Ate My First Ramapo Today

[mdvpc]

I have had seed for several years, tried growing Ramapo F1 in El Paso, never got a fruit. My first year growing here in San Antonio. Plant is very vigorous, lots of fruit. First fruit was 10.6 ounces. Easily the best hybrid tomato I have ever eaten. Anyone else growing the F1?

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by mdvpc

I have had seed for several years, tried growing Ramapo F1 in El Paso, never got a fruit. My first year growing here in San Antonio. Plant is very vigorous, lots of fruit. First fruit was 10.6 ounces. Easily the best hybrid tomato I have ever eaten. Anyone else growing the F1?

Not growing the F1 now, but certainly have in the past since the F1 went out of production for awhile and I got a hold of some F1 seeds since several in NJ, knowing it was going out of production had sandbagged some seeds of the F1 and sent them to me.

Knowing the parents of the F1 it didn't surprise me that it looked pretty stable early on and I was growing the F1 for comparison each time I made a selection(s).

I'm linking to the OP version below and you'll note that I sent seeds to Ed Ryan and he was a commercial farmer in NJ who knew Ramapo F1 very well and said the OP was just as good as the F1.

http://tatianastomatobase.com/wiki/Ramapo

HEre's the F1 and you can see what the two parents are but I got that info from someone at Rutgers.

http://tatianastomatobase.com/wiki/Ramapo_F1

Yes, I really like Ramapo, F1 or now OP. but there are other of the earliest hybrids akin to Ramapo F1 that I also think are great and those are the Harris bred Jet Star F1 and Supersonic F1, and of course two other F1's that were also available early on are Big Boy F1 and Better Boy F1, but I like the other ones I mentioned much better than the latter two.

I had tried to dehybridize Big Boy F1 b'c I was trying to get out the one parent, Teddy Jones, a large pink heirloom from the midwest, and guiding me was Dr. Oved Shifriss who bred Big Boy F1. But for several reasons I didn't continue with that dehybridization.

And yes, Oved had told me what the other parent was and asked me to never tell anyone, and I haven't, even now after Oved passed away quite a few years ago.

There are many threads here describing how I knew about Teddy Jones in the first place, contacted Dr. Shifriss about it, etc.,

Carolyn