bigdaddy,

I am growing N.A.R.X. again this Season with F4 seeds as of now:

{{gwi:25681}}

All of mine (plus ones I did for neighbors) were RL. Outstanding tomato. My F2 seeds were courtesy of TomsTrees in NJ.

Raybo

Here is a photo from last August. Almost 4 " in diameter:

Very tasty:

Raybo

bigdaddy,as long as it isn't a stray seed it's probably a cross since your at the F4 but PL being a recessive trait who knows. I know tomtrees has been growing an RL from the gitgo and calls it NAR-X which I grew last year which grew true plus the Brannar I grow which is a Red PL. Also grew a Brannar #10 Pink PL from Bill and Val McMurray last year as well. I'm sure Bill will will step in and give us his take as well.:) Anyway that PL is a F1 so maybe you could call it Bdaddy Brannar.;) Keep us posted on how it turns out. Bdaddy Brannar, I like it! Ami

Ami, I had the same thing happen at the F4 with a line I
worked with from the original Brandywine x ?(Tad?) cross
that NCTomatoman found in his garden.
Craig regrew some F3s from that line one year and had about
six different (3 RL and 3 PL) plants. The RL3 plant was the
best tasting, and so I grew it out the next year as an F4
and got PL seedlings. I doubt this was a cross at the F3, as
the fruit came out as a striped/bi-color type.
So, I think it is possible bigdaddy has a PL version of the
original BWxNAR cross.....

By the way, that F4 I grew out was a monster (1.5lbs) striped/bicolor which I'm trying to find in the F5 again this year. The F5 I grew out a few years ago produced a
small, 6oz. heart shaped striped tomato which is available
now as Striped Sweetheart.

Ahhh genetics!

Lee

Raybo, your plants look in tip top shape...Nice!

Thanx everyone, I'll report back when the fruit are ripe. I forgot to add that that first year I grew the F2's, I saved seed only from the plant I liked best. It wasn't the most productive of the 5 but they were the best tasting and beautiful looking to boot. The lone F3 plant was very ho-hum last year. I even considered not growing it again this season but I did grow another anyway from the seed of this F3 out of sheer curiousity. I found a picture of that F3 I grew last year and remember it was a disease magnet but a tremendous producer despite that. From these tomatoes I got the seeds that have produced the F4 PL plant I have this year. Pretty interesting....;-)

Hey maybe I'm gonna have to try making my own BWxNAR seeds this year...considering I am growing both Brandywine Sudduth and NAR this year. Never tried crossing tomatoes but I've seen how it's done so I should give it a try.

3/4 of the F2 seed should be RL, 1/4 should be stable RL, 2/4 unstable RL.

Unstable RL = same proportions as F2. So yes growing out a few RL seeds each year could easily get you a PL way down the line from the hidden recessive PL trait.

The way to get PL is to sprout a whole bunch of seeds from different plants and pick out any PL. Sprouting all of the original F2 seed should get you 25% PL more or less.

The way to get a stable RL is to sprout out all/most of the seeds from individual fruits and then only pick plants from those fruits that do not produce any PL seedlings. Bagging blossoms befor hand would make sure that there is no stray PL genes from another plant.

I love the shape of the fruits. I want to see moe irregular surface and not perfectly round and smooth, FOR CHANGE. Another tomato that fits into this category is "Goji Faranji"

Forgive my ignorance, but what's the difference between RL and PL other than the PL is recessive? Why is PL more desired?
Are they better fruits?

Ray, were the seeds you sent me the NARX F4s too? I have 5 or 6 seedlings started. What should I look for in the produce? I'll save seeds of course, but am not certain what I'm looking for yet other than a lot of tasty tomatoes. lol

Bencjedi...Here in my garden world I grow organic. We sometimes have long stretches of wet and humid and disease is a factor. I have found that PL plants resist diseases a bit better and are generally stronger growers. For instance, a KBX plant has a better chance at making it to first frost than a KB plant...

