tangerine tangent 2023

[bower]

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I'm happy to report that so far, the plants marked for dark green cotyledons are two for two, gf type flowers!
So it seems that this is a good tell for gf, earlier than flowering.
Showing some pics of the known gf plants for comparison as well. The anther cone remains yellow to greenish-yellow or green-amber, without any hint of orange. Bearing in mind that I don't know what a gf-tt flower would look like, I'm assuming for now that the F2's are simply gf.

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[bower]

Another surprise: the Bicolor Rumpus F3 determinate selection turned out to be gf! I had forgotten about it, but it seems all the recessives were lurking in that burly F2 plant.
I have a pic of the precocious indeterminate Rumpus flower for comparison, showing the ry flower is exactly like R: warm, orange colored anther cone.

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[bower]

On the question of canopy color I am not seeing a correlation as with the cotyledons.
On the two plants shown before, the lighter leaf colored plant has gf flowers, while the dark green leafed is a red type.
It's always possible that there might be tt lurking behind the gf, and perhaps I should keep this plant anyway... I already have more determinates than I expected so it's a tough call. And there may be a couple more as there are some quite late plants still unfolding their buds.

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[Whwoz]

@Bower , you have got me wondering how these Newfoundland breed tomatoes of yours would do as extra earlies in the greenhouse that I am working on

[bower]

@Whwoz you might even be able to grow them all winter long!
I think you'll be surprised at how even a glimmer of sunshine heats up a greenhouse.
I couldn't find Trafalgar in weatherspark, but the Wanderlog gives daylength for June at 9.6 hours, maybe a little short, and high/low of 54/43 F. Those are similar or better than the outdoor temperatures here when my plants go into the greenhouse. You'll probably find that the night lows rarely drop below 50F, I reckon. At least mine runs about 10F above the outdoor, as long as there's some mass for heat capture.
As for the cold tolerance, this year for example, my 5 weekish old seedlings went out to harden off with greenhouse night temperatures running 41-43F and were not bothered. I also had a few seedling volunteers this year, which must've been from a fruit that some animal stole and dropped seeds in the horse manure pile, which the last bit got scraped up and brought in to add to the potting mix. Sunny day highs into the 80'sF caused them to germinate (in pots with brassicas) while it was still colder, and they were surprisingly just fine with night lows dropping to 39F and some cool days as well of 50 or less. WRT mature plants, I had a plant last year that survived a frost which wiped out the canopy of squash and buckwheat in beds next to them. It wasn't in great shape after a tough summer so it didn't last much longer, but I was impressed to see green leaves after white frost.
WRT setting and growing fruit, they are typical of early tomatoes in needing days over 60F to make progress. They tolerate colder days but don't make new growth. So I don't think you'd have a problem growing them in winter at all.
I'm thinking of getting a phytosanitary certificate in 2024 if that is feasible, so I can distribute some seeds of Skipper Pink and Rodney to the US. Would that be enough I wonder, to also do a legitimate import to Australia? I hope so!

[bower]

I think I can put the canopy color vs tt question to bed. The unopened bud on the dark green leafed BND F2 cherry looked suspiciously orangey, so I did a gentle pull on one sepal/petal to take a look. Definitely a dark anther cone, making this the first tt tangerine in the BND - where all the other plants have lighter green foliage. These genes don't seem to be linked at all.
Also, this plant was not marked for yellow cotyledons, and another strike against the ycot-tt hypothesis.

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[Whwoz]

@Bower, unfortunately while a phytosanitary would be a good start, there are some viruses that need to be tested for, at somewhere in the region of $3500 per lot.

[Whwoz]

Forgot to add, that last one has lead to cards becoming popular

[bower]

Oh ouch!! Indeed.

[bower]

I have a couple of better pictures of the tangerine flowers to post.
Our weather has continued cold and glum, so it's been a tedious wait for everything to open flower and/or set or grow some fruit. There are still two cherries that haven't got a flower close to opening, but all the others are open or close enough to tell they aren't tt tangerine.
My ratio of recessives is oddly skewed. So far out of 18 plants with possible sp, gf, and t recessives, I have only two tangerine and two gf. So unless the combination of gf and t looks like red, that's only half of what you'd expect. But I have six determinates, which is 1/3 instead of 1/4.
It's enough to remind me, survival of the lucky is really a bigger driver of evolution than we once thought.

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[Frosti]

Some nice pictures you got there!
The middle one shows the flowers of tangerine tomatoes really well.
Regarding the survival of the lucky ...
2 years ago I got a plant (F2) with the following characteristics:
dwarf, determinate, yellow flesh, visible (dark yellow)
shoulders when ripe, green gel.
The F1 plant had none of these characteristics. In fact, none of the F0 plants had visible shoulders when ripe or green gel ... Both of the F0 plants could be F1 themselves, not sure about that. The probability of that plant was at most 1:1024, probably less ... Im growing it again this year to see if the same features show again (maybe I harvested too early and that's the explanation for the visible shoulders and the green gel, but I doubt it).

