lj in ny wrote:Give your Brandywine plant a little shake when you're in the garden it may set more fruit (I shake all my plants to aid pollination). I've grown BW, Stupice and Kellogg's Breakfast before and like them all. I'm growing PP for the first time. I'd plant 2 BW -the plants aren't terribly productive but the tomatoes are really tasty. Stupice is early and prolific.
I asked Dr Carolyn and she said about 5% on average cross if you don't bag. I bag the blossoms for seed I'm going to save, it's not really hard to do and I prefer to make sure if I'm trading I don't send out any surprises. I have about 40 varieties of heirlooms going this year. Not exactly sure where I'm going to put them all.
PS- I second the Black Krim suggestion; Heaven on a plate!
Your comments about shaking the plants are right. I thought someone was crazy many years ago when she told me to just whup my maters with a broom if I want them to make lots of maters. I didn't whup them, but I did shake them vigorously with good results.
I love the 1 lb. mug. The color variations you achieved are great. My wife and I have a good collection of glazed pottery a friend produced over the years. Most of hers had a Native American motif. We love it.
wolfie wrote:Can someone explain the process of saving the first thing you were talking about to get good seed? I am totally confused. thanks!
wolfie,
I'm sorry, I may have confused you by referencing a glazed pottery mug "tj in ny" made and displayed on her blog. My thoughts tend to run in a lot of directions at the same time.
In my garden tests have shown that the first flowers of the season have a much lower cross pollination rate than mid season flowers (>5% vs. 20%). Unrelated to this, I also have a higher success rate (fruits developing within the bag) when I bag the early season flowers. But you have to bag the flower truss before the flowers open so I call it a bud truss. I put the bag on as soon as the little curled up bud truss is large enough to fit the bag over it, and leave it on as long as there are still open flowers in the bag or until fruit get so large in the bag that it has to come off.
Each garden's cross pollination rate is different. Carolyn Male says that she has higher cross pollination early in the season (opposite of me). There could be many factors involved in this such as the ratio of tomato flowers to wild flowers in the areas that the bees are visiting, and amount of wind (which promotes self pollination by shaking pollen loose befor the bees can get to the flowers). Although I have plenty of bees around even before it is warm enough to plant the tomatoes, I also have alot of wild flowers and few tomato flowers early in the season. By mid season the main flowers in the area are my tomatoes and peppers.
Tiny halactid sweat bees and larger bumble bees bite onto the anther cone and then vibrate their flight muscles to shake pollen loose (you can see the bite bruising on old flowers), some pollen falls onto the flower's stigma, but most falls onto the bee. The bee then scrapes it off of its body into pollen sacks on its legs. The structure of a tomato's flower has evolved to be (mostly self) pollinated in this way. Taking a stick and whacking the cage or stake sets up a vibration that does the same thing to the flower. Commercial greenhouses used to use special tomato buzzers, like electric toothbrushes, to help out before they started to bring bumble bees in to do the job better. The flowers actually release pollen starting in mid morning and ending mid afternoon, so if you are going to whack your plants keep that in mind.
This is from a write up that Carolyn Male likes to cite, especially in relation to the 5% cross rate, but note the range of values.
"Close interplanting of two tomato varieties may typically produce 2-5% NCP; however, factors such as long style length, frequent visitation of tomato flowers by bees and suitable environmental conditions may produce much higher NCP values. Various studies have reported values of 12, 15, 26, and 47% NCP values in interplanted tomatoes. The wide range of results reflects the influence of different methods and variables used in these studies; however, it is clear that NCP values can be high under the right conditions."
I too love Black Krim, although it took a little getting used to because I had never had a black tomato before, so it wasn't until my second year growing it that I fell in love with it. In addition to the earthy flavor it also has fairly large seeds and quite a bit of gel (which holds alot of the flavor) so it is quite different than say a pink beefsteak. It is usually the first to ripen in my garden, even before early varieties for some reason. I don't have much luck getting early varieties to ripen early.
Not being overly fond of radishes and lettuce, I ordered mixes of each.
Growing them at home, I picked them at the moment of readiness.
Some were okay, some were pretty good. And then I fell in love a radish, and a lettuce. I looked for more and every one like that was heavenly. I then tried to find a way to know them before I harvested them and get seed. That didn't work for me. And so, I bought more mix this year, I hope I find the treasures in those mixes.
And I bought alot of individual radishes and lettuces... looking for that treasure. Maybe this will be the year and I will find my treasures. Maybe not.
Sure, I tried alot of different radishes and lettuces, but I didn't know what they were. So it was not helpful in growing that one again. This year, before I bite, I am going to try to identify the radish or lettuce! Not a likely occurence, but maybe?
Thanks TZ! I remember you writing about bagging the flowers and collecting seeds from the first fruit. Your explanation and description makes it all very easy to understand.
This has been a good refresher, and I'm definitely going to need to make use of this technique this year since I'm growing a whole lot more tomatoes than I've ever grown before, and almost all of them are heirlooms!
Its confusing because when most people think about wind and pollination they think that the pollen is being blown from one place to the other (like with pine trees and rag weed), but in this case the wind is simply jiggling the flower, not carrying the pollen any where.
The tomato flower is shaped in such a way that loose pollen falls past/around/ onto the stigma because the pollen is released from the INSIDE of the anther cone. Some pollen will fall out on its own but any movement increases the amount let loose (like a salt shaker) so a little bit of wind jiggling the plant around will release pollen even if the flower is inside a bag.
