Tomato Growing Thread 2022

I don't know what would happen if you grow different varieties of tomatoes close together & then sow some of the seed from the plants the following year. It's something I've never done. Every year I sow fresh(ish) seeds because on occasions I have some seed left from the previous year which I sow. Like this year, I have LOTS of seed of GD left over which I will sow next year. I shan't buy any seeds but perhaps my son will grow a different variety & give me a few plants like I gave him a couple this year.

Tomatoes can self fertilize & in fact don't really need bees at all to do the pollinating. I often tap the flowers on my toms lightly every time I go out on to the balcony while they are growing. I've have pretty good results most years. As bees are becoming scarcer & there are less & less of them being self fertile is a boon for tomatoes! Just that you have to remember to do it frequently if you want a good crop of toms!

 

You would get a very variable set of plants and crops of tomatoes. Tall, short, large, small etc.
Although tomatoes can self pollinate it is not the most efficient way to get good crops. When bees land on tomato flowers the vibration from their buzz dislodges pollen and improves fruit set ("buzz pollination"), hence the advice to tap the stems or strings when you go past.
Commercially large numbers of bees are bought and nests placed in the glasshouses. Bumble bees beat honey bees at this game.
Pollination is also dependent on temperature and humidity, low humidity and the pollen doesn't stick well enough, to warm and humid and it sticks to anthers too well and isn't dislodged by the bee, or grower.
Some years ago I did see battery powered vibrators that could be used instead of bees, I think they turned out to be less effective and too labour intensive.

 

Has anyone grown variety "alfresco", a compact bush type? I got a free pack from Mr fothergills with a recent seed order

 

I have never seen a bee on a tomato flower, I'm not saying other insects dont pollenate them and I have heard commercial growers use bees in greenhouses but I can honestly say I have never seen a bee of any description going around the flowers on my tomatoes.

Another thing I dont understand is how open pollenated plants remain, or are supposed to remain true to type.
Surely open pollenated means all the seed produced could be possible hybrids, unknown hybrids perhaps, but natural hybrids.

F1 surely means a particular cross of two known parents.

 

The breeder or person in charge of the stock, has to go through and rigourously remove any plants that don't conform to the specification and only save seed from those that do conform.
Also growing in relative isolation so that accidental crossing with other varieites can be avoided as much as possible.
Sometimes in plants from the same seed packet you will get one that is noticeably different, this is one of the hybrids that if you wanted to save the seed you would remove before flowering, I've noticed it in brassicas such as sprouting broccoli where you might get one plant that looks more like a kale.

Yes and to maintain consistency of the F1 strain you have to rigourously maintain both parent varieties, also both parents are self pollinated for a number of generations to make sure that all the plants are as uniform as possible and then the parents are crossed often hand pollinated.

 

@pete, I suppose that if you grow several of the same variety together in a relatively small place then they would cross pollinate each other, with insect help of course, but also through self pollination.

I mentioned once before that I've never grown tomatoes from my own seed, I've always bought new seeds each year.

The only time I ever sowed saved seeds were one year near Christmas I think when the supermarket we get our online shopping from had run out of the ones we had ordered & had substituted them for others. We liked them very much & so I saved lots of seed from them to try for myself. Well I got the seeds through the winter with no problems then sowed them in the greenhouse on the allotment I was sharing with a friend at that time the following year. They germinated embarrassingly well! I had 100s of seedlings come up!!! They were also extremely vigorous & the little plants grew very quickly indeed! I planted them out in a bed on my own half allotment & I was very surprised how quickly they fruited & how many tomatoes grew on each l-o-n-g truss! Just as it was coming up to harvesting time they got blight! I soon discovered they had absolutely no resistance whatsoever to it & the whole bed of tomatoes keeled over & was dead in about a week!

 

Here are a few photos of the tomatoes I was talking about above. I looked for photos I'm sure I must have taken when they were germinating in the greenhouse on the allotment but can't find any!
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In this first one you can see just how many tomatoes grew on each truss!
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Here are a couple of pictures of the same tomatoes but with blight!
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A week later they were all a stinking mush!
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Must admit I've grown from supermarket fruit, both toms and sweet peppers, they have usually done well enough.
@Balc they were good tomatoes, nobody said they were blight resistant, I doubt many supermarket ones are, they are probably very similar to the original variety and were not bred for outdoor growing.

 

Flower structure has a a lot to do with it. Here's what the Real Seeds website says:

"Most modern varieties of tomato are self pollinating, and will not cross. The anthers on tomato flowers (which make the pollen) are fused together to make a tight cone that insects cannot enter. Usually the stigma (the receptive surface for receiving pollen) is very short, and so is located deep inside this cone of anthers. No insects can get to it and the only pollen that can fertilise it comes from the surrounding cone of anthers.

In a few varieties however, the stigma is much longer, sticking out beyond the cone of anthers. In this case, insects can get to it, and there is the chance of cross-pollination. Varieties with longer stigmas include potato leaved tomatoes and currant tomatoes. To avoid crossing only grow one variety with exposed stigmas. The double flowers which are sometimes formed first by many beefsteak tomatoes also often have exposed stigmas, but later single flowers will be normal. "

 

I think Craig LeHoullier said in his book that if you save seeds from a tomato they have a 98% chance of being true to the parent plant. And you can improve those odds by picking early fruit for seed saving (less active polinators) and excluding seeds from fruits that were formed from megablooms. And obviously netting against insects to guarantee no cross pollination.

Even then you will get occasional plants from those seeds that are different due to mutation

 

Some very interesting posts, thanks a lot! I've been wondering about plants where seeds are KEPT as my biological education says HYBRIDS to me. Again separating breeding plants was also important (I can remember crossing red and white radish to teach about basic hybrid/crosses. Lots of cutting off stamens and stigmas and bagging up ovaries. Open pollinating always produced indeterminate plants when seeds were grown! Must be said that I naively thought the seeds I was buying had had the QUALITY CONTROL applied!!
The other feature that must be included in any discussion about Tomatoes is TASTE. Its a pity that its the most opinionated thing to consider! What cannot be disregarded is disease as has been illustrated above and the wonderful crop decimated by blight!!! With climate changing so rapidly, season on season, the PROBABILITY of blight conditions becoming the NORM points to resistance becoming the most important criterion. Taste cannot be MY PERSONAL criterion unfortunately which is ludicrous!!

 

@JWK You got a good assortment there!

 

Nice tomatoes for any month never mind December, well done mine were finished last month