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Old June 17, 2012   #16
bower
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Default appreciation!

Just wanted to note, ChrisK and Dice how much I appreciate you sharing your personal experience and technique. I'm sure that over time a person learns to judge which bud is ready to use as well as the emasculation and pollination techniques to maximize success...

The great videos did inspire me to go ahead and try, but every bit of insight helps.. eventually I will develop the technique (or give it up and cry in my beer!).

I'm now wondering how long it will be before I can tell if there will be fruit or not! At least, these clusters have gone ahead and opened new blooms, so if these go on and set fruit I'll know I've been left in the dust.
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Old June 19, 2012   #17
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That was a good video. I usually use the end of the tweezers or
scissors to open up the anther cone, but the plastic toothpick
is an innovation.

After a few crosses, both successful and unsuccessful, one gets
a visual feel for the buds. You can just look at one and see,
"too early, might be too late, likely just right for crossing."

Even in cultivars with big tree trunk pistils, relatively, they are still
easy to damage, and one needs steady hands to avoid breaking
them. In those big double and triple flowers that one sees, you can
often find 2 or more pistils fused together in the center of the flower.

Usually you will see the ovary start to swell within a week if the trimmed
bud has been successfully pollenated. It stays green when it does this,
and the stem of the flower truss connected to that bud will also start
to thicken, to support the weight of the eventual fruit.

If the end of the pistil turns brown with no swelling beneath it,
and the stem to it is not getting thicker, that bud was likely
not pollenated successfully.
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Old June 19, 2012   #18
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Happy to say, so far so good. One of the Fiaschettos is for sure setting a pointy little fruit, I couldn't get a close look at the second one because the fan is in the way at the mo. It's harder to tell with Stupice and Moravsky Div because they started out with a little green bump anyway, but the Stupices do look to be starting to swell... I'm least sure of the M Div but at least they are still green.

Re: multiple pistils, I noticed a double pistil on one of both Stu and MDiv. Since I wasn't expecting that, I was most fearful of accidental damage. I actually used my fingernails to remove the anther cones this time. And glasses! Definitely need those.
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Old June 21, 2012   #19
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You are on your way!
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Old July 18, 2012   #20
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how exciting for ya.
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Old July 18, 2012   #21
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Thanks Jan. Three out of six attempts were successful: two Fiaschetto and one Stupice, which are now at the partially grown green fruit stage. So I'm crossing my fingers that they continue to mature and ripen without any problems. The Moravsky Div crosses didn't score, unfortunately.

I was really glad I clipped the sepals as Dice mentioned, otherwise I could easily have lost track of the crossed fruit.

My plants are pretty much loaded with ripening fruit at this point, and every variety is dropping blossoms in the heat. Maybe after this lot have ripened I'll have a chance to try a few more crosses before the season ends.
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Old July 19, 2012   #22
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I hang a small tag made of card stock with the cross and date on each one using thread or a twist tie. Don't rely on your memory (and it makes it easier to find those clipped sepals)!

One or two you might be able to remember but when you get up to 20-30....
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Old July 19, 2012   #23
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Quote:
I was really glad I clipped the sepals as Dice mentioned, otherwise I could easily have lost track of the crossed fruit.
I used to use plastic bread bag clips to mark the source variety
of the pollen, but they were a little tight. I would sometimes get
stems of the ripening fruit swelling into them, and because they
were kind of stiff, there was danger of damaging the stem to
the freshly trimmed bud trying to hang them on there.

I got some of these tags from Earthstar when I was ordering
something else anyway:
http://www.earthstarproducts.com/Hyb...Tags_c_17.html

The hole is big enough not to cramp a mature flower cluster stem
on stocky tomato plants, and they are thin enough that they can be
easily opened up to slip around the stem of flower cluster. I mark
the variety name with a waterproof marker. (I save them at the
end of the season and reuse them, too. Just cross out the name
and write a new one under it or on the other side.)
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Old July 19, 2012   #24
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Nice gear, Dice, designed for the purpose!

I cut little tags out of cardboard and hung with red thread, but I was afraid they were too heavy to hang on a single immature flower, so I hung it on the stem of the cluster instead. Afterwards I had to rely on the sepal clipping to find the crossed fruit.
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Old July 19, 2012   #25
dice
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It would be easy to make those Earthstar tags out
of .040 Polystyrene, too. Any place that sells sheets
of plastic (or a sign maker) would have it. It is thin
enough to cut with scissors, a utility knife, or a paper
cutter, and flexible enough for the job. Drill a 1/2" hole
in one end of a stack of labels, cut an angled slot into
the hole with whatever, good to go.

One can find them everywhere after election season.
Election signs are either ".040 styrene" or "Corex"
(corrugated plastic, looks like plastic cardboard),
screen printed by the hundreds or thousands.
You can write on even the inked parts with
waterproof black industrial marker or grease
pencil. (Recycling them for labels delays use
of landfill space, so it is a public service.)
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Last edited by dice; August 10, 2012 at 03:48 AM. Reason: sp, long lines
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Old August 8, 2012   #26
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Default ripe and seed saved

Happily all three fruit made it, and ripened on the same day. I put the F1 seed to ferment yesterday, so soon I'll have em.
Attached Images
File Type: jpg StupiceXBCripe.JPG (42.8 KB, 23 views)
File Type: jpg FiaschettoXBCripe.jpg (260.2 KB, 21 views)
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Old August 8, 2012   #27
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Well done! It may become an addiction!!
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Old August 8, 2012   #28
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ChrisK View Post
Well done! It may become an addiction!!
No doubt! ChrisK, thinking ahead to the next generation, how many seeds should be enough to save for the F2 growout?
I know if I'm looking for just two recessive traits (black fruit, determinate) I can only hope to find one in sixteen, but how many more to find on that's black, determinate, good taste, etcetera...... What is a reasonable number? (not 50,000, please... addiction, you say...???? )
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Old August 8, 2012   #29
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Some of those are single gene traits so not too many. For any combination of three genes 1 in 64 F2 plants will be homozygous recessive for all three (you have to plant more than 64 though)...now good tasting, that is going to be a complex trait and potentially require larger numbers. I am sure there are others that can give better empirical numbers than I on this one!

I have 30 crosses (so far) this year. No idea what I'm going to do with them all! Might have to prioritize a bit.
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Old August 10, 2012   #30
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I once crossed Moravsky Div with Huge Black. I got six seeds
out of the crossed fruit. Looking at them in the fermenting
margarine container, I decided that there was not enough juice.
Rather than add water and sugar, I decided that, "Hey, I can just
use one of these zillion Csikös Bötermö fruits that I have, cut it up
in a strainer, and let the juice drain into the Moravsky Div x
Huge Black seeds."

As I was doing that, I started to think about something else, and
I forgot to use the strainer. Suddenly I looked down and noticed
that I had the seeds of both fruits together in the fermenting
container. Dang.

So I have these six seeds of an F1 cross mixed up with 30 or
more seeds of an OP indeterminate or semi-determinate,
both RL. I have so far not been willing to use up 30 or more
tomato spots in one year to find them. (2 Csikös Bötermö plants
is plenty for one year; they have mild, sweet flavor and produce
like a cherry tomato.)
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