I have ambitious plans to make lots of hybrids this year. Imagine me making the cross between F-1
ANNANAS DE LA BOURDAISIERE x F-1 (Orange Purple Smudge x Skykomish)! And in just a week or so from now. Working from location to location starting soon and ending up in August...I will be a happy man if all goes well.
The two rows on the left are tomatoes that I will use to start making hybrids this year. I will likely start the hybrids next week. There will eventually be about 100 lines at this location that will be used in all sorts of crosses...two way, three way, four way, backcrosses and even more complicated. The plants are with a friend who grows tomato fruits for the Seattle markets. I am training an intern to help me make thousands of crosses this year. Each of these 100 varieties will end up with maybe five crosses or more per vine/variety.
Further down the pike will be about 142 other tomato varieties to be used in crosses. Here is a picture taken yesterday of seed sown 2-4-14. With nearly 500 plants I should be able to make lots of crosses soon after I get done with the first batch. I may store some pollen in gel caps and put in the frig for later pollinations.
A later batch of another 125 varieties are following these two batches and will be about three weeks behind the second group. Finding room for all of these has been a chore but it will be completed more or less on schedule.
I have yet another 200+ varieties in San Diego County to be involved in April's crossing work. Those plants will be both in the field transplants in less than two weeks along with greenhouse specimens. More plants will be in the field than in the greenhouse but the crosses will be timed so that I can harvest them at the appropriate times.
I have not even started the seeding for local Seattle outdoor plantings. As I get all of these tomatoes plants organized I will be making weekly crosses so that after the summer is done, I will have attempted maybe 5,000 crosses. The potato crossings will be much more limited but hopefully will number in the hundreds at least.
You would think a retired man of 68 with 61 years of breeding work behind him would know when to stop? I feel good and have the means to do this and building a living library of tomato and potato hybrids along the the ensuing F-2, etc., populations is as good a goal as anything else.
Tom Wagner