More fruits of the season

7/30/13

Tips for cross-pollinating tomatoes

1. Tag the flower first, otherwise tagging might inadvertently damage the fragile pistil.

2. Emasculate: choose a flower that had not yet opened, with slightly immature coloring.  Then with tweezers, remove sepals, then petals, then carefully remove anther cone; note,  pulling it all off intact may pull off the pistil.   Therefore I like to pick off individual anthers.  If you pull off a whole anther down to the base, it can break the "ring" attaching the anther cone to the base,  and may make it easier to remove the rest of the cone.

3. Pollinate with pollen from the male parent.

Update 7/29/13

It's the peak of harvesting and it's been fun to have up to a dozen different types of tomatoes in the kitchen at the same time.  Made some very good sauces by roasting tomatoes.

My attempts to do crosses have been failures, though I only tried a few.  By now some varieties have few or no flowers.  Unfortunately Indigo Rose has stopped, and I really needed that pollen.   I'll try one more BFT X IR today since I found a good-stage BFT flower and I dissected it well; trying IR pollen I saved previously.  Hope it's still good.

Update, and enjoying harvest

Well we have been picking some of almost every variety now.  Got a few ripe  Black from Tulas that were big and odd shaped, but meaty and flavorful.  Flamme is I think my favorite so far.   Black Cherry was very good but only had a few so far.  Still waiting on Airyleaf and Kellogs breakfast but it won be long.  There is an Airyleaf that is huge, just now turning color. Prob 5" long x 2.5 " wide. And wonder of wonders, a Zapotec finally set a fruit.

Top row L to R: HCs, coyotes, red pear, Ildi, black cherry, red ping pong, Indigo rose, Flamme.

Bottom row: green zebra, gogoshari, better boy, black from Tula.

Taste the rainbow

From top, clockwise: Indigo Rose, Green Zebra, Coyote (two of 'em), Ildi, Flamme, Pink Ping Pong, Hawaiian Currant, Red Pear.

2nd crosspollination attempt

I tried using anthers from a fresh Indigo rose, along with an old anther cone I saved last month. Recipient female: Black fom Tula, a full sized young flower still unopened with still-green anther cone.  I hope I did not damage the pistil, but it looks ok as far as I can see.  Not covering the pistil this time as my muslin covering sort of damaged the last attempts.  

 Looks like the heat and humidity are reducing fruit set on some varieties.

7/13/13: harvesting

Lots of HC and coyotes, which are both very sweet.  Definitely will replant them next year.  We've also picked Flamme, Ildi and Red Pear.    Flammes are very good flavor, juicy and a great apricot color.  Ildi an Red pear are OK, nothing spectacular.   Coming soon: indigo rose, black from Tula, pink ping pong, green zebra, better boy.

First tomatoes

We began harvesting Coyote and Hawaiian Currant cherries (pictured).  Nice sweetness and they are a hit with our kids.  A few more Flammes, Ildi are coloring up.   The Airyleafs are looking like very nice smooth, large pointy plum shapes.  Red Pear looks very prolific, while Ildi had poor fruit set despite the knockout flower trusses.  The first Flamme and Black from Tulas had a little blossom end rot.  However it seemed to be a limited problem.  Interestingly I've read that BER tends to manifest on the first fruit.  Let's hope it stays that way.