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On top of Brush Mountain, Pa.

To all of you growers making crosses here is a post from Tomato Depot that you should into your thinking regarding crosses and growing them out.

"When you do decide to go for a cross of your own, make sure you have noted which tomatoes on the plants are the ones you've pollinated. You'll need to save the seeds from those specific fruit, save them, and grow them out- this results in your F1 fruit. Then you save seeds from your F1, and grow them again- growing as many plants as you can, because those gene combinations can give you 16 (or more) different expressions of fruit. You want to find the best, so you grow as many as you can and select the best of the best of the F2's to carry forward for more trialing. The F3 generation is generally down to 4-5 of the best expressions, you re-visit your choices and save seed again to produce the F4 generation. You grow them again to ensure stability, and generally tomatoes are thought to be stable and are released to the general public at the F8 stage or beyond.

When you purchase seeds from a vendor or a plant from a nursery that has an F1 hybrid designation to it, that generally means that if you saved seed from that tomato, whatever you grow from those seeds is not likely going to resemble the original plant you saved seeds from. When you purchase heirloom or open pollinated tomato seeds or plants, you are getting something that if you saved seed, it most likely will be the same as the plant you started with. There would not be some kind of master thread designating parent plants and new lines, because that would be un-ending and difficult to maintain."

It isn't so simple. Marv

3/26/2017 6:16:42 PM

simpson,KS

WOW thanks for the info.

4/15/2017 8:24:56 AM

Fuquay Varina, NC

When crossing gourds we didn't even start to consider having anything near stable for at least 5 years

4/15/2017 11:14:53 PM