The San Antonio Sandbur Patch

[bower]

Chiapas Wild sounds like it could be a cross, if so it would now be F3. So you may see some interesting variation to select from there.
Also if Jasper F1 is as you believe out of Matt's Wild Cherry, nothing to stop you from saving seeds from it and selecting the traits for fruit size and disease and heat resistance from the F2.
Looking forward to hear about your new season in 2024!

[Wildcat82]

Chiapas Wild sounds like it could be a cross, if so it would now be F3. So you may see some interesting variation to select from there.
Also if Jasper F1 is as you believe out of Matt's Wild Cherry, nothing to stop you from saving seeds from it and selecting the traits for fruit size and disease and heat resistance from the F2.
Looking forward to hear about your new season in 2024!

Wild tomatoes are sort of a crap shoot since I don't know how the tomatoes I'm planting will taste or produce nor am I sure what pest/disease resistance they will have. But I do know from the scientific literature that some wild tomatoes have high resistance to mites and others have high resistance to fungal diseases like early blight. Others are adapted to desert climates. The Coyotes I've grown the past 2 years seem invulnerable to early blight, mites, and 100 degree heat and taste pretty good (ask @Karstopography). I just want to find tomatoes varieties that produce a little bigger fruit.

If Chiapas can grow wild in extremely humid Chiapas Mexico (averge high temperature in the low 80's), I suspect it may be immune to early blight. If you have room, maybe you could trial one plant where you live.

FYI New England-based Fruition Seeds says this about Coyote and Chiapas:

"Along with her sweet yellow cousin Coyote, Organic Chiapas Tomato...... simply don’t get classic tomato diseases like Late Blight, Early Blight and Septoria Leaf Spot. Delectable disease resistance!"
https://www.fruitionseeds.com/shop/vege ... as-tomato/

[bower]

Thanks for the advice @Wildcat82 - I like where you're going with this.
I did grow Coyote here one insanely cold summer more than a decade ago (half of Greenland floating past) and it toughed out the cold - outdoors in my garden - and produced a few little fruits. I wasn't that crazy about the taste but for the sake of disease resistance I would indeed give it another try, as well as Chiapas and other wild blooded tomatoes. At least they're already edible, that's a big step from the actual 'wild relatives' which you need lots of space and time to breed them into a food producing condition.
Long vines are a bit of a problem for me, but I definitely can fit a few in if I plan ahead.

[Wildcat82]

We had a hard frost earlier this week so I harvested all the tomatoes and eggplant. I ended up harvesting 30 eggplant over the past 2 weeks after essentially no production (I did harvest 1 in early November) the previous 8 months. My Sungolds were still loaded so I moved then inside for 1 night then back out the next day. No frost in the forecast for the next 2 weeks and we may even get some sun later this week.

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[Wildcat82]

The day after Christmas I went into the garden for the first time in 5 days since the ground was so sticky wet and picked a bowl of Sungolds. For the past 3 days I'd neglected gathering eggs and, boy was I surprised - my hens egg production has gone into overdive lately - 2-3 eggs/day from 3 hens. I figure this is because I've been spoiling them lately. I've given them some canned corn a couple times and every day I give them a little shredded cheese and a handful of mealworms. The hens deserved some Christmas presents too.

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[Wildcat82]

Growing Tomatoes in San Antonio Year Round?
The weird thing about San Antonio is that any time of year can be conducive to gardening and any time of year can be awful for gardening. Most people here try to garden in the spring then give up for the rest of the year once summer heat hits. However, the summer heat wave has arrived so early the past couple years, most people here have had little or no production at all. To beat the summer hit wave I’ve found myself sowing seeds earlier and earlier each year til I now sow seeds the day after Thanksgiving. And even during the blazing summer heat, a few select tomato varieties are fairly productive. I’ve actually, on the whole, had better luck with my Fall garden than a spring garden over the past 4 years since we’ve had longer periods of nice weather in the fall than in the spring. Wintertime (November – March) often has long stretches when we have nice spring-like temperatures and I’ve found my Sungolds are larger and just as productive now as in the spring. Best of all, they have retained that great Sungold flavor. And there are no darn mites to worry about.

