Tomato Watch

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Permalink Reply by John Walker on May 16, 2008 at 8:40am

This is only slightly off topic, but at this time may not require a separate forum.
What spacing between plants do you recommend for saving seed, to have a fair chance of maintaining the variety? I'm sure it is different from what they would recommend in a seed savers book.
I collected seed last year from tomato plants that were 5 ft from other varieties and I have potato and regular leaf varieties coming up from a regular leaf plant. (I don't think I mixed the seeds up.......)
pax
John

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Permalink Reply by Penelope on May 16, 2008 at 9:43am

Great question, John. I was wondering about that just yesterday since people tend to grow tomatoes, several varieties, all together in the same bed -- or that's my observation. I won't be saving seed this year, obviously, since I planted the dreaded hybrids :-)

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Permalink Reply by John Walker on May 16, 2008 at 9:53am

hybrids, shmybrids
at least you're growing something.
However..next year, with all this lovely information.. You can do it right without supporting the military-industrial complex.
Seed starting is not that hard if I can do it.
Also check out a post on KGI last year by Roger P about tomato cages.

Permalink Reply by Penelope on May 16, 2008 at 9:59am

I do start some of my own plants from seed, but this year just didn't get much of it done. 2007 took the punch out of me. But there's always next year, right?

Permalink Reply by Brook on May 16, 2008 at 12:33pm

Penelope, the biggest instance of the several-varieties syndrome appears with peppers.

Peppers are the sluts of the garden, and will cross if you look at them cockeyed. But people insist on growing several varieties together.

Serious estimates are that as much as 80% of home-grown pepper seed is crossed.

The sin of it is that with 5 different domesticated species, a gardener could still grow a variety without danger of crossing.

Permalink Reply by Brook on May 16, 2008 at 12:30pm

Actually, John, it probably does require its own thread.

Isolation distances vary by type of plant, and range from as little as 2 inches to as much as a mile.

With standard tomatoes, 5 feet is enough. Where you came a cropper was having PL types too close.

Potatoe leaf, current, and (maybe) double-blossomed beefsteaks have extruded styles, and are therefore very suseptible to crossing. All other tomato types have unextruded styles, which makes their pollen generally unavailable to pollinators.

According to the literature, at 5 feet crossing ranges from 0 to 5%. But there is some question about how that is figured.

If you exclude the three types mentioned, just think of the odds. You need a particularly persistent bee to work it's way deep into the flower. Then that bee has to do the same thing on a plant 5 feet away. Then you have to happen to choose that particular tomato to save seeds from.

Anyway, I isolate my PLs. But everything else is grown on 5 foot separation. I've never knowingly had a cross.

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Permalink Reply by Penelope on May 16, 2008 at 12:43pm

wow. garden sluts. geishas? ladies of the evening? sex workers? prostitutes? streetwalkers? mistresses? paramours? and I am sure there are more words and euphemisms -- are there more "green" terms we could apply to the poor peppers? -- in terms of spreading seed/pollen around, sounds more like these phallic shaped pappers are more like "studs" of the garden. (and i don't mean the kind that roll around on snow tires :-)

but as you were accusing John the other day of not being "right" or "a brick shy of a load" or "not playing with a full deck" -- there are tons of these. Fun. Sorry for the diversion.

Permalink Reply by Brook on May 16, 2008 at 12:59pm

>sounds more like these phallic shaped pappers are more like "studs" of the garden. <

Well, Penelope, there's always Peter Peppers to serve that role.

If you're not familiar with them, they're a rather hot chili that has an uncanny resemblence to the male sexual organ.

And, if you really want to bug the neighbors, you grow them side by side with Teton de Venus tomatos; which look exactly like their name. The grow in pairs, and actually have small, nipple-like protrusions.

Permalink Reply by Penelope on May 16, 2008 at 1:15pm

and the Wyoming Tetons are just up the crik from here.

sexual forms in nature repeat themselves in many ways. i've seen some plants that literally make me blush . . . even as old and jaded as I've become . . .

Permalink Reply by John Walker on May 16, 2008 at 1:54pm

Thanks,
by current do you mean varieties as max's wild cherry?
As to persistent bees, do we know how many other flower's stigmas a bee can pollinate from one collection of pollen.
(all in all, I realise its a numbers game)

Would you like to expound on Bill Best's comments about bees cross pollinating beans? Since I should be planting beans (when it stops raining).
pax
John

Permalink Reply by Penelope on May 16, 2008 at 2:13pm

It's interesting about climate. John and Brook are complaining about rain and not being able to get in the garden to plant, while here in the Rocky Mountains where we've had late snowstorms, it's now very dry and night temperatures are in the 40s, predicted for all week. And I took the risk and planted tender things keeping covers close by for crazy freeze warnings.

I am wondering who will have a ripe tomato first. (but Brook will my hybrids count???)

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Permalink Reply by Brook on May 16, 2008 at 3:48pm

John, one of the very few things Bill and I disagree on is the matter of beans crossing.

Beans are self-pollinators, and they drop their pollin the evening before the flowers open. So the odds are really slim against crossings.

In fact, it's because of this peculularity that there are no hybrid beans. Every bean seed you can buy, trade for, or collect, is open pollinated.

I grow my beans on trellises 4 feet apart. The only time I've ever knowingly had a cross is when I got lazy and allowed two varieities to grow into each other. The only crossing was among those vines that actually intertwined.

I can offer a guess why that happened, in terms of proximity and pollinator movement.

If you visit SMAC, and see how Bill grows his beans, then he should, if I'm right, have a greater incidence of crosses than normal. And the fact is, he does.

However, cross-pollination among legumes is a hotly debated topic. A very good summary can be found in Seed To Seed.

Meanwhile, if I recall correctly, the USDA isolation distance for beans is 25 feet.

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