Mat-Su Express
 

Sherry AK and I have been working on several crosses of great tasting heirlooms with good tasting early varieties to make varieties that work well in northern climates. One of these is called Mat-Su Express, a cross of Brandywine and Bloody Butcher that is now at F6.
I sent a few seeds out at F4 and some F5's will be going around from those seeds known as plant (A). I have also sent out several batches of F6 from plant A - A was a selection in the F3.
Here is the important part of this post. I had a heck of a time finding good selections that were close to as early as the F1. At F4 about 25 percent were very early, F5 was about 50 percent. ALL I ASK is if you plan on passing around seed, please grow a few plants to make sure you get an early selection, taste is pretty stable, just a little variation. We call it Mat-Su Express because they are early. There are plenty of late season types floating around that tastes great, less early ones that taste great. I am growing over a 100 per generation to make good selections for the next generation, and will have it at F8 this next season.
I will send out some plant B (a selection in F3 also) next season, they are called Mat-Su Super B, they yield a lot of very tasty tomatoes

Enjoy, many will really like this strain.
Mark in the frozen north

AK Mark , really looking forward to this season and growing your Matsu Express! Hope it does well in my area . It's getting great reviews and brandywine was very good this, my first year. Tomatoes seem to be pretty forgiving for complete novice like myself.lol. Don't know which generation I have but if I have success I'm sure they'll taste great! Thanks for bringing M E to tomatovillers and shortened DTM is huge plus! Your workin awful hard up there and prolly enjoying it. Rock the maters in 2017! Jimbo

Those of us who live in the north really appreciate your hard work in creating an EARLY and TASTY M.E. I have some seeds and will attempt to grow more than one plant in 2017.

Linda

Everyone getting their seed from me has F5. I only had three plants, but I could not tell them apart. It's my favorite red tomato to eat, and I have grown a lot of red tomatoes. Yield was good, too.

My plants last year were in the high tunnel, which is not heated, and I had May weather that was ridiculously cold and wet, some nights in the 40's. My early Mat-Su were cat-faced from the very cold weather. That was the only downside I saw in it. I'm going to grow a lot of Mat-Su Express next summer, but I'm not going to try to make an early tomato out of it, because in my climate that means exposure to unpredictable weather.

Thank again, Mark. I hope everyone else likes Mat-Su as much as I did.

I just finished salad with my last brandywine tomato. Gonna grow couple extra M E this year in place of brandywine.

Kudos, Mark! I really enjoyed the F1 parent of Mat-Su this summer. It did very well in spite of challenging conditions and a late start. It set every blossom afaict, and when I put the plant outdoors it lost most of its leaves but it kept on sizing up those fruit and most of them ripened before the season was over. They were salad sized beefs, quite tasty and the plant wasn't fazed by our crazy weather. Thanks for sharing. :)8-)

Cole, you don't have to expose them to weather conditions, you can simply choose seed from the first several plants that bear tomatoes, the tastes are all about the same as the later bearing plants. What someone like yourself gets from that is being one of the first guys at the market with tomatoes.

sounds great! How many DTM are you looking at for the early selections Mark?
Karen

Karen, in my near perfect environment I am getting the first ripe fruits from 102-108 days from seed, some are a week or so later, but I will fix that in the next few generations. I will grow a bunch this year, I have a lot of space to grow them. I also have some seed from outdoor plants to select for cold tolerance, but I have not put as much time into those, YET
I am meeting with Sherry Monday to discuss where we are going with this. She has several semi stable and stable crosses that she has been working on for many years, I think many people will really like them too. I will let you all know what we come up with. I can say this, there are some great genetics in the crosses, most will grow outside in AK, they taste great, some are superior tasting too.

Hi Mark,

I'll be putting Mat-Su Xp through the gauntlet right next to my other winter warriors (M. Alla, Maya & Sion AC, S. Ponchik, 0-33, G. Altai, and a few others) to see how they handle large swings in temp. During our "winter" evenings can be in the 40s with days in the high 80s, sometimes 90s.

Mat Su XP is growing strong, on par with Maya & Sion AC.