My Latest Tomato Growing Experiment:
1. Sow seeds extremely early and plant out in pots as soon as possible and move indoors if frost threatens. This way you lengthen your harvest season. Of course the summer heat may arrive early and fry your plants before they produce much.
2. In late spring try planting your smaller fruited heat tolerant types (Juliet, Sioux) to try to get some production in mid summer. Of course the summer heat may overwhelm your plants.
3. Sow seed around 1 July and grow them inside, away from the searing heat, then plant out when the heat subsides for a Fall harvest. Of course, there’s a 50/50 chance cold weather come early and you don’t get much of a harvest.
4. Set out some cold weather growers like Sungold in pots in November and you may be able to get a good harvest all winter. Move the pots indoors if frost threatens. Some years we have fairly consistent temperatures in the 40-75 degree range with only 3-4 frosts. Moving the pots indoors 3-4 times isn’t that big of a hassle. On the other hand, half the time we’ll have 16-18 hard frosts during winter and moving pots in and out that frequently probably isn’t worth it.
Bottomline: I think it’s best to continually sow seeds/clone plants year round since the weather is so variable. Expect a couple periods each year to be productive and a couple periods each year will be total wipe outs.

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[karstopography]

Nice summary. My fall tomato growing experiment hasn’t been very successful. The tomatoes are taking forever to ripen. Maybe I need to get them in earlier, but I followed our county extension calendar. There just hasn’t been enough warmth here this fall and winter for tomatoes to ripen, at least Bella Rosa. Maybe another type might be better. Sungold, I might try that one next fall.

[Wildcat82]

Nice summary. My fall tomato growing experiment hasn’t been very successful. The tomatoes are taking forever to ripen. Maybe I need to get them in earlier, but I followed our county extension calendar. There just hasn’t been enough warmth here this fall and winter for tomatoes to ripen, at least Bella Rosa. Maybe another type might be better. Sungold, I might try that one next fall.

I've tried several times to keep tomatoes producing during the late Fall/Winter. Some years I've had decent yields and other years bad yields, however the deal breaker for me was the consistently bland mealy flavor/texture, I've always tried smaller determinates/semi-determinate plants since they are easier to move around but Fantastico, Bloody Butcher, Moskovitch, Chadwick, etc. have not impressed me at all but Sungold has been a revelation. Despite the constant cloud cover and cool temperatures, they taste just as good as in the spring and I've been getting a bowl of cherries every week from 2 plants.

[worth1]

From experiments I've found any tomato will turn color regardless of maturity given enough time and in a warmer area.
I even had baby tomatoes turn color like Orange Russian.

[karstopography]

My three 4 ounce bella rosa tomatoes on the counter are in no hurry to ripen. There’s a hint of what I believe is a color change to something in the red, orange and yellow color spectrum, but if the color is spreading it is so slow to be imperceptible. But, the ones out on the vine aren’t doing anything either.

They will all have to come in soon. We are getting the type of weather Monday that is far beyond and below what a tomato can be shielded against.

Looks like we are set for three straight winters with temperatures in the low 20s or lower. Cannot remember that happening before, maybe in the late 1970s, we had a string of cold winters then.

The upside to this killer freeze coming is that I won’t have to struggle with finding the space for the tomatoes, peppers, beans, and the rest of the spring plantings because most everything growing in the garden now will be dead or damaged beyond recovery. I’ll just turn it all into the soil and be ready for spring.

[worth1]

I figured my dill will die too.

[karstopography]

I figured my dill will die too.

I plan my winter gardens to withstand the high twenties for a few hours.

I guess my onions, garlic, curly kale should make it. The last two years in the teens some things surprised me that made it, but I had covered them up in piles of leaves and freeze cloth. Celery made it. Some of the lettuce and chicory made it.

I hope my Georgia Collards make it, they have been the star vegetable of this year’s rather so far mediocre winter garden. Anyway, I’m not planning on doing a big all in effort to protect everything this time around. I’m short on leaves at the moment and too many other things going on. Sometimes, most of the time, nature wins, I’m getting tired of fighting with her.

