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Re: Fw: Dot's on transplanting tomatoes

Hi, everybody.  I'm pretty confused about who's talking in this post that
makes reference to mine from the past on the 'Mama Mia' paste tomato. We
seem to be starting off with
Clifford Drake <c-s-drake@worldnet.att.net>
but later a "Sue" is signing off.  Anyhow, for whatever it's worth, here are
some clarifications interleaved with these commenters' statements.

>> > Afraid I don't have a source for the Mama Mia paste tomato you're
>looking
>> > for, but I do have a question for you. You said this is a _hybrid_
>tomato,
>> > yet it sounds like you (and possibly others in the AHS seed exchange)
>have
>> > been saving the seeds from it. Did I understand you correctly?

The AHS free seed exchange redistributes seeds contributed by members and
also seeds contributed in bulk by several of the biggest seed companies, all
repackaged into anonymous brown baby-size envelopes with hand-stamped
numbers on them.  It is not possible to tell what the source of a particular
packet is.  (Unlike the Hardy Plant Society, which names the donors
specifically in their free giveaway.)

There are many hybrids offered in the AHS giveaway.  One simply takes pot
luck on the issue of whether the submitter actually grew the item from F1
seeds and kept the plants away from similar cultivars to minimize
cross-pollination or whether the contributions came from a bulk supplier and
are the real thing.

The free seeds of 'Mama Mia,' which I got from AHS in 1994, grew
successfully (as in like gangbusters) in '94, '95, and '96.  'Mama Mia' was
offered in the '95 seed exchange, but I didn't ask for it because I still
had plenty of seed from the prior year.  MM was NOT offered in '96, but I
still had *a few* seeds from '94 and they grew fine.  I realized I couldn't
count on MM from AHS and took steps to save the seeds from my '96 bushes.
And those were the ones Hubby poured into the disposal.

Very bad, but I still had good hopes that MM would reappear, Phoenix-like,
in the AHS list for 1997.

But no get.  This year, AHS reduced the number of varieties offered from 403
down to around 200.  I do NOT know what that's about, but the whole
selection was grossly inferior than in the previous 3 years.  Can you
imagine this:  they offered only 1 tomato and 1 pepper--the two things
nearly every gardener nationwide really wants to grow.  There used to be at
least 5 or 6 tomatoes and 10 sweet and hot pepper varieties.

My personal suspicion is that the seed companies contributing to the AHS
equation ganged up and told AHS that they didn't want so damn many
wonder-freebies on the exchange list as it was cutting into profits.  This
might really be the case, too.  There are over 46,000 AHS members, and they
buy LOTS of garden-related stuff every year....

>> > If so, I'd like to hear more about this from you or anyone else who has
>had
>> > success saving 'hybrid' seed. I've had plants like marigolds (that I
>bought
>> > at garden centers & were clearly marked as hybrid varieties & didn't
>seem
>> > to be mislabeled when the plants grew & bloomed) self-sow and have been
>> > unable to tell any difference in the offspring.

I'm no expert in this, but some hybrids remain truer than others over
subsequent generations.  The aster frikartii 'Wonder of Staffa' that I grew
from AHS seeds in '94 produced blue flowers (right on time, in '95, and the
correct) except for the 2 plants that produced dirty white blooms.  That's 2
in 6 outplanted specimens that failed to remain true in the F2 generation.

>>> Carol Deppe (in her book
>> > _Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties_) talks about 'de-hybridizing'
>plant
>> > varieties and it's on my list of Things To Try Sometime. The whole
>concept
>> > also makes me wonder about some of the 'truths' about growing things
>that
>> > have been handed down over the years. (No, I'm not paranoid -- just
>> > curious. Inquiring minds, doncha know?) Thanks for any input ... and
>I'll
>> > keep looking for Mama Mia -- sounds like a good one!

In 1993, I purchased Vinca 'Parasol' plants at a fine local nursery
(Behnke's, for those of you listing from the Washington, DC, area), and they
grew very well on my zone 7 hot, sunny, west-facing slope.  'Parasol' is a
big, upright plant with white blooms and cherry eyes, about the size of a
50-cent piece (i.e., big plants and big flowers for a vinca).  I did not
save seed as this was a hybrid....

In 1994, I purchased Vinca 'Peppermint Cooler' plants from another nursery
and planted them in the same place.  'PC' is also a white with cherry eye
hybrid, but the plants are smaller (much more typical for the species) and
the blooms are about the size of a quarter.

Lo and behold, around the third week in July I spied all sorts of teeny baby
vincas growing in the same plot.  Clearly these were the seed offspring of
'Parasols' from the prior year.  I let them grow on out just to see what I'd
get.

About a third of these babies produced plants with the habit and bloom
quality of the original F1 'Parasols.'  Another third produced shrimpy
plants that looked like ragged shadows of their former selves, with the same
bloom color but a jagged petal structure.  The final third produced slightly
shrimpy plants whose blossoms were entirely a midrange fuchsia color.

By the end of the summer, when all were in bloom, it was very easy to tell
the 'Parasols' and their offspring from the first-generation 'Peppermint
Coolers.'

Then in 1995, I decided to switch entirely to the hot new "true red"
solid-color vinca sold by Park's, 'Pacifica Red.'  I grew these out from
seed but was really *very* disappointed in the results.  The plants had an
unappealing light-green leaf structure (vs. the sharp dark green with white
ribs of both 'Parasol' and 'Peppermint Cooler.'  And the color was a very
blue red, somewhere between cherry and magenta.  Not at all the straight red
I had been led to believe it would be.  Additionally, 'Pacifica Red' plants
were not nearly as floriferous as either of the white-and-cherry hybrids.  I
decided not to bother with them again.

So what happened in 1996?  I abandoned all these varieties of vinca for a
bed of vinca 'Apricot Delight,' which a nurseryman told me was going to be a
superb addition to my coral and blue and raspberry color scheme.

Another bummer!  'Apricot Delight' was sickly light-green in the leaf area
and produced not to many very small (nickel-sized) blooms of an extremely
washed-out coral.

Additional years' worth of offsprings of 'Parasol,' 'Peppermint Cooler,'
*and* 'Pacifica Red' continued to pop up between the 'Apricot Delights.'
But in general all these repeaters produced significantly inferior product
to the first-year plants installed earlier in this cycle.

So--and this got awfully long--I can definitively say almost nothing on this
subject.  The Vinca Family seems to be untrue to its school while my
hoped-for experiment with 'Mama Mia' tomatoes will probably never take place.

--Janet
------------------------------------------------------------------
Janet Wintermute             jwintermute@ids2.idsonline.com
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