[joseph]

Bower:

Thanks. Last year, out of a few hundred tomato plants I had one that tasted poisonous, one that tasted insipidly watery, and one that tasted like a hard bland grocery store tomato. They were culled.

I am tasting the wild tomato species. If allowed to ripen fully, they are typically sweet and aromatic. Fully ripe means two or three weeks after they fall off the plant. I suspect that my tomatoes will eventually follow the path that I took with muskmelons, they will end up very fruity and smelly. I like my fruit to taste like fruit!!! I like it to smell like perfume.

I am not impressed with the flavor of S. pimpinellifolium. It's pretty close to a grocery store tomato. It keeps passing the frost/cold tolerance tests, so I'll continue to grow it until I can get it crossed with something else, or I find other things that are more frost tolerant.

I'm tasting a fruit from every plant before saving seeds from it, even with the wild tomatoes. As I move closer to truly promiscuous tomatoes, and eventually to self incompatible tomatoes, the risk increases that a nasty tasting tomato will spoil a batch of seed. Thanks for bringing it up now... It's easier to avoid contamination than to clean it up later. There will be funky things coming out of the wild crosses. I have 5 isolated fields. I suppose that I aught to give some thought to protecting my current genetics while I play around with the wild stuff. I already do that with squash, corn, and peppers. Might as well add tomatoes to the list.

Bwah ha ha!!! Look at me, fussing over finding enough isolated fields to plant tomatoes! This promiscuously pollinating tomato project is starting to get real.