If someone can help me, I took photos but I am not sure how to post them on the thread. I can email you if you would like to help.

If it is a PL it's important to know whether you bought the seeds as the hybrid or are using saved seeds from a trade.

I'm cutting and pasting a snippet from another place where I read/post, which discussed Early Girl is some detail. The PSR one being referred to is an OP Early Girl developed by Tim Peters and I guess he offers it at his commercial website.

here's the snippet, which should help:

The currently available Early Girl tomato is called Early Girl Improved and yes, it's a hybrid. When you grow out saved seeds from Early Girl Improved (a regular leaf type), you also will get about 25% potato leaf vines similar to PSR-37, so apparently the producer of Early Girl Improved continues to use a potato leaf line as one of the parents similar or same as one of the parent lines of Early Girl (original).

So saved seeds could give you about 25% PL plants for the reason given above, but the hybrid itself is RL.

Carolyn

Carolyn,

I bought all my seeds from tomato growers dot com. I bought them this year around January. I did not save any seeds or trade them or anything like that.

All the rest I planted are regular leaf, but the one oddball is a potato leaf.

alamo

I would like seeds from this plant. Please write my email. I will explain more.

Carolyn,
I re read your post. Interesting.

So you are saying that Early Girl is a hybrid, (yes I just checked, its called Early Girl VFF Hybrid #2783) and one of the parents of the type I bought is a potato leaf.

Hence, about 25% of the time a potato leaf may appear?

So what type of tomato is it then? An Early Girl with a recessive gene? Or is it the same name as the one parent?

What will the tomatoes turn out to be like?

PS...I sure am glad you are here! WOW. You certainly earned your title of 'tomato guru' LOL!

I can't find your email address.

Email me at alamo5000 hotmail

I will get you all the seeds you want. I have never saved seeds before...

I guess just chop up the tomato and let it dry?

Should I seperate it out from the other plants so it doesn't get cross pollenated? I am container gardening so I can put it where I want.

email on the way

yes separate it

you can find seeding saving info here
http://www.kdcomm.net/~tomato/Tomato/seedsav.html

alamo

dont remember how much genetics you recall from high school but:

an f1 hybrid should all be uniform.

speaking JUST to the leaf characteristic of PL vs RL in this instance; a PL should not show up in this F1. If it does there was a "problem". What the problem might be is speculation.

But what you have isn't an 'Early Girl'

How far away do I need to seperate it from the rest?

"So you are saying that Early Girl is a hybrid, (yes I just checked, its called Early Girl VFF Hybrid #2783) and one of the parents of the type I bought is a potato leaf?"
----------------------------------------------------------
Yes, one of the parent lines of Early Girl and Early Girl Improved is potato leafed (PL).

Like you, I have found PL seedlings in plants I have started from Early Girl Improved seeds bought from commercial vendors in sealed packages bought from racks like Burpee, Northrup King, Ferry Morse, etc.

All that means to me is that someone in some Southeast Asian seed production plantation mistakenly picked one of the tomatoes from a PL parent plant that had not been cross pollinated by the RL parent line and those pure line PL seeds got mixed into the whole batch of properly harvested F1 seeds.

I've also found PL seedlings in Early Girl plants started at commercial greenhouses and set out for sale. This too is rare, but when I examined all the plants at this one particular nursery, no a single other variety the man has started was a PL variety. I confirmed this with the owner.

I have also grown PSR-37, which Peters Seed Research absolutely described as an open pollinated derivation of the old Early Girl (prior to Early Girl Improved) and said it should be stable for PL and it was.

All of these tomatoes that were PL were similar or nearly identical in all respects to one another by comparison.

The fruit all was small to medium, red, pointed at the blossom end and zingy/sweet with no depth of flavor. I'd compare them to Bloody Butcher, Matina, Tamina, and those kind of Western European, PL, early season, open pollinated varieties that are popular here in the states for early tomatoes.

Here is a picture of one of the faux Early Girl (PLs) side-by-side with Early Girl Improved.

The tomato on the right is Early Girl Improved with its leaf shape and the tomato on the right is one of what I consider to be from stray seed of one of the Early Girl parents.

Again, this one on the left is typical of what I got on two occasions as mistaken EG, what I got when I grew out Early Girl Improved F2 seeds (25% of the total), and what PSR-37 looks like. Oh there may be some minor differences in the fruit as some are more pointy than others; but that could be climatic conditions too.

And again, I consider these rare stray PL plants from seed packs or in nursery flats to be the result of sloppy seed harvesting at the breeding fields. Nothing to get excited about unless you, unlike me, find something outrageously delicious.

You guys are waaaay too professional! LOL!

Its nice to have people that can explain this to me...

All I am after is having some different and some tasty tomatoes!

**I have 60 plants this year, 10 varieties. I started another 15 plants (variety #11) for a family member which of course I will be able to taste as well.

Alamo, let me reinforce what I'm saying ...

I used to go around every year to every place in this town where they were selling tomato plants at commercial outlets ... big box stores, farm supply stores, nurseries, greenhouses, etc. ... just looking for unusual stuff. You know, like looking for oddball misfits mixed in with the other standard stuff.

Anyway, here is another example of an oddball from either stray seed or seed improperly harvested from a parent line ... or maybe even a throwback/mutation of some sort. This plant was in a flat of Husky Red Cherry plants in front of a farm supply store that sold only commercially grown plants from some nursery down in Kentucky.

Looks like Silvery Fir Tree foliage only more delicate. But unline SFT, this plant was an upright, indeterminate with small, elongated globe-shaped cherry tomatoes the size indicated by the quarter dollar sitting next to the tomatoes.

The more tomato plants you look at, and the more seeds you start at home, the more oddballs you're gonna run across. (And by that, I didn't mean oddballs like Carolyn, Mulio and me!)

The more tomato plants you look at, and the more seeds you start at home, the more oddballs you're gonna run across. (And by that, I didn't mean oddballs like Carolyn, Mulio and me!)

****

How comforting. LOL

Alamo, in my post above I quoted someone else's information as a snippet from a longer discussion of Early Girl, so it's not what I was saying, it's what that person was saying. And all the pertinent information has been relayed to you here.

And now that I'm back at the computer I see that all of your questions have been answered, which is great.

So all I can do is to wish you good growing, for whatever it is that you're growing. ( smile)

Carolyn

Here is my list:

Sweet Gold FT hybrid (golden cherry)
Azoychka
Yellow Pear
Sungold (cherry)
Black Cherry
Opalka
Brandywine Suddith
Big Beef
Early Wonder
Early Girl

and the one oddball LOL!

I also have some Celebrity that I started for a family member that I will undoubtedly eat some of those too.

So far my plants are looking good. I am excited.

So far I managed to have a much higher success rate this year (my second year) compared to last. From when I started until having the plants set out I have had a 95% success rate.

I germinated 3 Early Girls this year and one of them is PL. I got the seeds from a SASE. I checked with the sender and was told the seeds were definitely from a retail packet and not saved seeds.

It's good to know what the mystery plant is likely to produce.

There seem to be a lot of PL plants in the Early Girl packs at commercial vendors this year - lanky ones. I bought one just for fun. Doesn't seem to like my growing conditions, but it set early fruit. I also saw a big Early Girl plant at Walmart with a branch sported to PL, but I was too cheap to buy it at the moment. Probably should have taken it home.

Same here. Planted Early Girl Hybrid seeds from sealed packet ordered directly in 2012 from Burpee. Only planted 3 seeds, all germintated, 2 were regular leaf and 1 was potato leaf.