Breeding lines for an early PINK!

[bower]

Pink lover(s) .. you know who you are.
Being shamed by not having a (non black, non-green-gelled) pink to grow this season, I have turned to... the Big Binder of seeds of the Great Unfinished, to see where I may have abandoned a worthy quest...

And so begins the tale of these lonesome pinks, just waiting for space to be grown. Mostly indeterminates, that's my excuse. Large plants.

First page of the binder, these are crosses that started with Black Cherry X Stupice.
There is Kitten Paws Pink - a mini beef, early, which developed huge almost multiflora clusters in the F3 or F4.
These were good but the sister plant Black Kitten Paws is the one that got grown forward while KPP didn't find room.

Second, on the same page, is a cross between Kitten Paws Pink and the F1 (Eva Purple Ball X PI120256) which only made 6 seeds but wonderful early plants with small ruffly beefs and pretty great tasting too, both red and pink. This in turn led to seeds of KPEPI Pink F2 and pink PL F3 in 2020. .. and a KPEPI red selection that was a bit larger fruited and more vigorous and productive. The chances of there being something superior to find in the Pink F2 are good since only one of the PL's got a spot that year iirc, and didn't happen to have the impressive vigor of the red.
Reason for all the mixing was the tasty Eva Purple Ball and PI120256 were both late here, although PI120256 is very cold tolerant (ruffled red from Turkey). The cross with Kitten Paws definitely got the earliness genetics, and nothing late has been seen in this line. These are large indeterminate plants with branched clusters of a dozen. Fruit size will be variable but should be a bit larger than Kitten Paws Pink.

There are a number of reds to be found in these pages but only one more pink - waay at the back dated 2015 is the F3 seed of a cross between Rozoviy Flamingo heart and the dwarf Al Kuffah, labeled dwarf pink heart. I remember these because the shape of the fruit was so pretty - three loculed heart. However the years 2014 and 15 were cold here and the RF offfspring did not produce super tasty fruit in those conditions. Also the dwarf earliness didn't really make the grade.

There it is, the tale of abandoned pinks whose seeds make puppyfaces waiting for their day in the sun.

[Tormato]

Meow.

In breeding for an extremely early good to great tasting pink (or even a red), determinate preferred, but indeterminate OK, would you have any recommendations to cross with Pervaya Lyubov?

[bower]

Not sure what you mean by "extremely early " but PLyubov herself is nearly as early as Stupice, Moravsky Div and so on.
There are a few "extremely early" red tomatoes, such as Kimberley and Beaverlodge plum, which have an early flowering gene and are starting to flower two weeks earlier than the pack. But the early BP (in the cold) were tasteless. And Kimberley didn't actually ripen more than the "first fruit" any earlier than M Div in our cold spring conditions. That kind of earliness would be useful if you're planning to plant late when it isn't cold, which you might be?

I think the KPEPI pink F2 is a best bet from the above for early indeterminate pink to select for outstanding taste and then cross to PLyu for larger fruit and similar earliness. Not sure if there would be shape issues, where both PLyu and the ruffled parent may catface or misshape in cold.
OTOH if accepting the indeterminate condition and maxing for taste, you could simply cross your favorite later pink into Pervaya and select for earliness.

If aiming for determinate goal, I have seed for Petrusha Ogorodnik, that is an early determinate OP paste/heart very nice dark pink color. We cooked them though for max taste enjoyment. But no reason you couldn't get good eating tomatoes from a cross with Pervaya, and a darker pink to boot. I grew this out recently and intended to make a cross but missed the window.

In other determinate reds, IDK if you tried Altajskij Urozajnij? It was exquisitely tasting with few small fruit when grown here in a 5 gal pot outdoors in the bitter cold. The next year I gave it a big tub in the greenhouse and.... copious, larger sweet fruit without the remarkable flavor. Also iirc I tried a cross with it and was disappointed in the F1s, did not pursue. So it can be hard to tell, which parent would best suit another climate. I used Napoli a Fiaschetto for the determinate red parent in my black determinates - small but decent intensity of taste and a rugged plant, but the earliness there is only = black cherry so a week or ten days later than Lyubov. I really didn't find many tasty fruit parents in the early determinates I trialed.

I have crossed the biggest and sweetest KPEPI red to a determinate small beef and grew the F1 last summer, where the next step would be to grow F2 and select determinate and um, red and non-gf offspring for your project (eyes averted from brown fruit and green gel).
This would be a good cross to make with PLyu for a tasty determinate early pink with less catfacing than PLyu, because the determinate minibeef has the 'bump' gene that is a suppressed (more or less) gene for "pointy" which in beefs helps to maintain their shape. Whereas the KPEPI like PI120256 is flattish ruffled with many locules and some degree of tendency to misshapes as well. Makes sense to me, but OTOH with the recessive black genes in there, you're likely to have offensively dark fruit showing up in the litter for some time - way easier to pick out blacks than vet black out of reds.
So you might want to avoid that altogether by using a red or pink det.

Just thinking about the pinks I've grown.. I believe the tastiest was one you sent me called Siberian Giant Pink. They hung there massive and green when all the others were nearly done... I thought they would never ripen but they really were delicious when they did.

