Hi there. Nice trade list...do you happen to have a list of your tomato varieties? Also, are your seeds pure? Thanks. Feel free to look at my list...I have lots of stuff. BTW, I'm from WA too.

@joon1329

Hey there, half of my tomato varieties I grew from seeds I bought from dealers so I assume they are relatively genetically pure. The other half I grew from seeds i got from different sources, so I can't really say if they are heirloom per say (50~100 yrs of verified variety). However all my seeds are second generation, meaning I grew them myself and I carefully hand pollinate all my plants.

The ones I have verified are:

• Garden Peach, Chocolate Cherry (have small and medium sized variants), Big Rainbow, Aunt Rubys German Green, Cherokee Purple, Red Beefsteak.

The ones I got elsewhere are unique in some way, and produced consistent fruits. I don't know the variety names of most of them so I'll either describe them by visually similar varieties or characteristics.

• Bumblebee Cherry Tomatoes

1. Red with jagged Gold streaks from top to bottom, round
2. Purple with green streaks
3. Orange with red streaks from top to bottom, round
4. Red French Radish with darker red Streaks, long and thin, with a pointed end. Deliciously sweet, on par with the Chocolate cherry
5. Green French Radish with darker green streaks. Same as the red one. Tasty.

• Others

1. Indigo Rose- I have two types, one that is yellow where the sun doesn't shine on it, and another one that turns red.
2. Kellogg Orange medium sized slicer
3. Transparent yellow Roma
4. Sunny gold-small or medium variants
5. Jolly-Red with pointed end like a radish
6. Snow white-ivory yellowish small
7. Some others I can't quite recall right now, but mainly these

Thanks for the info! If you have a minute, I've got a question for you. How are you hand-pollinating your tomatoes? Do you then bag them so nothing else will pollinate the flower? I've had terrible luck bagging my blooms...only a couple ever set fruit, so I would love any advice you can give. Did you look at my list, and was there anything you were interested in? Thanks!

Holy moly, you have a lot of seeds. First off, tomatoes are a type of flower pollinated mainly by wind and bees, but in a interesting way. Most tomato flowers are autogamous (self pollinating), but require bees to initiate pollination through vibrations. As such, tomato flowers have evolved to greatly release pollen at the frequency of bee wing vibrations (the buzz buzz you hear when bees are in flowers are their wings hitting/vibrating the leaves at a specific frequency). With the decrease in bee populations, crop yields have fallen and this adaptation is part of the reason why bee's are so critical to most of our current commercial crops and heirloom varieties.

Bee wings vibrate at a medium C, which can be replicated with a cheap tuning fork on Ebay or approximated with a vibrating tooth brush from the dollar store(works with other Solanacea like Eggplants and other flowers in general). By touching the base of each flower, you can see a puff of pollen(also, you don't get pollen on the toothbrush or fork and can prevent spreading it). Tomatoes are already almost purely self pollinated due to its flower shape and hardly cross so even if it was open pollinated like most commercial varieties that are sold, it will stay genetically pure. This vibration method just increases the chance of fruit set to 99.9%. Literally, only 1 or 2 flowers fail to set every year I use this method. I also see a huge increase in eggplant productivity.

I learned this from the UW greenhouse biologists in Seattle.

You have so many cool seeds. It'll take a way to look them all up so I'll reply later with a list. Feel free to choose as many of my seeds as you'd like.

I also have White Wonder and Dragon's Egg Cucumbers, Red Currant Tomatoes which are tiny, Bokchoy, Orange Cayenne, Purple Cayenne, and golden peas

Are the Borlotti Beans p. vulgaris or are the actual runner beans of a different species?

Thanks for the info, Brandon. I have received several tomato varieties in trade that I've subsequently grown out only to realize they were crosses, so I'm leery of any that weren't isolated. It's a bummer to think you're growing one thing only to find out that it's something different that doesn't even taste good. I was aware of the way tomato flowers pollinate themselves, but I haven't used the vibration tools. Does shaking a plant or tapping blooms work also? I've also gotten good pollination on plants I've grown in my greenhouse. There aren't many bugs in there, but I do have fans going. I may have to get one of the things you mentioned and give it a try in my greenhouse. Mostly I just grow peppers and eggplants in there. I'll take a look at your list too and get back to you. Thanks!

Do you have it set up so I can send you a private message with my trade request? I don't see anywhere to message you.

@collierfarms

It is P.Vulgaris, but it is described as a half runner due to forming long climbing vines and leaves similar to true runner beans like my Scarlet Runner Beans.

@joon1329

I probably haven't set much up. I haven't used this site since high school, back when it was gardenwebs haha. I'll try to set it up soon and message you. It is a bummer sometimes, when you trade for seeds and don't get what you expected. I grew a baby boo last year that unexpectedly grew 3 different kinds of mini pumpkins(white boo, white acorn, a green yellow boo) so I couldn't trade it. I'm somewhat lenient when trading for tomatoes as their distinctive characteristics usually remain and they are hard to cross pollinate. Sometimes, people just mistake the fancy names of hybrids for heirloom varieties. Shaking a plant does increase the chances somewhat, but not much and it can hurt the plant. The $3 tuning fork can easily guarantee pollinate a hundred flowers a minute, so I usually do that since it's not much effort on a small scale. It also boosted my eggplant production from 1 to 2 eggplants per plant to 6 or 8 at a time. There are surprisingly many things in a greenhouse with wings. My greenhouse has the occasional hummingbird, and a lot of bees and insects that buzz in an out through the tiniest gaps. Tomatoes set with wind too, so your fans might work. Personally, I prefer hand pollinating them everyday in still weather to prevent pollen from flying with the wind and to ensure that flowers are self pollinated. My grandfathers orchard in eastern washington uses several dozen bee hives, so if you have farms nearby you probably don't lack in bees.