Of the seeds that you saved, did you bag some of the blossoms to prevent any possibility of crossing?

I know that I have crossing in my garden, so I always bag blossoms now.

Cindy

What are the chances of getting a cross from saved seed? In my garden it is around 20%.

Unfortunately, the chances of getting stray seeds in packs from some venders is quite high as well. I think the owner ticked off the workers the days my seeds were packed.

All of these were grown from the seeds originally saved in 2005. What are the chances???

*****

The chances are that that off type Black Krim that you saved seeds from was a cross and since you're still using the same seeds all you're seeing is the F2 segregation of genes. The more plants you grow from that initial saved seed the more diversity you're going to see.

What you need to do is to save seed from fruits from one of the plants that is closest to what you want to genetically stabilize, then the f3 seeds, and continue doing that at each grow out until all seeds planted give you the same plants/fruits and the selection is then OP.

As for Purple Haze, folks are getting all sorts of interesting plants/fruits from the F2 saved seeds. if you look at the thread here about Dora I posted a link to Mulio
s site where the parentage of Purple Haze was given.

Anthony, year after year here at GW you seem to have so many problems that I have to admit that I look forward to your threads with the latest ones. LOL

Do you buy your seeds or do you trade seeds? There's a much higher shot at getting wrong seeds if you're trading seeds, but I think you know that.

As to commercial seeds, sure, sometimes there's a stray seed in there and sometimes even a whole pack of mislabeled seeds, but not that often and it does make a difference as to where you buy your seeds from b'c some places are MUCH better than others and there's thread after thread here about seed sources.

Whch year was it that the hail got your plants? ( smile)

Carolyn

Hi Carolyn. Hail was last year, a few weeks after early June frost, and before record rainfall. Very interesting to see how easily a stem turned back into a nice plant. Still, last years waterlogged plants produced better tasting tomatoes than this year's admittedly very late yet shockingly full, large, and productive plants. If someone knows what causes mealiness, I would love to know. Really is looking like I will have about 1200-1500 large mealy beefsteaks...and I hoped to avoid any jarring for sauce this year.

The weird thing about those saved Black Krim is that I saw no variation at all for the first 2 seasons (with 14 total plants in my garden and given to others), only one out of 6 in season 3, and then 4 this year. All of the other plants have produced the same round tomatoes from that one stray plant from 2005...no noticeable difference in plants size/appearance, fruit size/appearance/number/flavour. All 5 of the variations have produced very similar large pink beefsteaks. If it was particularly unstable/if some initially saved seeds were destined to produce beefsteaks, I would have expected to see it sooner. The one plant that produced beefsteaks last year was quite good (similar to brandywine/marianna's peace), so I saved seeds separately, and the plants growing from those seeds this year are producing nice pink beefs. I did not bag any blossoms this year, will save seeds from one of the round fruits as a backup, and will grow out more of the originals next year and bag some blossoms from each (and save some that come out round). Of course if the beefs turn out to be keepers I will save more of those too. I never did follow the acknowledged proper procedure of saving seeds from the most representative plant from each of the next few successive generations, primarily because I assumed it was a stray OP seed since all of the offspring for first two years were so much like the first. I have learned my lesson, though it appears to be a delicious lesson given the nice beefs pictured in the link below.

See some pics from a month ago on the below thread. Shows a few pics of one plant from saved PH seed. The second from the last picture is from saved seeds from last year's one beefsteak from those seeds originally saved in 2005.

http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/tomato/msg0700110626924.html

I purchase 100% of my seeds (except for PH and Goose which were saved by someone and sent to me...jury out on whether Goose are true, who knows if hybrid PH were also cross-pollenized). In a few cases a packet has been mislabeled, in other cases just one stray seed. However as I said this is not always a problem, I have a few good keepers as a result. I will however be disappointed if the other two Cherokee Greens start turning orangey red, and will be a bit disappointed if the RL from Green Giant is not a green tomato.

Hey, I thought you liked hearing about my assorted challenging situations and attempts to get clarification on good growing practices! I do a lot of fiddling with things, and we have had wacky weather up here...those things combined with maybe a few more than the average expected number of mixed up seeds has led to more than one BAH from me.

Anyway in the end unless things change this season might end up being the biggest tease ever...with poor expectations, very late planting, very cool nights, I somehow ended up with giant full plants...and although widespread fruit set was 3-4 weeks later than normal, the plants seem to be absolutely covered in fruit. So many others have horror stories, but I have bigger plants than ever before, more fruits per plant than ever before, and so far they are the worst tasting (i.e. flavourless and MEALY) since I started growing. It's like I have a garden full of those awful yellow pears. That is deserving of one more BAH!

Just saw the below thread...deja vous?

http://melissa-majora3.blogspot.com/search/label/Tomatoes