as Missouri Surprise when the University of Missouri was producing hybrids using Mozark as a parent. Another hybrid they produced was Avalanche (Mozark x Glamour).

So, since I have some Mozark seeds from University of Missouri, Columbia, I went ahead and made this cross in 2008, but didn't grow it until this year. WOW! What a surprise.

Heavy with no core is how I have to describe this meaty, old fashioned flavored tomato. And the vine is a healthy indeterminate productive of many fine looking fruit.


Bill

[PVP]

Is this tomato green or is it ripe and ready to eat?


Well it caught me by surprise on the vine, because it sure looked green.
It was grown from seed taken out of a clear pink tomato from last season. More on that later ...

From the side it looks a bit more ripe, but still looks to be just breaking color, right?


The blossom end looks a bit more ready to eat.
And believe me, it felt pliable enough to eat when I picked it.


But I left it on the counter a couple more days before slicing it ...


Guess it source.

WildThyme (Janet from California) sent me seeds she took out of a medium size, deep purple Purple Haze F2.
When I grew the F3 seeds, I got a large, pink tomato:


Also in 2009, the interior looked like this:


But this year, this one looks like this inside:


Yummy too.


Bill

[PVP]

Okay, now here is that WildThyme Green When Ripe sitting side by side with a yellow bicolor tomato.


Guess where the yellow bicolor came from. Yep, it's a sibling of the green when ripe.
Seeds came from the same 2009 clear pink F3 tomato grown from Janet's deep purple PH F2.



Don't know what to tell you except it's yummy sweet and fruity too.

And that you can expect all sorts of variations when growing out Purple Haze:



Bill