Tomatoes mostly don't cross on their own. You should be fine.

No need to make it nearly that complicated. Especially since you have a short growing season and are using a late season variety which normally don't have time to ripen sufficiently in short season locations.

Since tomatoes are basically self-pollinating, even with multiple varieties growing/blooming/setting fruit at the same time the odds of cross pollination are minimal. Check out the FAQ here on Tomato Cross Pollination.

How many tomato plants do you normally grow? Out of the 1000's of varieties available why limit yourself to just 2 varieties? Most seed savers, myself included, grow multiple varieties annually and save seed with no problems.

Dave

I've grown approximately 30 different varieties over the past 4 years, and those two were by far the best I've encountered.

I grow about 10 tomato plants a year, and felt that 2 all-purpose varieties were all I really needed to cover my needs. No need to get overly complicated.

Also, the Abes, when started indoors in April, do fully ripen in late summer. The Siberian Reds, even direct-seeded in early June here with a cool July, still ripened by the end of August!

Your choice as long as you are happy with them. But there is no need to make the seed saving so complicated either. You'll get some late fruit off the Siberians if you don't pull them.

The first Abe Lincoln's will be the best for seed saving. The later fruit is much smaller and less likely to mature to full ripeness needed for seed saving. And the chances of them crossing are essentially nil

Dave

I didn't know that the timing of fruit harvest would make a difference on the quality of the seed gathered. Thinking about it, it makes sense, but it never crossed my mind.

Thanks for the information!

I grow and save seeds for about 8 different varieties each year. I have eliminated those that don't do well for me over the years and these that I grow are favorites. I also usually try one or two new varieties each year, many times a hybrid, just to see if there may be something better.

I also feel that growing more than one or two varieties allows me to hedge my bets against drought, disease or whatever may come along, so that I still have enough for eating and preserving.

When saving seeds, I always follow that sage advice, save the seeds from the very best, regardless if it is early, mid or late season. Generally, by mid season I have identified and harvested my best of the best and fermented and processed the seeds for next season's planting and sharing.

Dave's right, it doesn't have to be real complicated.

Steve

I have never bagged seeds but I have seen little viole bags in the bead isle at Wal Mart. You could easily make a few bags even if you don't sew. I think you could get a little fine net and make a bag cheaply. If you grow 10 plants one seed saving year would give enough seeds to last a long time. They say to save seeds from several tomatoes at once so if there is a cross at least some of the seeds would be true. I think if you just grow two tomatoes that you like, a cross might be interesting anyway. I grow a Siberian that is red from Sand Hill. I see there are several Siberians. Is yours a couple inches long and longer than wide? I like mine for early tomatoes and it sets fruit in heat. The one called Red Siberian on Tatiana's site is a bigger tomato than the one I grow. I am interested in knowing the one you like. I start my Siberian inside and then put walls of water over them to have early tomatoes. Some years that helps. This year it snowed here in May very unusual.

You should look out for Bumble bees, they love pollen of any sort. I have watched BBs moving from Tomato flowers all along the row. So bagging a number of trusses would be the best if you want to ensure breeding true.

It doesn't matter if you have 2 types of tomatoes or 20 types of tomatoes near each other, you can save seeds. Tomatoes BLOSSOMS are self fertile and only outcross by accident around 4 to 5% of the time. So, even if you have different varieties planted right up next to each other, outcrosses would generally only happen to about 1 tomato in 20.

So, by saving seeds, even with other tomatoes very close by, you are going to get the tomato you wanted from those seeds about 19 out of 20 times. The other, accidentally out-crossed one, might or might not look different and taste different.

I am convinced that MOST accidental outcrosses never are detected by home gardeners who save seeds, because most of them don't know what to look for. So, it doesn't matter to them, and if it doesn't matter to them, then it probably isn't a big deal, anyway.

I beg to differ!

One year I grew Garden Peach (which I hated). It was fuzzy and didn't taste good to me.

Next year one of my favs, cherry Rosé, gave me tomatoes that looked just like the dreaded Garden Peach - yuck! You can be sure that I noticed!!!!

Linda

cherry Rosé, gave me tomatoes that looked just like the dreaded Garden Peach

That would require a genetic miracle given dominant and recessive genes so could you clarify please?

Exactly what "cherry Rose" tomato? Specific name of the variety please. There are many varieties with 'rose' in the name but nothing comes up named Cherry Rose.

There are many possible explanations for noticing something different about a fruit but cross pollination does not result in a total size, shape, color, flavor, and skin texture in one generation.

Dave

It was a cherry tomato called Rosé grown from seeds that I bought from an Heirloom seed company and grew out for at least three years. They always produced nice pink cherry tomatoes. I only grew the Garden Peach for one season because I didn't like it (and I obviously didn't save seeds from that!). It's entirely possible that the fruit were smaller than Garden Peach, I don't remember now, but they were peachy-coloured and fuzzy!

How odd that it's not possible for cross-pollination to be the problem here! I started all my plants from my own saved seeds that year and didn't buy any other tomato plants or seeds.

Linda

Well, It is generally believed that cross pollination can/will happen. Somebody mentioned 4% possibility. Even Less than one percent is a REAL probability. We buy lotto with one in 5o million probability. (!!!)
But as Dave said, the first generation of a crossed seed, is not going to take just after the Father plant in physical attributes.

So what happened?

Assuming that the pink cherry crossed with the fuzzy peach, what would the F1 result be that I apparently missed? It must have been enough like a pink cherry for me to have saved the seeds.

BTW it wasn't just one rogue seed because I kept two plants and gave two seedlings away that were all peach coloured fuzzies.

Linda

How odd that it's not possible for cross-pollination to be the problem here! I started all my plants from my own saved seeds that year and didn't buy any other tomato plants or seeds.