[bower]

@Frosti that's a nice stack of recessives, alright!
I really am stuck working with very small numbers, due to small space and really variable summer conditions which don't always allow me to expand outdoors. A half dozen is my go-to number per line, and is usually, but not always enough to recover a single recessive. Some lines get shelved after the first season, if they aren't promising in the first round. Then the good and lucky lines occasionally get a bigger grow of 10 or a dozen, but strangely I've never found a dozen to be luckier than six. Just with regard to the recovery of multiple recessives, this isn't the first time I've seen a big skew between which ones are well represented, and which are no better than I expected from six.
I've also taken the approach of splitting a line between two promising fruits, doing four of each sibling. That has turned out to be a really useful approach, because the divergence of two sib lines is eye opening, even if they seemed very similar at the point of the split. So a split eight seems lucky to me, if not for recessives than for other characteristics or complex combinations of traits.
The two earliest Nev determinates, including the tt one, have a beautiful growth habit with three early clusters of flowers at the first level adding up to 16. Unfortunately while petals have reached the dropping point I am not seeing any fruit growth yet, in the frankly challenging conditions this season both foggy (dark!) and cold. So I'm anxiously waiting to see whether they've made good sets. There are already pea sized and larger fruit on Skipper Pink, Rodney and the new determinate F3 GWR bicolor Rumpus, and the ability to push out fruit in lousy weather is a box I need to check. Several of the Nev indeterminates have already pushed out fruits, so it's not impossible for the line, but it may take some further searching.
The remaining 3 Nev determinates are a good bit later (4/5 reds, one with round buds and beef type flowers) so will probably not be put to the cold weather setting test. But it would be easy to cross the tt determinate with any of the others to increase chances of tt offspring if they are worth growing on for any reason.

[Frosti]

@Bower Interesting idea regarding the splitting of a line between two siblings. I'm doing something similar with one of my lines. For that one I only had a single F3 plant last year that was pretty good but not as good as in the F2 generation. So I decided to give that generation another chance with two more F3 plants while going forward with 6 F4 plants. If it was simply environmental conditions that werent ideal last season, then Im not losing a full year.
Regarding your lack of space. Have you tried growing multiple plants in one pot? This year Im experimenting with two dwarfs in a 16L bucket. Sure its not ideal and it's very crowded, but so far the plants look very healthy.

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[bower]

@Frosti I have done cherries and small fruit as a one pot multi, but since light is the limiting factor in the small greenhouse, crowding really brings out the worst, ie long vines without much fruit. I've increased numbers using 3 gallon pots for the past two years, which did surprisingly well and were decently productive. However those were hot summers, which meant they could be productive outdoors and not contributing to the overcrowding inside. They still needed as much space and light as a plant in 5 gallons.
Larger fruited plants that ended up in 3 gallon pots and a crowded row were very light producers. That's okay if the objective is to assess all the fruit possibilities, but it also tends to prejudice me against the plant, even though it's my own fault for not providing resources. But I do also need to select for compact growth habits, and plants that get leggy and unproductive in crowded, cool and dark places are not best for me, LOL.
Your two dwarves look excellent!

[bower]

Well I thought I should clue this up by showing the F2 fruit! All came true to the color expected from flower color. But I did have one oddity - a definite pink, which I don't know where that clear skin gene could've come from.
The tt tangerine fruit, dubbed Neville's Golden Songs, was salad sized, and both tangy and sweet, so I quite enjoyed it. This plant was also the most resistant to the Alternaria blight which struck us later on in the season, so I will grow the F3 and see if that holds up.
Larger, heart shaped fruit turned up in the determinate reds. The one called 'Fruity Bowl' after the shape of the plant was really delicious, and I would grow it again for the taste, which is saying something for a red. 'Red Rambler' was bigger and very meaty with few seeds..

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[Whwoz]

Have you come across 'Orange - you Glad' @bower. I grew it last season, maybe photos in glog. Determinate about 500-600mm tall. Beautiful dark orange. Maybe of interest. Should have seed, ment to grow again this year, but never got around to it, if you want some and can't track any down. I don't take much notice of DTM, find quoted figures to unreliable around here.

[bower]

Indeed, I see they are designed for coastal climate and reported disease resistant as well @Whwoz. Will definitely keep it in mind if I need to get plant size down a bit, or fruit size up, or boost resistance by crossing with another source.
I'm planning to grow the determinate Mountain Gem (Randy Gardiner's F1) this season along with some others that are specifically bred or known to have the genes for disease resistance, so I can evaluate how my breeding lines are doing in comparison to something known.

I'm also going to try a garlic treatment for the tomato seeds, to address the risk of seedborne Alternaria.
The study I read found it to be fully effective. It is a water extract at 10 g fresh garlic to 100 ml of cold water, iirc.