Supermarket Tomatoes II

[Garf]

I assume that tomatoes grown in a home garden and vine ripened will be better than one processed commercially. The first batch was pretty good. I'm also looking for disease resistance.

[xtgold]

It may be a dumb question, but if the tomatoes weren't good are you hoping the parents were better?

since they were genetically engineered,I was hoping to grow generations to see the differences.
I was hoping for better disease resistance anyway.

[xtgold]

I assume that tomatoes grown in a home garden and vine ripened will be better than one processed commercially. The first batch was pretty good. I'm also looking for disease resistance.

burger king tomatoes are just as yucky as the ones you have on the burger.
I am amazed they survive the microwave and still grow.
The seeds were free,it was from a buy one get one free burger deal.
McD tomatoes are also yucky.Growing those in the garden makes no difference.And yes they are full size,even tho the parent was hybrid.

[ElizabethB]

I admire your adventurous nature in planting seeds from supermarket tomatoes. I hope you are keeping your expectations low.

First issue is that supermarket tomatoes are Hybrids. Any plants or fruit that you get will not be true to the parent plant.

second issue - even when growing in containers you need to consider spacing requirements. Indeterminate tomatoes grown vertically with the suckers removed will do fine in a 12" pot. Determinate tomatoes, even caged, need a spacing of 36". Since you have no way of knowing if your seeds will produce determinate or indeterminate plants you need to treat them as if they are determinate. One plant in a LARGE pot. 18 gallons is a great sized pot but crowding 3 plants in one pot will restrict the growth, use up nutrients and encourage pest and disease.

Good luck with your experiment. I am curious to see how your plants and fruit turn out.

[Garf]

As the pic indicates, I only put 2 in the 18 gallon tub. I put one each in 2 different 6 gallon pots. We'll see how big these get. The seedlings seem healthy enough.

[Garf]

These are the last 4 I am keeping as backups.

[Gardener_Wes]

Dumb question.
How are you looking for disease resistance? I'm familiar with gardening and have been doing it for a good while, but always wondered how you find such traits in plants.

Also, for Store bought tomatoes re-grown from seed they're not looking all that bad. My Purple Charokee(bought seeds from a shop) are about the same size as the last picture you posted.

[Garf]

When you buy seeds, the packets are marked with their resistances (VFFNT). I figure commercial tomato growers look for disease resistance to avoid losses.

[xtgold]

Dumb question.
How are you looking for disease resistance? I'm familiar with gardening and have been doing it for a good while, but always wondered how you find such traits in plants.

Also, for Store bought tomatoes re-grown from seed they're not looking all that bad. My Purple Charokee(bought seeds from a shop) are about the same size as the last picture you posted.

My rule of thumb is if the plants are still alive when the frost hits them they are disease resistant.
The only one that passed the test for me was a wild matt's wild cherry.I had 25 varieties in the garden this year and most were dead by september.You can't blame the earth because some were in large containers with primo potting soil and they still got diseased.I have a cutting from a matt's and saved seeds so I may try grafting experiments when they are big enough.

[Gardener_Wes]

When you buy seeds, the packets are marked with their resistances (VFFNT). I figure commercial tomato growers look for disease resistance to avoid losses.

Well junk. I feel stupid. I don't really focus to much on packet info. I check for how deep, how much spacing, zoning and then I just start them from seed.

[Garf]

Read this:
https://www.tomatodirt.com/disease-resistance-codes.html

[Garf]

They are getting bigger.

[Voices30]

Looking great. I grew 2 plants from the supermarket last year they were campari. I had a couple of bushes, just to see what happened and they came out great. Even though the seeds came from store bought tomatoes.

One thing to note, is that some commercial growers use Ethylene to ripen the crops so this means a couple of things. First of all the fruit stinks because it's not mature yet, and wasn't ready to ripen, it also means that seeds inside the tomato may not be fully developed and can have problems germinating.

[Garf]

I got 8 starts out of 8 seeds. Guess I didn't have that problem.

[Garf]

These are looking like small trees rather than vines.

supermarket7a.jpg (44.55 KiB) Viewed 2471 times

Latest pic of the 18 gallon tub.

supermarket7b1.jpg (50.91 KiB) Viewed 2471 times

[applestar]

Interesting -- are they all growing like this? I wonder if they had some dwarf genes in their make-up (I believe dwarf trait is recessive.

FYI:
Subject: Learning • Practicing to Cross Breed Tomato Varieties

As for the genetics and basic concept of what kind of progeny these may produce, this is always a good guide: https://kdcomm.net/~tomato/gene/genes.html

...you may have seen it before.

[Garf]

We'll see what they end up like. At first, all 8 seem identical.

[Garf]

Latest pic of batch 2 tub 1.

[feldon30]

I admire your adventurous nature in planting seeds from supermarket tomatoes. I hope you are keeping your expectations low.

My feeling as well.

There are some 12,000 tomato varieties, including thousands of heirlooms with known parentage and documented flavor. Even if I had 5,000 square feet of garden space, I'm not sure I could spare a spot for a seed from a tasteless red baseball from Walmart.

Hopefully your results prove me wrong and you get something tasty and productive!!

[Garf]

There a lot of blooms in Tub #1 plus one baby.

[Voices30]

I live in Florida and I am jealous. I live much farther north than you, and I can say with the utmost certainty that there will be no tomatoes blooming in my yard anytime soon! HAHA

[rainbowgardener]

yeah and the rest of us have nothing but snow and ice in our gardens!

[Garf]

Once every few years we do get a hard frost in Miami. The last hard freeze was in 1972. More pics to follow soon.

[Garf]

More babies, 2 medium size fruit, a ton of blossoms. I may need to thin the foliage.

[Garf]

Here are 2 plants from batch 2 I put into 6 gallon pots. They are slightly lagging the twins despite being started at the same time.

[Garf]

The first 2 tomatoes from the 18 gallon tub have a bad case of blossom end rot. I just examined the whole lot today. They are the only bad ones. Very disheartening.

[Garf]

The last survivor from batch 2 is coming back after a severe trim to eliminate disease.