Shule's 2025 growlog

[JayneR13]

Have you found monocropping to be superior to simply bagging a few flowers when it comes to producing seeds of a specific variety with no crossing?

[Shule]

Have you found monocropping to be superior to simply bagging a few flowers when it comes to producing seeds of a specific variety with no crossing?

Well, I haven't truly tried monocropping, yet, but I have tried growing a lot of the same variety along with some others that would be easy to tell if there were a cross (due to major differences in size/color or leaf type).

Monocropping should in theory be quite superior to just bagging blossoms (except in that you can't save seeds from as many pre-existing kinds of tomatoes). There are a few reasons for why I say it's superior:

- It's less work. I mean, one label for zillions of plants instead of a label for each one. One kind of variety to save seeds from instead of zillions. Predictable plant behavior (so, you can make your garden look more uniform, and treat all the plants optimally more easily).
- It has less of a learning curve.
- It should be close to 100% effective, even if you're new to it.
- When you bag blossoms, you don't know what the fruit is going to be like before it appears, so unless you're bagging every blossom, you don't have as many fruits to do selective breeding between. And if you don't bag blossoms on every plant, you're disadvantaged even more.

To really understand why monocropping would be more advantageous, you need to understand how selective breeding works. There are at least two major methods here, and they're both important:
- Selection by plant
- Selection by fruit

We also need to talk about the importance of growing multiple plants when maintaining a variety.

Selection by plant:
This is where you grow multiple plants and you choose a specific plant to save seeds from (doing this repeatedly over the years).

The most obvious place where selection by plant is needed is when stabilizing a hybrid, since each plant is significantly different. The basic idea is to pick the plants you like the most for your goals (but you can refine your selection better if you know a lot about genetics like @bower does). However, it's a lesser known fact that even with stable varieties, each plant can still be different, for whatever reason (e.g. mutations, if nothing else). For instance, one plant may be more productive than another, or grow larger than another. One plant might have larger or smaller fruit. One plant might have fruits with a consistent niche fruit shape. One might resist disease better. Most of them should be pretty similar if it is stable, but occasionally, you'll get one that's different. Hence the importance of growing a lot of plants (to find the ones that are different). To maintain a variety, it's important to grow lots of varieties, so you can ensure production is maintained, or ideally, improved, as opposed to having the production decline (some plants are less productive than average, too).

It's my personal observation that if you just grow one plant every year, this isn't a good way to maintain a variety. You risk the variety's vigor, production, fruit size and such declining.

If you only grow one plant, you can't select by plant.

Selection by fruit:
This is when you choose which fruit to save seeds and grow from, within a single plant (or even from among multiple plants).

The most obvious situation where selection by fruit is important is when you find an obvious sport or a mutated fruit among a bunch of regular fruits on the same plant. Then you grow that out and see what becomes of it (whether it has heritable changes or not).

However, even in less obvious cases, selection by fruit is still important. However, you're basically doing the same thing as above, except you're looking for subtle differences, too (not just blatantly obvious ones). It doesn't always pay off each and every time, but it does pay off often enough that it is a good practice. Selection by plant is more likely to give you heritable changes, however, unless you have different soil quality per plant.

You can select by fruit even if you only grow one plant, but it's better to grow more, so you have more tomatoes to select from. I had about 17 to 20-something Galapagos Island tomatoes last year, and each plant produced zillions of fruit. I only found one abnormally large fruit from among those, but I saved seeds and am growing them. I hope it's genetic. Some varieties produce sports and mutations a lot more often than Galapagos Island does.

You can select for whatever you want. For instance, I could select for Galapagos Island tomatoes that produce sports by finding sports, and then exclusively growing the sport, and finding a sport on that. Then do the same thing with its sport, and so on.

You can select for larger fruit, smaller fruit, more production, heat-tolerance, disease-resistance, pest-resistance, salt-tolerance, faster germination, etc. Some traits are easier to select for than others.

Maintaining a variety:
We already talked about this above, but I also wanted to mention that this seems to be a common practice commercially, but less common among home gardeners. However, home gardeners can do it, if they're willing to sacrifice the garden space. But just because you're maintaining a variety and avoiding hybridization doesn't mean you can't selectively breed effectively from it, in a way that is enjoyable.

[JayneR13]

Thanks for the explanation. FWIW I took two years of genetics in college. Nothing like a bit of directional selection to get the qualities you really want, right?

[bower]

I'm actually amazed at the amount of variation in stable OP's. Even with a half dozen seedlings, there's often an especially early one - they always get the prime spot here. Go early, rah rah.
IDK how much other traits vary, since earliness and vigor tends to be associated with the best production as well. There would have to be some outstanding difference in a less vigorous plant, for to put its seeds ahead of the sibling in a stable variety.
So it's quite possible that some things are missed in small gardens that would be noticeable in a large mono grow of the same variety.
I read some research iirc from Turkey, about periodically growing out and selecting the best performers of their OP's on a large scale. It does seem that it may be worth doing at least from time to time, to correct course for seed that may have been saved from a slightly less worthy variant.

[Shule]

I bought some new tomato seeds. Definitely not planning to monocrop next year. However, I'm trying to go for mostly large tomatoes, so if they cross, at least they'll be big.