[Wildcat82]

With low temperatures expected in the 17-18 degree range for the next few days I went ahead and decided to pick all my dill and collards. I cooked the collards yesterday while the dill went into the freezer.

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[Wildcat82]

Are Some Tomato Varieties Resistant to Mites?
After combing through Google Scholar for many hours, I made a chance discovery that might be a gamer-changer for me and anyone else struggling with mites.

“The wild tomato species L. hirsutum is highly resistant to various arthropods, including 2-spotted spider mites (Tetranychus urticae Koch) (1, 6, 9, 10).”
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/0f98/1 ... 6bfc29.pdf

Is the emerging mite pest Aculops lycopersici 2 controllable? Global and genome-based insights in its biology and management.
“Could trichome-related host plant resistance breeding potentially reduce pesticide use in tomato production? Most genes conferring herbivore resistance are present in wild species. Even when the presence of trichomes seems to benefit A. lycopersici in commercial tomato varieties by providing shelter, resistance to A. lycopersici was linked to increasing densities of mainly type VI glandular 228 trichomes in wild type tomato (Lycopersicon hirsutum).”
file:///C:/Users/dwsta/Downloads/accepted.pdf

So it appears tomato species L. Hirsutum is resistant to spider mites, russet mites and other arthropod pests. I have no idea if broad mites are included in this final group though I suspect they are included. I certainly think it merits investigation.

Surprisingly, I was able to track down four varieties of rare L Hirsutum plants or crosses for sale:

Woolly Kate
“Rare. Woolly Kate is one of the very few blue woolly type varieties. Seeds given to Gary Ibsen of TomatoFest in 2015 by Gary Cass from the Big Island of Hawaii, who has been working with this variety as part of a project working with L. hirsutum flavors tied to natural pest and disease resistance. Gary Cass got his seeds from Tom Wagner. Apparently the woolly types are from a mutation that was found in a field of Rutgers. Introduced commercially by TomatoFest in 2016. Indeterminate, regular leaf plants produces abundant crops of 1"-1 1/2", cocktail-sized, round, fruits with blue/purple shoulders.
The branches and some of the fruit are fuzzy, (like peach fuzz) and some are smooth. Good tart and sweet flavors. Plant grows well in Hawaii and other hot humid areas.”
https://www.tomatofest.com/ProductDetai ... TF%2D0523E

Red Centiflor
“Huge clusters of 3/4” red cherry tomatoes, on indeterminate vines. name from Centi-flor = hundred flowers = hyper-tress. Bred Dr. Alan M. Kapuler of Peace Seeds from Kusra Kapuler's cross of Lycopersicon humboldtii (obtained from a SSE member Rosemarie LaCherez in Australia, the grape tress tomato with yellow-orange 0.5" fruits) with L. hirsutum which has red fruits, clusters of open yellow flowers and fuzzy stems. Flower trusses are about two feet across, bearing tomatoes in a huge grape-like cluster, and we've never seen anything like it. Sweet flavor reminiscent of Sun Gold. Tags: Type: Indeterminate, Harvest: Early, Color: Red, Size: Cherry, Shape: Round, Specialty: Heavy Producer, Specialty: Hypertress, Season: Summer, Certification: Organic.”
https://www.restorationseeds.com/produc ... lor-tomato

Orange Centiflor
“One of the unusual characteristics of the Centiflor tomatoes is that, unlike most garden tomatoes, they outcross occasionally. This creates problems in seed saving but opportunity for crosses that the bees can do. This new variety arose from a cross of Sungold with Red Centiflor. These are vigorous hypertress vines with remarkably delicious fruits. Bred Dr. Alan M. Kapuler of Peace Seeds in Corvallis, Oregon. Sweet flavor reminiscent of Sun Gold. Tags: Type: Indeterminate, Harvest: Early, Color: Orange, Size: Cherry, Shape: Round, Specialty: Hypertress, Season: Summer, Certification: Organic.”
https://www.restorationseeds.com/produc ... lor-tomato