Big Daddy, the reason I sent out 16 - 32 F2 seeds of the Brandywine x Neves Azorean Red to each of the few people I sent them to, in 2008 and 2009, is so y'all would plant all of them at once and select the healthiest potato leaf (PL) seedlings to grow. See, if you'd plant say 20 F2 seeds, you'd likely have 4 - 5 PL vines to look at and select from.

The F2s were sent mainly to a few folks who I know prefer PL vines. But then it seems most the folks I sent them to only planted a few at once and either forwarded a few seeds to other folks or held on to the rest and planted a few the following year. This reduced the chances of selecting out PLs and increased the chances of RLs becoming the dominant selection. That's fine with me, because some of the other folks ended up with nice RL types.

I'm just sayin' what my original idea was.

We do have one really fine red fruited PL type selected out here in Indiana in 2009, and grown to the F3 in Tishomingo, Mississippi; and that I'll be growing a few examples of here this year. It's a real dinner plate sized, great tasting beefsteak on a vigorous, potato leaf vine.

And yes, there are several lines that seem susceptible to the damp weather blues like Septoria and Early Blight, but I have found a few lines in the F3 (I grew 10 plants last summer) that were very tolerant of that type of thing. And yes, those were PL vines, as a matter of fact.

And also yes, I continue to find PL seedlings out of seeds saved from RL plants which is due to exactly what Spice Ham detailed above ... recessive PL lurking under the RL expression in many of the vines.

By the way, I took that great, large red, PL F2 I was talking about and outcrossed it to a highly desease resistant, tart, red, Italian tomato, and now am growing out the F2s from that one too. Have a few PL seedlings among the mostly RL siblings to sort out for the garden this summer. I hope to capture the disease resistance from the Italian parent.

Bill, I am sorry I didn't do the grow out properly. This F1, F2 stuff was new to me and I only have space for 30 plants and that's only if I kick all my wife's flowers out of the beds! LOL

I had too many must grows to devote space to so many seedlings. I had fun sharing what I did do though. Thanx for those seeds. You are light years ahead of me in this. I only hope I might have helped a little and might be able to mooch a few seeds from some of your very best future proteges! I still have the F1's and some of the F2 seeds you sent if you'd like them back. Meanwhile I'll just grow out this one PL F4 this year and see what I get! Thanx

I think maybe I didn't explain it right. Sorry. No, I don't mean for anyone to grow out 16 or 32 plants if they don't have the room to devote to an F2 mass growout. What I meant was that I sent 16 - 32 seeds to a few folks who I know like potato leaf (PL) stuff with the thought that they would plant 16 or more seeds and then pick out the one or two best looking transplants from the four or five PLs that popped up and cull out the regular leaf (RL) stuff or give them away with the unplanted PLs, whatever.

And I don't need the seeds back, but thanks for the offer. I plan on growing the F1 again this year and saving several hundred fresh F2 seeds. If you or anyone else who wants a PL line has leftover F2 seeds, plant them all next time and pick a PL out, if you get one. Or if you have two or more RL vines growing, save the seeds from each vine separately and plant 24 seeds from each vine and pick out a couple of PL starts from the recessives that might pop up.

These seeds aren't really that precious. They're tomato seeds, not gold dust. LOL!

No, I have no problem with the way things went especially from Big Daddy who did grow out, if I remember right, five nice regular leaf plants, some of which had very interesting leaf shapes and I hear decent tomatoes. And Dan Mc__ in western Canada grew out 10 or 12 F2s with varying results, some PL and some RL, some pink some red, some great and some not so great tomatoes.

All is good with BWxNAR, far as I'm concerned. Hope everyone got something good from it and more to come. This is supposed to be fun!

My original thought was everyone picks a winner and since each resulting line is different from its sibling lines, you claim it - you name it. Be creative with the names though, so we don't all end up calling them Brannar and NARX when they should each have their own designation when stable ... 4 or 5 more years from now.

Great Bill, thanx for posting that. It's ALL good...;-)

Ah PL = potato leaf and RL = regular leaf. Now I get it. Thanks