Great to hear Gerardo, that was the plan, I want to see how they are doing elsewhere than here. I have some others I have not sent out yet that people are really going to like too. At the end of next season, I will unleash several. LOL
Just thank Sherry, she showed me how to do this, and donates a lot of her time tinkering in my GH's with the varieties. She is pretty darn sharp and detailed, and simply has a knack for dreaming up great combinations. If you guys like the tomatoes, make sure to thank Sherry AK

[QUOTE=AKmark;602705]Karen, in my near perfect environment I am getting the first ripe fruits from 102-108 days from seed, some are a week or so later, but I will fix that in the next few generations. I will grow a bunch this year, I have a lot of space to grow them. I also have some seed from outdoor plants to select for cold tolerance, but I have not put as much time into those, YET
I am meeting with Sherry Monday to discuss where we are going with this. She has several semi stable and stable crosses that she has been working on for many years, I think many people will really like them too. I will let you all know what we come up with. I can say this, there are some great genetics in the crosses, most will grow outside in AK, they taste great, some are superior tasting too.[/QUOTE]


Thank you for sharing this important (to us northerners) cross with us, Mark and Sherry. I am excited to try it in the future.

I am wondering if in a less than perfect growing environment (such as mine) are the results that Mark achieved dependent on continuous fertilizing and watering? I am sometimes remiss with regards to both. Is the earliness purely genetic, or could I get the same results with slightly neglected plants. I'm more of a plant it (with fertilizer) and let it be for a while due to my schedule. A small reduction in production is okay, but I hope the lack of continuous fertilization would not slow it down initially. Those first few tomatoes really stand out and get a lot of attention until they are ready!

Any pics?

- Lisa

Mark, there will be some F5 Mat-Su Express growing in Texas. They will be started on January 1, 2017. Then planted out sometime in March. I could grow one in a 5 gallon bucket too.

Mat-Su Express will be growing in Florida this winter. Seeds from Cole_Robbie so F5s, have been sowed - 100% germination.

Very excited to try this.

Lisa, great question. They have been grown outside in AK. In my greenhouses every variety gets the same environment, so when we see stuff that is earlier, or yields better, we can safely assume it is most likely genetic, and I grow about a 100 varieties a year. Lisa look in the crosstalk thread section at a thread called expectations.
Robert, good luck, I have no idea how they will perform in the Texas heat, you can certainly let us know though. I have a couple of other crosses, I will have to send you next year, they are later season, but the taste I cannot get enough of.
Awesome Barb, I hope they treat you good.

[QUOTE=Barb_FL;602723]Mat-Su Express will be growing in Florida this winter. Seeds from Cole_Robbie so F5s, have been sowed - 100% germination.

Very excited to try this.[/QUOTE]

Oh good, do I will know who to get seeds from. I really kinda haveta grow this because my initials are MSE.:)

Thinking about it - the one grown in a 5 gallon buck could be started January 1. Brought inside when needed and grown outside most of the days in late February, March and April - 105 days later is April 15. That's way before the Texas heat sets in. Hmm, it might work.

I do not like red tomatoes. Usually they have not much flavour or they are sour. But with you telling how good mat su express is I am tempted to try.
How is the flavor? Sweet, acid, balanced...???
Did someone send some to Tormato for the swap? Or how could I get some coming to France? ;)

I did send in some for the swap. I still have plenty of seed. I saved a lot.

Mat-Su Express pics
 

Here is a few pics of the line from F1-4, the F5 pics are hiding somewhere, but greatly resemble F4's anyway.
Some of you have asked about MgSO4 deficiency, you can see it on plant A and B in the F3 pics. These were at the end of a season, I ran out of Epsom salt, they were on their own at that point. In the F3 notice the difference in plant A on the left, and B on the right, A threw bigger fruit, up to a pound, but B was loaded. I will send B out next season at F8, I want to continue to tailor it as I see fit, it is a true market tomato, the red cluster is B
The F3 was an important generation for selection, with A I greatly improved fruit size, B was/ is a monster yielder.
Anyway, you can see they yield a few tomatoes, and the F4 labeled May 5 was sprouted January 21 I think.

These Mat Su Express tomatoes are [I]amazing![/I] :love::yes:

Mark these are some beautiful tomato trusses. Do they need any support for all of that weight?

You have done a great job! It sounds as if half of our Tomatoville neighborhood will be growing this plant next year. Well Done!

