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Re: Rob's on open-pollination and tomatoes

Rob Loach said,
>2. In this part of the country [Greenville, SC, which is probably USDA zone
7 and possibly one zone hotter using the Amer. Hort. Soc. heat zone system],
we have *lots* of trouble raising
>tomatoes that aren't disease resistant. I've had the best success with
>Celebrity and with Sweet Million tomatoes.

Yes, Celebrity has been vey reliable for me too, though its flavor can't
compare with Brandywine.  I grew Sweet 100, an ancestor of Sweet Million,
for several years in the mid-1980's, too.  We have similar humidity-related
blight problems to what Rob deals with here in the national capital area.

>Since we can much of our harvest for use the rest of the year, we really
don't want to have a
>small harvest. Could I continue to raise Celebrity and Sweet Million but
>still have a variety like Brandywine? I figure that I couldn't save the
>seeds from the Celeb. or from the S. Million, but would they affect the
>Brandywine? I could put them about 50 yds apart, but from I've read, that
>may not be sufficient.

I had some private conversations with tomato guru Keith Dowling Mueller on
this subject last summer.  He just left North Carolina State, where he was
postdocking in tomato horticulture for several years.  And he's intimately
familiar with the literature on a worldwide basis.  He told me about a field
study from Peru where certain open-pollinated tomatoes were deliberately
planted amongst one another and then the seeds were grown out to see how
much outcrossing took place.

Almost none did!  Evidently tomatoes are not nearly as eager to mix as most
of us had been thinking.

This is good news, 'cause you'd have to own a plantation to be able to plant
varieties at the distances apart that are traditionally mandated to rule out
crossing.

Now if a bee rolled around in a Celebrity blossom and then flew over to a
Brandywine plant and rolled around in a Brandywine blossom, you would get
crossing inevitably.  But Keith told me the flower structure of many
tomatoes makes this scenario uncommon.  Guess they're mostly wind pollinated
rather than by bees or other pollenizer insects.

I think Rob can go for it and not even worry about the 50-yard spacing you
mentioned.

>3. Because of our problems here with disease (our climate in the summer
>is very hot and very humid), would Brandywines even make it? If not, what
>heirloom variety might and what would be a good source for it?

BW is a slow-to-develop heirloom in my experience.  I don't care what the
seed packets say.  I'm not getting ripe BW's on the bush until mid-August.
Therefore, I do not think that the heat and humidity, per se, will hold it
back for you.  BUT BW has very little disease resistance (maybe none).
You're going to have early and/or late blight, almost undoubtedly.

It helps somewhat to space the individual BW plants farther apart than you
might like for other varieties so that air movement within the plant
branches can make it harder for humidity-favored pathogens to thrive.

True square-footing of a Brandywine tomato, IMO, would be a mistake.

>I know that some of you are really experienced in all of this and I would
>appreciate any advice, and probably others would too. I know that I've
>talked mainly about tomatoes, but that has been one of our main garden
>crops, which last year I grew successfully in a kind of sqft method. I
>caged the tomatoes, but in groups of ten cages -- two rows of five cages,
>but all right up against each other. I hope that my description of it
>makes sense to you. :-)

Sounds like a very workable arrangement.  BW's in particular benefit from
caging as the plants get pretty big even though they don't carry very many
fruits compared to modern hybrids.  And each tomato on my plants is itself
on the large side.  Excessive or wildly uneven watering leads to a high
percentage of BW fruit with radial cracking or imple splitting of the skin.
If you can apply water to the ground rather than spraying the whole plant,
that'd be a good idea, too.

If I remember correctly, Keith Mueller's fab tomato homepage is now at

http://tomato.vbutler.com

He's living in Kansas now.  You'll find all manner of info and great links
there.

--Janet

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