Sowing heirlooms

4/1/18 I also sowed these:

BC, BZ, BTD, BW, CA, CP, CG, FL, GZ, HC, GDZ, GZ, HC, KB, LC, MS, RT, SG, WB, ZPT.    = 18 varieties!

New abbreviations:
BZ   Black Zebra
PBTD  (Pink) Berkeley Tie Dye
CA  Carbon
GDZ  Godzilla
LC    Lucky Cross
MS   Mr Stripey
WB  White Beauty

Sowing F4s

4/1/18 -  I sowed F4 seeds from these 2017 F3 plants from the IRxCP cross.

8A-6, 8A-7.                         

Gf. Biggest of the 8As. 250-300 g.  Might see an increase in purple color in F4s?

46A-2                                   

Gf, globe, nice purple

55A-1, 55A-5, 55A-7.  

Gf.  Better purple than 8A but might not be quite as big: 150-200 g.

10B-1

Not gf but good size and good purple, so kinda neat.  Gf homozygotes might emerge in F4s. Chance of any one F4 plant being gf/gf is (2/3 x 1/4) = 1/6.  

28D-3            

The purple-tinged cherry.

Not sure how to handle the nomenclature going forward, but I don't see why after this point I'd be inclined to save fruit from more than just my favorite single individual from any one line.  Going forward I can keep the F3 identifier and just append the generation, e.g. 8A6-F4, 46A2-F4, etc. 

Big red sauce prep of 2017.

I thawed all of my "red" tomato juice for a large batch of sauce to can, on Labor Day.   (I still have two frozen bags of "dark" juice, which are either CP, F3s, or both.) By weight the frozen red juice was about 12.9 kilograms; this translates to over 13 quarts of liquid, assuming it's mostly water.  I had to thaw it out in 2 pots - the 12 qt pasta cooker and also my big canning pot.   After reducing it a few hours in both pots, and also reducing 2 quarts of the stuff in the oven in baking pans, it fit in the 12 qt pot and was around 8-9 quarts volume.   Added: 1.5 chopped onion, 1.5 bulb diced garlic+ 2 tsp garlic powder, about 1 cup fresh chopped basil (all that was left from my garden), about 2 tbsp salt, ~4 tbsp oregano and some sicilian spices. The end result was pretty good though when I had it on pasta the next day I thought it could use a bit more salt.   Better too little than too much though.

And in the end, I reduced it to about 6+1/4 quarts. (canned 6.) This was a pretty good thickness compared to my previous sauce attempts, but it really still could be reduced more - I bet if this got down to 5 or even 4 quarts it would be spectacular.  Of course the risk of burning it goes up the thicker it gets.   I may try to make a decent thick quart from the remaining "dark" juice.

Tomato press yields summer 2017

Saucy

On Sunday 8/20/17 I thawed all of amy frozen, pressed yellow tomato juice - by weight, this was about 6-7 quart equivalent.  I reduced this down to only 2 quarts of finished pasta sauce.  It turned out well.

World's smallest tomato???

World record smallest tomato??? My entry won "littlest tomato" in the Nashville Tomato Art Festival, 8/12/17.  7.95 mm.   There's not much out there in the interwebs about any such world record...Let the challengers rise.  Till then I claim the crown.   Actually they don't do any measuring at this festival, it's pretty informal.  The calipers are mine.   I carefully "dissected" it and found a total of two seeds inside. !

 

Those F3s tho

And the F3 collection is done, I think.  I am still summarizing but I saved some seeds from 8A, 24A, 46A, 55A, 10B, 20C, 28D.  I didn't save from 58, which was clearly a small red globe with slight purple - so it must be a sport with IR in it, probably an F2 from the prior year's backyard F1.  But it's just an IR-sized red globe with a wisp of purple, so, meh.  

8A yielded large 200g gf fruit but with only a wisp of purple in some of them.  Nice looking fruit though.

24a and 46a were not huge, but have strong purple + gf. So very nice looking color on these, and slightly larger than IR - about 80-100 g.

55A was the only one to really combine size, gf and strong purple skin. Woo hoo!

10B yielded large red fruit with purple, but no gf. It's still possible what I saved has gf/+, but not sure.

Finally 28D was a decent red cherry with a blush of purple, so that was kind of cool and worth saving.

I also saved IR and KB seeds.