A case for saving my own seeds

[Jbest]

I planted sixty tomato seeds this year. Today when checking there condition, there was one and only one out of sixty that had potato shaped leaves. The tomato seeds were from the big “Bâ€

[TZ -OH6]

Getting stray seeds in commercial packs is not uncommon, even in those packaged by hand in the US. What leads you to believe that the PL plant is Brandywine? (the true/original German Johnson is RL by the way) it could be just about anything that the seed company offers, or anything that the wholesaler seed farm grows.

[applestar]

I don't know if this means anything, but I liked the flavor of a package organic grape tomatoes I bought this spring labeled Sugar Plum. Thinking that a commercial operation probably grows them in a large block of open-polinated, mono-cultured single cultivar, I squeezed out the seeds from a couple of spoiled/soft ones in the package and planted them. Selection was completely random ("good looking") but they ALL came from the 2 or 3 tomatoes. Out of approximately 12 seeds, one of them has potato leaves.

[Jbest]

This may be more common than I thought. I think that I will start saving my seeds anyway just because of the price of seeds today.

John

[atascosa_tx]

I ordered some seeds from Sandhill...and I my kelloggs breakfast plant seeds must have been mixed up..all have RL except one has PL..going to be interesting what it comes out to be...I aint going to dish Sandhill...they are a goodern.

[applestar]

Alright, jbest. You got me thinking.
Right now I have 3 areas where I might plant tomatoes -- Main Veg Garden on SW side of the house, New Kitchen Garden on SE side of the house, and last year's Sunflower House on the NE side. It's only a suburban property with a small yard and the 2 story house is the only buffer I can provide. I have 5 varieties started from seed packets, 1 aforementioned grape tomatoes, and 4 mystery volunteers.

I've already planted "The Fool" -- a volunteer -- in yet another bed that is at the South corner of the house. It's within a "stone's throw" -- I mean literally I can THROW a stone -- from the Main Veg Garden and the New Kitchen Garden, but I guess I have to designate that area as the Volunteer area and plant the other 3 there.

Let's say from the outset that I'd keep the indeterminates and the determinates separate... or are they LESS likely to cross pollinate each other? I guess I can separate the known larger fruited ones and the smaller fruited ones: Like Pricipe Borghesis would be planted with the Sugar Plums -- problem here is that Sugar Plum has a looong maturation date and I wouldn't want that crossing into PB, but, on the other hand, maybe that would mean the determinate PB would be done even before SP starts flowering.... Oh, wait, SP is indeterminate.... Wow, this is complicated!

Any other thoughts? You know I have to COMPLETELY redo the tomato planting plan....

[Jbest]

I have been buying all my seeds so I can't answer your question. I will only plant one Early Girl and two Big Beef tomatoes. All the other tomato plants are for other people. As soon as the BB starts to produce, I will turn the EG into compost and not save any toms from the BB until late in the season to avoid any cross pollination with the EGs.

John

[TZ -OH6]

Bees have no problem hitting every tomato plant in an average sized yard, and if you have the tiny sweat bees around they will focus on the tomatoes because they are adapted to stripping pollen from that type of flower. This is good if you want high fruit set, but bad if you want uncrossed seed. In my case I have lower percentage of cross pollination on the first fruits of the season, which is probably the norm, but others have reported the opposite (which doesn't makes sense because the bee population increases as the season progresses.) Bagging blossoms is very easy to do and you can be certain of true seed. You can make bags out of netting material or buy packs of a dozen 4'x6' drawstring sachet bags in the wedding/party aisle at Walmart for about $4. The bags just need to be on until you see fruit start to develop and then you can use the bag on another plant.

Days to maturity (early vs late season) has more to do with fruit maturation rate, and not when flowers are open. All varieties will have flowers opening during the first half of the season so trying to isolate varieties that way won't work very well.

[applestar]

Hi TZ. I hoped you'd join us in this thread. I saw your post in the "making own variety" thread and was going to post some questions there, but here you are!

Correlating what you said there and your post here, I guess I'll be hitting the local party isle in the near future!