Wasn't thrilled with the new varieties in 2016

Let's review. 

Ananas Noire. (Black Pineapple)
I had a hard time telling when it was ripe.  Then the plant started dying before I got more than a couple of fruit.

Basinga
Supposed to be a pale white, but it was just an ordinary orangy-yellow once it ripened.  Not remarkable at all.

Brandywine
Ok, but I prefer Mortgage Lifter, which is bigger and has great flavor.

Long Tom
These were prone to rot and/or other unsightly lesions.  I picked very few.

Roman Candle
Waxy yellow appearance - and taste.  Too bad this was the only one to survive past July in my backyard this year. Also prone to end rot.

And, I also had a couple Roma plants because I got free seeds from one of my suppliers. There's a reason it's a common variety - I got lots of consistent fruit and they sauce well.

The smallest F2

One of the interesting phenomena of intercrosses is in regards to continuous, quantitative traits such as fruit size.   Here's F2 #28, with an avg. weight of about 15 grams - well below that of the smaller parent, Indigo Rose.

So - what we can conclude from this F2 plant is that some contribution of genes from the much larger parent (Cherokee Purple) must have contributed genetic material that further reduced fruit size in the context of the smaller parent's genes.  How is this possible?

There are a few known tomato genes with large effects on size, and it is likely that Cherokee Purple is homozygous for the "big" alleles at these genes. However,  there are undoubtedly many more genes that have smaller effects on size too.  Cherokee Purple probably has some alleles that act to reduce fruit size slightly, but in the context of the Cherokee Purple genome these are overwhelmed by the action of the other loci that have much stronger effect to promote bigness.

In F2 28, I speculate that this plant has inherited "small" alleles from CP for loci that in IR are represented by "big" alleles. It is easier to understand this if one remembers that the ancestral fruit size was very small - just a few grams. In this view, IR certainly has some alleles that promote size way beyond the ancestral state.  In fact almost no tomatoes eaten routinely today are as small as the ancestral species/subspecies.  Exceptions are "currant" varieties, such as one of our family favorites, Hawaiian Currant. Here's an example:

More to try

Uluru ochre

More thoughts for 2017

Someone at the farmers' market suggested that I start a second set of plants a month behind the first set, so there will be more fruit continuing past the first batch.   Worth a try.  

When all my plants started to die off in early August I was worried that fungal load was just too much  this year.  Maybe plants that started later would be delayed in succumbing to these sorts of problems.

Remember too that in July-Aug, weeds really start to explode.  If there are plants that continue to produce into late August it will be necessary to keep on top of that.  :)

By then end of August the garden was completely overgrown (though I completely gave up on weeding by August, since fruit production was almost done anyway, what's the point?).  Many of the plants were dead and no good fruit were left out of ~90 plants.   And despite all my weed mats , and previous mulching and trimming it looked like more weeds than anything else. What a change from back in June when everything was so neat and orderly.  

Protip:  don't foolishly walk through tall weeds in August while wearing shorts.  I clearly got poison ivy or the equivalent.   Didn't expect that from weeds in my garden but live and learn.

Some runner-up F2s

These are not homozygous for gf.  But they have a 2/3 chance of being heterozygous; if so 1/4 of F3s will be gf/gf.   Otherwise they are big, or at least medium-big, and have good purpling - worth a try at the F3 stage.  In addition to these, note #s 20 and 49 which produced at least 1 rather large fruit, approaching 1 lb; and #28 which was a prolific cherry!

Examples of favorite F2s from 2016

These seemed to combine at least some purpling, flavor, size and homozygosity for gf.  Shown here: 8,24,46,55.   not shown but maybe: 15.

Examples of the green flesh gene (from Cherokee Purple)

Here's two F2 fruit showing the trait.  Fruit slices on the left are from an F2 that is homozygous recessive for the gf mutation.  The ones on the right are from a different plant with a wild-type color phenotype, the typical "tomato red" color.   Otherwise these particular F2s happened to be very similar in size and shape.

Ideas for tomatoes to try next year

Sun Gold, and  Lilian's Yellow Heirloom .  Suggested by Craig LeHoullier on The Splendid Table 9/9/16.  This is the guy who named Cherokee Purple.   These are his top three recommended varieties; furthermore he says Lilian's Yellow is the best tasting large tomato.  Considering he knows Cherokee Purple better than anyone, that is saying a lot.