[Tormato]

Ultimately, all I'm looking for is a really early, really tasty tomato. Easier said, than done. Size, shape, color, etc... doesn't matter (although a smaller size will probably ripen before larger fruits). I'm thinking of crossing PLyu with Microbecium Occemus, a very small, ruffled, seedy bag of gel that does have very good flavor. Cole, Juni, Early Wonder Pink, and one Eastern European variety (forgot the name) might be thrown in, too. I think I'll pass on crossing with Dingwall Scotty, although I could only imagine something coming out that is better than the original. And, just to see what would show up, I have seed from an experimental white (pale yellow) boat-shaped cherry, that had 14 locules. Cat-faced fruit never bothers me, and I could always name a tomato "Lying Cat-Faced Pony Soldier".

It looks like 2022 will finally be my first attempts at crossing/breeding.

[bower]

You're right about smaller sized fruit ripening sooner. Love the sound of that 14 locule cherry! miaow indeed.
I hear the Juni is truly super early? Like better than 88 day Jagodka or micros?

I don't think it's too much to ask for really early really tasty. As long as the really early parent isn't a dud, meant to produce a large crop of red balls that look like tomatoes.

[PNW_D]

http://tatianastomatobase.com/wiki/Americke_Pyramidni

anyone tried this one ......... was early (here in PNW) for Tania ...... and gets excellent taste test review from her

[PNW_D]

maybe crossed with Dwarf Pink Passion ...... sorry can't figure out how to add to my previous post

perfect - thank you!

[Tormato]

You're right about smaller sized fruit ripening sooner. Love the sound of that 14 locule cherry! miaow indeed.
I hear the Juni is truly super early? Like better than 88 day Jagodka or micros?

I don't think it's too much to ask for really early really tasty. As long as the really early parent isn't a dud, meant to produce a large crop of red balls that look like tomatoes.

Linda/Labradors had Juni coming in at 73 days from sowing. That's the same as my earliest ever, Cole.

Red balls that look like tomatoes describes Latah.

[Tormato]

maybe crossed with Dwarf Pink Passion ...... sorry can't figure out how to add to my previous post

In the upper right corner of posts, there is an edit post (red button on the left of a row of red buttons, that looks like a pencil, slanted).

[bower]

Just wondering @Tormato how the breeding experiments went this summer?

I ended up with a single seedling of Pervaya Lyubov in the batch I started for the farm this spring, so I kept it to refresh the seed supply, and I also got seed of an F1 cross with the current Rodney (early determinate beef sweet tasty, but um black!). So thar be pinks but will have to select from a motley crew. I picked Rodney for the parent because it has all the traits wanted except pink. It is not a huge beef but a better place to start than crosses with a cherry, for a decent sized pink.

[Labradors]

I grew Pervaya Lyubov this summer and wasn't impressed with the flavour - boo hoo! I know people RAVE about it so I was disappointed that it didn't like my growing conditions.

Have you guys tried EM Champion? It's a red heart that is determinate. Taste is full bodied with a bit of a kick. Mine actually dies halfway through the season, so I plant it in the middle of the row so that its removal is beneficial to the plants growing on either side of it.

Linda

[bower]

I was planning to grow EM Champion but misplaced the seeds at planting time. Pervaya Lyubov is just average for flavor imo. Acceptable quality for the earliness but not outstanding, for sure.
Curious that EMC craps out early, because PLyubov also has the same habit usually. Doesn't get very big for an indeterminate either.
Still have a lot of 'better pinks' seeds to try when I have some extra space. All indeterminates of course. That bites my low maintenance growing plans... so extra space and extra time for the endless pruning...

[Tormato]

Bower,

I didn't get to make any crosses this year. A severely sprained ankle meant that I couldn't get low enough to the determinate plants' flowers. Perhaps in 2023.

Pervaya Lyubov, in my garden, is a very good, but not great tasting tomato. But, it is far superior to virtually all of the early tomatoes that I've tried. It's much bigger, too.

EM Champion also dies early in my garden. Flavor is good to very good, but way below that of almost all hearts. I keep trialing it hoping that it will naturally cross with something, but no luck yet with saved seed. Perhaps I'll have to make the cross myself. But with what?

[MissS]

@Bower Alpha Pink seeds were sent to Gary for the swap. Alpha Pink is a early 14oz pink beefsteak but with a mild flavor. It may be good for your breeding project. You might want to ask him for a couple of seeds.

[bower]

Sorry to hear about the ankle!
Pervaya Lyubov is just as you said for us, Gary. A cut above the usual earlies, and a large fruit. Also a reliable early cropper, this is why it's still on the grow list at the farm.
Some year I'm going to have a 'pink' year and just wallow in as many pink fruited delights as I can. Not next year, but some year. It's out there.
I actually was pretty pleased with the taste of the determinate pink from my bicolor project, but they aren't large by any means. And I accidentally poured the seeds into the same bag as a red one, so I may have some trouble sorting those out.
I think Rodney is the flavor parent in this year's cross, for sure. Hope those genes combine nicely. If not, I think I would just use something later but really superb tasting as the pink parent instead.