Tomato Growing Thread 2023

-2! save those seeds!! perhaps epigenetic changes will occur for frosty tolerance.

 

Thanks very much so far for 'must grow' varieties! Hope to have more before I order!!

Regarding breeding-in frost proofing! BEWARE, In my opinion anyway!! The species, however, keeps us AT-IT enough as it is!! Anyway as most frost occurs when light is poor it might not be important!!

 

I haven't been out on the balcony for a few days but as we haven't had any more frost I suppose the 'Gardeners Delight' cutting is still alive. If I can get out on the balcony tomorrow I will have a look.

 

Not sure it's quite that simple.

 

Down here I have had tomatoes into January on Sungold. The vines were leafless at this point and long, would come back from a run and go pick a couple of ice cold ripe tomatoes. Don't do it at the moment as I have more plants needing winter protection, so all tomatoes are turfed out in October.
The fruit in January had little flavour, there was definite fungal infections on the vine.
Main problems I can see with frost resistant tomatoes would be lack of light and the damp atmosphere encouraging fungal problems.
Commercial growers would use heat and light plus air circulation if they were to grow in the UK winter, energy prices would deter most at the moment.
If you wanted you could try cutting back to a 1 ft stump allow the compost to pretty much dry out and then either keep cool, frost free, dry and dark; or keep cool and dryish on a cold indoor windowsill. The idea being to keep the stump alive, but dormant. Any growth would be weak and stressed so prone to disease and insect attack.

 

One of my Fat Frog self sown plantlets, thriving by a sunny window.

 

Impressive on the Jan toms. Main advantage I see for cold and frost tolerance is ability to start them outside earlier rather than late. Due to frost and cold we miss a lot of the years early light which is quite substantial from march onward. Here is a graph I made for central england latitude. Its further tilted to spring due to it being less cloudy than autumn here.

 

Some tomatoes have cold tolerance, in that they will continue to grow and can set fruit at 5c. There's quite a few good threads on the tomatoville forum about it. I don't think you'll ever get any that are frost resistant. I got a few from tomato eden before they stopped selling that were supposed to be cold tolerant(i think....or maybe just short season ones), I'm not sure if I notice much difference between them and the others I've grown to be honest. They are relatively early though

 

The cold growth genes are the most important bit imo since spring frost can be protected against: an unheated glasshouse would help for example.

A certain Saint has gifted me Latah and Bloody Butcher IIRC which are famous superearlies, ive heard cold growth is very very controversial though. Could even be epigenetic which would explain variability amongst growers. A user on OSPB made a fairly convicing argument that epigenetics really does cause variability, but thag was in truly diverse gene pools.

Conditions matter too: My pots all froze 2 inches down last week while the ground was still 3 C at the top. For many dormant plants thats life or death. Tall grass helps with that too enormously.

Ive been following on tomatoville a bit and mostly on open source breeding. From what ive seen only the wild stuff Joseph lofthouse popularised has any real frost hardiness (check the cold hardy cactus thread for his proof), but our may frosts usually gets sub 0 for a few hours at night only, thats a different story. Even the cold genes though seemed to be restricted to wild crosses. If you have any links id be greatly appreciative.

 

Apologies for the mix of links, nowhere has them all together. You could try emailing tomato eden for cold tolerant varieties, while they have stopped selling they have their email still up on their site. Im assuming these are more short season ones than actually cold tolerant, i put them in the greenhouse early may but i dont think ive ever subjected them to really low temperatures. I've grown both sevruga and godorst sibiri for the last two years and will grow them again, they are very early for their size and have excellent flavour. Grown Banan krasnyi just this year once and will also grow it again next year, it wasn't early but was very prolific and tasty


These are the ones i got from them, the only one i wasnt impressed with was kardynal. The info in the banan krasnyi link is not totally correct, i found it to be the most vigourous plant i grew, moreso than even sungold and it was indeterminate

tomate Banan Krasnyi - Banane Rouge - Банан красный
https://land.decorexpro.com/en/pomidory/tomat-sevruga.html
Tomato Gordost Sibiri
Kardynal Tomato Seeds For Sale At Renaissance Farms

There's also sub arctic plenty which I'm sure is a cold tolerant one?


also solanum habrochaites, the hairy tomato. I guess it's similar to hairy chilli plants, they do much better in the cold than others. Is this the wild type you are referring too? I've never grown any of these

 

@infradig

yes! i thought about mini glass frames you can pick up 1m high. im not a diy genius though. perhaps as you say a blankie castle would work.

Thanks greatly. Substituting doomscrolling for browsing seed catalogs may prove positive for my mental health

S. Habrochiates is one of the wild species, often gone into for disease resistance and so on. J. Lofthouses "Polyamorous" tomato project has ancestors in Habro and a few other wild "tomato" species like Pimpinellifolium (domestic toms most recent ancestor, seen i think in "current" tomato types).

There are also further ones like "s. peruvianum" but these are harder to cross with. there are a few more distant crosses like with goji berries but that stuff is for laboratories and genetic engineering

Near everything I say has been scrounged from these guys research I am just a weevil not an OG source of information (yet!!!)

 

A kind person has given me seeds of Mango Lassi. I have been unable to find out anything about it on the internet. Does any tomato guru at GC have any knowledge? If so, feel free to be fulsome.

Looking forward to any replies.

Fred Clarke