Defective tomato and other seedling(s)

applestar · Fri Mar 22, 2013 8:58 pm

I have a tomato seedling that I have been puzzling over. It grew beautiful cotyledons, then a weird looking one sided "true leaf", then stopped. It was obviously taking in nutrients because it looks healthy and the mutant "true leaf" has been getting huge, but there is no growing point at all.

I finally sought some tomato growing expertise, and the replies I received concludes that it will sit there like that and never grow beyond this state.

One person waited two months, another let it "grow out" -- which it never did -- for the summer.

Here it is, in case you ever encounter one of these:

Advise I received was to sow new seeds and chuck this one.

Just as an experiment, I'm going to knick it with a sharp sterilized knife where the growing point *should be* at the top base of the mutant true leaf and see if anything will happen.

dustyrivergardens · Fri Mar 22, 2013 9:23 pm

Toss it. I grow a lot of paste tomatoes and I get about 1 out of a hundred that come out like that. They won't do anything but get a larger they will not produce tomatoes.

Cola82 · Sat Mar 23, 2013 1:03 pm

I have a basil with a mutant leaf.

It's got a little nodule where more leaves should be coming in, but it looks like they can't burst through or whatever. Easy come, easy go, I guess. Genes are funny.

applestar · Sun Mar 31, 2013 7:47 pm

I now have a Tasmanian Chocolate that is also starting to look like it has the same growth issues with waxy, thickened and over-large seed leaves and thickened hypocotyl:

Now, I hope this doesn't sound offensive in any way, but for some reason, looking at these seedlings among the others, a thought crossed my mind that they remind me of children with Down's Syndrome. I don't know why. (Wow I really want to rephrase that somehow, but I can't without figuring out what was behind that thought....

)

applestar · Sun Mar 31, 2013 7:50 pm

I tried surgical intervention on the first one (the little knick you can see with the white tray wall behind it).

I have absolutely no basis that this will do anything, but I was curiose to see if the healing scar tissue will re-organize into normal cells or if this plant lacks the capability -- tomato can grow root cells from stems... Can it grow upper growth cells?

I think I'm going to try different experiments (this knick is a very half-hearted casual attempt, but more drastic cuts and humid environment, etc. are other ideas I'm toying with.)

Right now, both of these seedlings look like they are bottled up with energy that is being pumped up from the roots.... I had another idea that maybe I could graft another seedling or a scion to these....

applestar · Sun Mar 31, 2013 7:56 pm

Now this is very strange...

...

I found a purple kohlrabi seedling with a defect reminiscent of the tomato seedlings I posted about above:

That's THREE instances. What are the chances? It's enough to get me started wondering (NOT panicking, just

)... All three seeds were mailed to me... Is the post office regularly X-raying the mail? There was that nuclear power plant disaster.... What else?

Do jump in and post if you are finding seedling defect among your starts this year.

sepeters · Mon Apr 01, 2013 1:47 pm

How strange! And you've never had this happen in previous years? I guess it's possible that the post office would x-ray seeds, you know just to make sure they weren't the seeds of illicit plants, or what not.

I've never had this happen, but this year I have had some weird experiences. All of the indigo apple seeds I had (from the giveaway) failed to produce any true leaves at all, and thus were culled.

Another strange thing with the purple beauty bells: They came up with nice thick stalks and never pushed the seed hull off. After 2 weeks I decided to gently cut away one of the seeds and see what was going on...and there weren't any cotyledons! Just a stem with the seed on the end and normally developing roots beneath! I left the other 4 for 2-3 more weeks and the stems got thicker and a little taller, but no cotyledons, and (not surprisingly) the roots didn't get bigger either. Weird stuff.

Cola82 · Mon Apr 01, 2013 4:38 pm

For what it's worth, my mutant basil seems to have sorted itself out. I may still have to cull it, because the stem is all twisted now and I can't imagine it supporting the plant when the leaves get bigger, but it's still interesting and I see no harm in waiting to see.

ReptileAddiction · Sun Apr 07, 2013 10:37 am

sepeters wrote:Another strange thing with the purple beauty bells: They came up with nice thick stalks and never pushed the seed hull off. After 2 weeks I decided to gently cut away one of the seeds and see what was going on...and there weren't any cotyledons! Just a stem with the seed on the end and normally developing roots beneath! I left the other 4 for 2-3 more weeks and the stems got thicker and a little taller, but no cotyledons, and (not surprisingly) the roots didn't get bigger either. Weird stuff.

I had a similar thing happen to my tomatos. It finally sprouted after about a month then the seed never came off. Eventually I did decide to remove it and it had very underdeveloped cotyledons that obviously werent growing. Thinking about it I think there was no growing point but I am not positive. All of the seeds from this batch packet took about a month to sprout and they are very small weak plants. I bought that packet in December and it too was mailed to me.

sepeters · Mon Apr 08, 2013 2:05 pm

How strange, ReptileAddiction! I think we both must have gotten a bad batch of seeds this time around. I've tried restarting the peppers three different times now with no success. Guess I should give up. I also had complete failure to germinate from my Nebraska Wedding tomatoes (which I was super excited about). I wonder if we ordered from the same company...
I don't think we're supposed to post about specific companies, though.

ReptileAddiction · Mon Apr 08, 2013 7:02 pm

I put the pot with the 'maters in it outside and forgot about it since I didnt think they would sprout but now there is one little 'mater seedling... two months later.

I don't see any reason we would not be able to post about specific companies? Are we Applestar?

applestar · Sun Jun 16, 2013 9:28 pm

Today, I up potted the last of the soil blocks and discovered another defective seedling.
So in addition to the first Victorian Dwarf tomato I reported here in the OP, the Tasmanian Chocolate tomato, and the Purple kohlrabi seedling, there were also one more tomato seedling: a Rosella Purple. There was also a jalapeÃ±o pepper seedling that exhibited the same defect.

-- total for this season's odd defect seedlings: 5 ...

Anyone else keep count?

Susan W · Mon Jun 17, 2013 3:37 pm

Hmmmmm. Could be odds of defective seeds hit all in one season. Did you get seeds from different sources/companies? Can this (source) be isolated. Could it be your new soil block system? Oh, so many variables.

On that note, just mailed some comfrey seeds to a friend in Nashville. If they get zapped, the thought of mutant comfrey is scary!