[Shule]

So, these tomatoes that I planted on Monday are now sprouting:
- Brandywine Pink x 2
- Roma VF x 2
- Amana Orange
- True Black Brandywine x 2
- German Lunchbox
- Cal Ace VF
- Pink Fang
- Burpee's Long-keeper x 1

I'm glad to see Amana Orange is among the first.

All 32 cells (of Brandywine Pink) I planted last Saturday had already sprouted by yesterday, if not well before.

All nine cups of watermelons have sprouted. Eight of the nine cups of Honey Rock melons have sprouted, so far.

I got Roma VF from another seed source to try next year to see if it's more stable than my current line initially was, and how it compares. I'm interested to see if the fruits are just as firm.

All the trays are outside for the day. They'll all be coming in at night, and they'll be staying in all day on Sunday.

[Shule]

I'm beginning to realize that not everyone has the same definition of 'sprouted'. So, I better tell you what mine is, lest I deceive you. I consider a tomato to have sprouted when you see the stem loop come above the soil (I don't wait until you can see leaves to say it's sprouted). However, if I just see a root from a seed that hasn't been buried properly, I don't say that has sprouted, yet.

This is what I mean:

IMG_20250412_112450_894.jpg

[Shule]

Brandywine Pink tomatoes:

IMG_20250412_112411_481.jpg

Winter watermelons (on the top half of the image) and Honey Rock melons (on the bottom half):

IMG_20250412_112506_371.jpg

[PlainJane]

Wow @Shule, that’s a robust amount of BWP!

[MissS]

Wow @Shule, that’s a robust amount of BWP!

It's a great tomato!

[Shule]

The other Burpee's Long-keeper sprouted. I think Pierce's Pride is sprouting, too, but it's hard to tell.

[Shule]

These new plants sprouted by today:

Peppers:
• Orange Mini Bell (This is excellent, since I only had four seeds left. [Edit: It didn't sprout on this date; it was a neighboring tomato seed I had forgotten got in].)

Tomatoes:
• Black from Tula (this possibly sprouted on Saturday, but I forgot to mention it, if so)
• Black Mountain Pink
• Brandy Boy cross early
• Carolina Yellow
• Cuostralee x 2
• Emma Pink
• Galapagos Island larger fruit selection
• German Pink
• Greek Domata
• Kentucky Beefsteak
• Marizol Purple (but the leaves are trapped in the seed coat)
• Medium large red tomato with good shelf-life (harvested in 2024); it may be a fruit selection of Cal Ace VF
• Nebraska Wedding x 3
• Pepe Jose
• Picnic-B
• Pierce's Pride (if it hadn't sprouted already)
• Pink Fang (the second cell sprouted, if it hadn't already)
• Rebekah Allen
• Sweet Ozark Orange [Edit: leaves still in seed coat]
• Terhune
• Thorburn's Terra-cotta
• Winsall x 1

[Shule]

It looks like it wasn't Orange Mini Bell that sprouted. It was a stay tomato seed from a neighboring cell that I now remember had gotten in. I had left it there in case the peppers didn't sprout. The neighbors are Brandywine Pink 2022 x 2, Picnic-B, Pink Fang x 1, and Galapagos Island.

Also, Sweet Ozark Orange hasn't escaped its seed coat.

[Shule]

Here are the plants this morning:

f2bc7f05-b061-45bc-8a4c-89c4d12b9502.jpg

[Shule]

Marizol Purple is escaping its seed coat (on its own).

[Shule]

These new tomatoes are sprouting:
- Greek Rose
- Northern Lights

[Shule]

Marizol Purple escaped its seed coat. I think the drop of water that was on the seed coat for a long time helped. So, I got a dropper to put water on the other seed coats that look like they aren't about to open.

Sweet Ozark Orange also escaped its seed coat (without adding water to the seed coat). New plants sprouted, too.

Also, the following new varieties sprouted today:

Peppers:
Blot x 6
Large Yellow Bell x 1
Yellow Bells x 1

Tomatoes:
Caspian Pink (seed coat covering leaves)
Daniel Burson
Rose

[Shule]

Okay, today, the following things sprouted:
- All remaining tomatoes except Ramapo OP.
- All the large yellow bell pepper seeds
- 4 of the 6 of the assorted yellow bell pepper seeds
- The remaining cup of Honey Rock melons (two plants sprouted in the cup of 2 or 3 seeds)
- One direct-seeded mustard plant (not sure of the variety)

Caspian Pink still has a seed coat on. At least one of every other cell of tomatoes seems to be free from the seed coat (there might be a few that still need to raise up all the way out of the soil, though, which could in theory still have the seed coats on).

So, now, we're waiting on Ramapo OP, California Wonder 300 TMR, and Orange Mini Bell.

I'm impressed at how almost all the tomatoes so far have sprouted effectively. I'm guessing refraining from putting the tomatoes outside when it's below ~52° F. may have helped there.

[Shule]

A family member got some garden sage, English thyme, and tiger lilies.

[Shule]

The last two of the assorted yellow bells sprouted.

Another mustard seed in the same planting spot sprouted, and four more planting spots sprouted a single seed each. Wonderberry volunteers are growing around there, too.