Yellow Centiflor
“Derived from the same cross of Sungold with Red Centiflor and Orange Centiflor, this line makes somewhat larger fruit, with a distinctive pear-shaped point on the end of the round, bright fruits. Foliage can have distinctive purple edges. While both parent species leading to this cultivar have 5-20 flowers in a spike, these centiflors (meaning 100 flowers) have hypertresses of flowers leading to a unique and distinguishing aspect. Bred Dr. Alan M. Kapuler of Peace Seeds in Corvallis, Oregon. Sweet flavor reminiscent of Sun Gold. Tags: Type: Indeterminate, Harvest: Early, Color: Yellow, Size: Cherry, Shape: Round, Specialty: Heavy Producer, Specialty: Hypertress, Season: Summer, Certification: Organic.”
https://www.restorationseeds.com/produc ... lor-tomato

Outside of vendor descriptions, I managed to track down one review of Yellow Centifor:

“Yellow centiflor hypertress tastes like sungold to me. Even the leaves smell a little smoky like sungold. Blindfolded I probably couldn't tell them apart. Obviously that is where the similarity ends. It was a short (2 foot) but well branched plant for me. The fruit was yellow and nippled. It was slower to spit out a ripe fruit.”
http://www.tomatoville.com/showthread.php?t=38894

I have ordered seeds of all 4 varieties and will hurry up and the get the seeds started ASAP so I can try them out this Spring during mite season. Stay tuned.

[Whwoz]

@Wildcat82 , there is an ongoing discussion thread over on the OSSI forum discussing this that may interest you

[Wildcat82]

@Wildcat82 , there is an ongoing discussion thread over on the OSSI forum discussing this that may interest you

I'm not sure which thread to which you're referring. Please send me a link or give me a thread title and I'll check it out.

edit - I think I found the thread you referred to.

[Whwoz]

My apologies for that @Wildcat82, I wasn't in a position to look it up and couldn't remember thread name, Arthrop and Insect resistant tomatoes was the one I was thinking of

[Wildcat82]

It looks like I came through our recent freezing weather reasonably well. I pulled the tarp off my pomegranate a day ago and all the branches are still flexible. The kale and collard look great. Heck even the cilantro and 1 dill plant survived lows of 17, 17,and 19 degrees unscathed. Meanwhile the plants I moved into our shed with the space heater survived the cold and 10 consecutive days with no sunlight. The Barbados cherry and 3 eggplants I had been growing in pots, look ok, my Bearrs lime is actually putting out quite a few blooms and a little new growth. Best of all, my 2 Sungolds are alive and growing new leaves! After my seed growing debacle it appears, with a little luck, I may have 2 very early producing plants.

Then today after groceries, I stopped by Rainbow Gardens Nursery and saw they had tomato plants for sale. I’ve never seen nurseries here stocking plants before late February so that was a surprise. But most shocking of all, amongst the Celebrities, Better Boys, Husky Cherry Reds, etc, was some Sungolds! I bought five 6-7 inch plants. I had pretty much consigned myself to not having any early tomatoes this year but now it looks like I’m back on track.

Weirdly, the only plants that didn’t survive (apparently) was my 5 chive plants.
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[Wildcat82]

With no frosts forecast for the next 2 weeks I planted out my early season tomatoes a couple days ago and 6 Grande Jalapenos yesterday. I sowed my summer harvest seeds about 2 weeks ago in baked sterilized potting soil (Punta Banda, Flamenco, Juliet, Super Sioux, Prescott, Porter, Miel de Mexique, and Jasper tomatoes, Fairy Tale and Ping Tung eggplant and Habanada, Cubanelle, Gypsy, Flaming Flare, and Big Jim peppers along a with some perilla). So far, they seem to be doing OK.

I have a lot more spring clean up in the back yard to do.

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[MissS]

I'm so happy that everything survived the cold. You did a good job protecting them all. If chives can survive up here with below 0 temperatures, then they should be fine there. They should sprout up as the temps warm up.

It will be so enjoyable to be working in the garden and just reaching out for a few SunGold's to snack on. With that many plants then some should make it into the house. I only grow one and it seems that only a handful ever make it in the door.