Nativegardener
Newly Registered
Posts: 3
Joined: Wed Jul 11, 2018 2:14 pm
Location: South Florida : Oakland Park 33311

Heirloom tomato seeds for trade/swap

Been container gardening here in south Florida for 40 years now. Have over 300 varieties of heirloom tomato seeds to swap or trade. I only grow indeterminate varieties due to our long growing season. The "black" varieties do especially well in our humid winters. I have red, pink, black varieties. Please email me if you are looking for a specific tomato. I might have it. Just send me SASE.

HoneyBerry
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Posts: 1216
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 1:10 pm
Location: Zone 8A Western Washington State

I would love to have some. But I don't have any seeds to share in return. I grew 3 varieties of heirloom tomatoes this year: Brandywine, Sungold (cherry) and Rose de B (cherry). I bought the plant starts from an organic farm stand at the farmers market. They are doing fantastic.
I would love to start some of my own for next year. I want to try some new varieties. Black tomatoes look interesting to me. Whatever you recommend would be fine. I am in Western Washington.

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Gary350
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Posts: 7396
Joined: Mon Mar 23, 2009 1:59 pm
Location: TN. 50 years of gardening experience.

Maybe I should grow heirloom tomatoes again it has been 20 years since I grew them. My tomatoes plants start dieing late July in the hot 98 degree humid TN weather. The only tomato seeds I save are 1" cherry tomatoes, large producer, very good flavor.

imafan26
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Posts: 13961
Joined: Tue Jan 01, 2013 8:32 am
Location: Hawaii, zone 12a 587 ft elev.

I would love to trade seeds but I cannot because of agricultural restrictions which make it very hard to get any uncertified plant material legally in and out of the state. One of the biggest issues with living on an isolated archipelago has got to be the distances everything must travel to get here. It is one of the biggest reasons why it is so expensive to live here. 90% of all food must be imported as well as most of the commercial goods like cars, clothes, building materials, fuel, and household goods. Then add a regressive tax.

Hawaii has the distinction of having the highest rate of species extinction. Most of it because the native species that came here on its own, often have a sole common ancestor and they survived by specialization. Habitat loss, competition and predation from non-native species, and introduced diseases have taken their toll.

Plant diseases, and introduced birds and insects are a big problem. In a warm climate, these thrive year round, if pests are imported accidentally, they may not have any predators to control them. Diseases do not die out since there is no winter kill.

In recent years, basil downy mildew, varoa mites, small hive beetles ( all showed up around 2011), tomato leaf curl virus (2009),coconut rhinoceros beetle (2013), little fire ant (1999) have been introduced mostly from inbound cargo ships and some from infested plants. None of these pests are going to go away and efforts are directed mainly to control the spread. People do not help since they illegally move plant material like palms from infested parts of the island to others by illegal dumping.

The first time I got tomato yellow leaf curl virus was in 2013. It appeared on a single plant I grew from seed and I did not know what it was at first. The other plants were not infested. I tried again the next year and the disease returned. I pulled all the plants and waited a couple of years to plant again. I planted a brandy boy tomato seedling this year that did not have symptoms in a pot this year and the top leaves started to show TYLCV curling and yellowing again. I pulled it out and started investigating whether it was soil borne, since I was reusing pots and potting soil from the same pot where the virus had grown before. The soil was different, it was used to grow cucumbers instead of tomatoes. I was thinking of tossing the pot and soil out as well. TYLCV is not normally transmitted by mechanical means. Seed transmission is not the usual way, but it has been proven possible in one study, and my problems started from a tomato grown from seed. TYLCV is mostly transmitted by silverleaf whiteflies which are ubiquitous here and other plants that may be asymptomatic hosts including peppers, beans, and weeds. There are few tomatoes that are resistant. Champion II, does not taste very good. Kewalo and Charger are other tomatoes that are resistant
.
Kewalo is o.k. but like most Hawaiian bred tomatoes the skin is tough. Resistant seeds are my only hope now of having a successful tomato crop. The whiteflies can transmit the virus to their offspring.

Florida was the introductory point for both basil downy mildew and TYLCV, and it spread partially through ag shipments from Florida sent around the country. It is important when saving seed from any plant to make sure the plant is healthy and to treat seeds properly to make sure they are safe. Some states will quarantine transport of any plant material to try to prevent the spread of diseases and pests. This is what is happening in Washington, trying to contain the spread of black leg in cabbages.
I urge you to be cautious when sharing seed and be careful especially if your area has diseases that may be of concern as you do not want to spread them to areas that do not have the problem now.

https://www.ctahr.hawaii.edu/oc/freepubs/pdf/PD-70.pdf
https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/seed_trans ... e_std_talk
https://howtosaveseeds.com/seedprep.php
https://ipm.ifas.ufl.edu/Agricultural_IP ... mgmt.shtml
https://ipm.ucanr.edu/PDF/PMG/TomBrochure04NoTriFold.pdf
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4705557/



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