MissS, Thanks. I did actually lose a couple of trusses on Mat-Su Super B, and that is something that rarly happens to me. I have used support a few times when I see a truss starting to give, but also would like to note that most of the time they just bend downward and make contact with the main stem, which usually provides some support. I have not lost very many trusses, very few actually.
Mat-Su should work well in your area. Like I said before, thank Sherry, she really enjoys tinkering with crosses, and got me hooked.
Just wait until you see some of her projects, she has a lot of stuff going on.

Thank you Sherry for bringing us this wonderful tomato. I hear that you are a genius at making tomato crosses. Keep up the good work!

I think that I will have to give this one a try too.

It's a great tasting tomato and early too. My friends had bought a plant from Mark this year and when they left on a trip, I had run of the ripe tomatoes in their greenhouse. It was the first one out of many early reds to ripen.

[QUOTE=AKmark;602663]Sherry AK and I have been working on several crosses of great tasting heirlooms with good tasting early varieties to make varieties that work well in northern climates. One of these is called Mat-Su Express, a cross of Brandywine and Bloody Butcher that is now at F6.
I sent a few seeds out at F4 and some F5's will be going around from those seeds known as plant (A). I have also sent out several batches of F6 from plant A - A was a selection in the F3.
Here is the important part of this post. I had a heck of a time finding good selections that were close to as early as the F1. At F4 about 25 percent were very early, F5 was about 50 percent. ALL I ASK is if you plan on passing around seed, please grow a few plants to make sure you get an early selection, taste is pretty stable, just a little variation. We call it Mat-Su Express because they are early. There are plenty of late season types floating around that tastes great, less early ones that taste great. I am growing over a 100 per generation to make good selections for the next generation, and will have it at F8 this next season.
I will send out some plant B (a selection in F3 also) next season, they are called Mat-Su Super B, they yield a lot of very tasty tomatoes

Enjoy, many will really like this strain.
Mark in the frozen north[/QUOTE]

Mark , got my F5 seeds from Cole Robbie. Thanks Cole.:lol: . What's approximate DTM on early ones? Plan on contributing seeds this year if all goes well.wanna make sure I don't save late ripeners.:lol:. Thanks again.jimbo.

The batch I saved seed from out of the F4's for plant (A) were 102-108 days from seed sprout, 8-10 out of about 40 were very early. The F5's from that batch had about 50 percent that were very early, and were in the same time frame. We can probably guess that F6's will have a few more that are very early, etc, etc.
Tailoring a line is hard work, we grow many examples so we get a good selection for the next generation. Mat-Su is mean't to be an early line that taste great. People can do what they want with them, of course, but using later maturing selections negates why it was started in the first place. With that said, grow a few, you will find what you want.

[QUOTE=charline;602782]I do not like red tomatoes. Usually they have not much flavour or they are sour. But with you telling how good mat su express is I am tempted to try.
How is the flavor? Sweet, acid, balanced...???
Did someone send some to Tormato for the swap? Or how could I get some coming to France? ;)[/QUOTE]

I made up 29 packs (5 seeds each) of M-SE, and noted that you're expecting it.;)

Charline, you asked about flavor. A few are sorta sweetish at first when you taste them, with a tomato taste that follows. The bulk of them have a very complex tomato taste, that on the strong side. I sell these at the markets, and they don't last long. In the first couple generations you kinda sense a BB taste, or a BW taste. I chose an F2 that was amazing, I based the whole line off of this one selection, then diverged it from there. I have only found a few that were just okay, both original parents taste good, so maybe it's sorta hard to find a ho-hum selection anyway. LOL
Good luck, thanks to Cole and Tormato for helping spread the Mat-Su around. BTW, Mat-Su stands for the Matanuska and Sustina Valleys, I kinda live between the two.

I just ate my first Mat-Su Express tomato
 

I'm growing quite a few plants; 4 plants in Root Pouches, 4 in EarthBoxes.

This tomato was grown in an EB with a SkyReacher Partner. This plant was not among the first planted out but was the first to produce a ripe tomato. So it is the earliest.

The taste was yummy; The tomato had thin skin, and intense flavor. The picture doesn't do justice to the deep color.

Next time I will get pictures with the good camera.