I'm not saying that tomato plants can't or don't cross-pollinate although the % of crossing is quite low. So low that the vast majority of seed savers don't concern themselves with it. So low that the odds of the fruit even developing and then you selecting the few tomatoes that may have crossed and developed for your seed saving is practically nil.

But even if two varieties do cross-pollinate and you do happen to save those exact seeds you still will not see variety A growing on variety B plants. You will only see some of the dominant genetic characteristics.

Red is dominant to yellow so a normally red fruit will not revert to yellow, smooth skin is dominant to fuzzy skin, etc. see link below.

So what happened? No way to know without seeing the plants at least and without a great deal more info about this tomato called Rose. Unfortunately none seems to be available on any of the standard tomato bases. There are no cherry tomato varieties named Rose' listed anywhere on any reputable tomatobase so presumably it is a name someone somewhere just made up and there is no telling what it might actually be.

But by far the most likely causes are either a) seed mix-ups where a seed from one variety gets accidentally mixed in with another variety (fairly common occurrence even commercially) , b) a variety reverts to one of its parental line, or c) a volunteer plant sprouts.

In your case where what should have been a red cherry tomato grew peachy-yellow fuzzy tomatoes the most likely explanation is a) above. Otherwise b) above is a possibility with the Rose but no way to know without knowing its parental lines.

Dave

Here is a link that might be useful: Genetic Inheritance in Tomatoes

I planted Carbon seeds that I was given and kept two plants. One plant produced abundant salad sized tomatoes that were black with green shoulders the other fit the description of Carbon which is a larger tomato. I believe the smaller tomato was a cross. The difference in the tomatoes was very noticeable. Are the experts on the tomato forums the only ones authorized to name tomatoes? It seems that people are finding tomatoes all the time on these forums and names are being given to them. You are telling this woman her tomato doesn't exist.

Yes, the cross pollination rate is usually quitelow. but if all the ovules in the tomato ovary have not been fertilized, then X pollination can still occur and even more by pollen from a different variety than the first time..

There are many variables associated with what's called NCP, natural cross pollination, so those rates depend on those variables and are not even constant from year to year in any one place.

Below I've linked to an excellent article written by Jeff MCcormack, former owner of SESE and I think it was just yesterday that I linked to it in another thread here.

Well worth reading for those who are interested IMO.

Carolyn

Here is a link that might be useful: Natural Cross Pollination

Are the experts on the tomato forums the only ones authorized to name tomatoes?

No. Why would you think that? Breeders create names for new hybrid varieties all the time. However they also document those names and the parental line names of those documented varieties and all that info shows up on the legit tomatbases that cover thousands of varieties from all over the world, even extinct varieties.

When it comes to what is supposed to be a heirloom variety that is already well documented under a certain name and then some seed vendor changes the name for some reason and distributes the seeds under that new name it helps no one. There is no way to trace the name, to learn anything about it including its genetics so they can be compared to the dominant and recessive genes of another variety. And unfortunately that is a fairly common practice with some seed vendors. They take the seeds from Rose Quartz for example and sell them as Rose or Cherry Rose or Rose Cherry in the hopes that it will now be seen as a different variety from Rose Quartz and only available from them.

You are telling this woman her tomato doesn't exist.

Not at all. Only that there is no information on any cherry variety by that name available. Therefore it's name is suspect and it could be any of over 100 different red or rose cherry varieties.

Dave

You are telling this woman her tomato doesn't exist.

Not at all. Only that there is no information on any cherry variety by that name available. Therefore it's name is suspect and it could be any of over 100 different red or rose cherry varieties.

&&&&&

I couldn't find a Cherry Rose variety either.

Linda, you said you bought them from an heirloom company. I think it would help if you could share with us the name of that company, so perhaps we can see what you bought and better understand the scenario you've given.

Thanks,

Carolyn

She grew the tomato called Rose' for three years and was happy with it. Excuse me but it sounded like you were disparaging her tomato.

Every thing you said was correct but your tone made me want to defend the poster.

Darn!

I wrote a msg thanking Dave for his link and explaining that I couldn't find a cherry named Rosé either!!! It is also rather obvious that a fuzzy yellow peach tomato doesn't sound very possible as an F1 from my pink cherry. Unfortunately, my note didn't appear.

I wish I had kept the original envelopes from the Heirloom seed company, but I had a big clean up last year and tossed them all out. Now I cannot remember the name of the company that sold me the seeds.

The tomatoes were pink, ovate, cherry-sized tomatoes that tasted good. I didn't realize that they were so unusual!

Linda

I think I might have to be on safe side and do cover bags for next year as I grow many varieties at my community garden and we are surrounded by gazillions of other gardeners tomato plants so no saying what is going on. Regarding Garden Peach, I did get different plant from my friendôs saved seed which produced non fuzzy golf ball sized bicolor, nice and tart in taste. I saved those seeds too. T&M Black Russian seed packet produced at least 3 different varieties of the plant, one of them does resemble original picture.

Garden Peach has several subset species being sold under that name by several different vendors. Different sizes, different variations in coloring, although they are all "yellowish" bicolors, and less or more 'fuzz'. It is a good example of the contamination of a variety mentioned above.. Add traders to the mix and the variety purity % falls even more.

And when growing in a community garden - so different from the average home garden - where intensive cropping and cross-wind layouts are common, bagging would be the best bet.

T&M Black Russian seed packet produced at least 3 different varieties of the plant, one of them does resemble original picture.

But do keep in mind that vendors have problems with cross-packet seed contamination. In other words it isn't necessarily cross-pollinated seed but different seeds accidentally included in the same packet. Needless to say some vendors have better controls than others.

Dave