Thanks for the pictures of the F2 of (Black Prince x Cherokee Purple) tomatoes. The way the anthers are curling away from the stigma is quite indicative of the larger fruit potential.
I had four plants left of this F-2 family. These are plants from a 2-6-08 sow date, transplanted once back around the first of March in two by three inch pots. The plants didn't have to be left in the pots so long but I had no place to go with them so I left them to semi-hibernate in a tough love sad situation. They didn't look so hot, being about 20 inches tall and blooming with some difficulty. This progeny was but one of hundreds of other lines suffering similar distress. Those who can, produce fruits in these small pots and I will harvest those with the understanding that earliness and smaller fruits usually predominate.
I selected a plant that I liked best of these four to go into a late field planting. I , too, look for flower types to predict better the prototype that I want. This is bottleneck genetic selection at its extreme, but for some reason, the serendipitous happenstance carries some merit. What I will be looking for is what I get rather than what I may wish. I rather like to select segregations from plants that suffer for 4 months in a cramped pot. The plants almost died a number of times, but I think the adversity of this time left in the pot too long will pay dividends in the future. The plants will bounce back nicely from past experience.
I put in 25 plants today of wide ranging segregating potential. I used a hand held drill with a 3 inch wide auger and dug holes about two feet deep in a sultan sandy clay loam. I backfilled with a mix of goodies, including all organic materials such as composted tree trimmings, chicken manure, greensand, alfalfa meal, blood meal, kelp meal, cottonseed meal, rock potash, mycorrhizals, humic shale, worm castings, peat moss, vermiculite, perlite, dolomite lime, plus stuff I can't remember. All of this was planted on wheat stubble mowed down prematurely, with no till. About 15 inches of the plant was buried. Drip line was placed along the 25 different pedigreed plants. Later, organic alfalfa hay will be positioned to protect the plants as they grow. A single bamboo pole will be shoved into the ground to tie up the main leader, and the rest of the plant will grow out over the hay.
Contingency crosses of the 25 plants planted today and the 25 planted two days ago will be planned sometime later this month.
Tom Wagner
|