Radishrain

Here are some pictures of some Early Girl F1 tomato fruits from a plant purchased at either Walmart or The Home Depot, this spring.



I zapped and saved the seeds, and put the fruit in the refrigerator. I used two zappers at once, the whole time. My Z4EX, and I think zapper #6 (30khz).

I think the plant has a very mild case of alternaria (that came with it from the store). It's a good plant, though. I know the zappers seem to have been able to take care of that disease in seeds in the past.

It's awesome to finally have replenished my supply of Early Girl F2 seeds.

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I harvested some ripe tomatoes from the F2 Brandy Boy crosses, today. The one from plant B (which is potato leaf) was large and heavily catfaced with some zippering. The one from plant D (which is regular leaf) had a mild case of blossom end rot.

I ate the fruit from plant D without saving the seeds. It tasted quite good and different from its parent. I really liked it. I might describe the flavor as a beefy tomato flavor.

The fruit from plant B was difficult to seed. The stem was firmly attached to the plant, but the stem broke more easily than its parent (so, no scissors were needed). The taste was excellent: sweet and tangy! It was a unique taste. I didn't taste any of that taste that comes from Brandywine types, but I did notice some good big tomato flavor, and it was easily a favorite, this year, so far. The skin wasn't too thick. The texture was nice. Another taster liked it a lot, too, but didn't think it was as sweet as I thought it was (the taster called it a vague sweetness, but seemed very pleased with the fruit). I liked the fruit's eating qualities more than that of the parent fruit. Anyway, I saved seeds and I plan to grow them again next year. Despite the yellowish stuff in the sliced fruit, there wasn't a tough core inside; it tasted better than it looks. The hole in the skin is probably a polination blemish rather than a bite.

I forgot to assess the colors of the fruits (the camera makes pictures look more blue and less red). I think they were both pink, though.

Here are some pictures of the fruit from plant B:








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I saved a whole bunch of wonderberry seeds, today. I got about three herbal tea bags full. They were from less than a large strainer full of berries. I saved a single bag full ago this season, but I wanted a whole lot (so I can share them comfortably).

I visited some people on Tuesday, and they gave me some Tristar strawberries so I could plant them. I planted them on Wednesday (31 July) night, each strawberry in its own foam cup. There were four strawberries. I zapped the strawberries first (I hadn't zapped the Ozark Beauty or Quinault strawberries, though). They fermented in a plastic bag a bit before I zapped them.

I got some ripe Matt's Wild Cherry tomatoes, today, and saved seeds from nine of them. They had a less strong tomatine-type taste than the ones I first tried, and they tasted decently good. Some of them split after I harvested them. They weren't super sweet, although they probably had sweetness. The plant grows long vines with long internodes. It has a lot of vine for the number of fruits, but it probably doesn't smother other plants easily, due to not being bushy.




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Here's a volunteer tomato. I believe it's Husky Cherry Red F-something x Sweet Orange Cherry F2. It resembles the F1 last year. However, it doesn't have quite the vigor and production as last year's. The taste is mild. I picked some others on Tuesday. The bigger one here isn't fully ripe, but the plant usually has the bigger size. The less ripe one had a peachy taste and a crunchy texture, kind of like a less ripe Sweet Ozark Orange.




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Sausage was a favorite last year for production and ease of harvest/use, and for tolerating hot soil. This year, it's a lot meatier! The flavor was good (not the best for the variety, but it was the first fruit, and I preferred it to last year's first fruit), but it was a bit mushy. The pictured fruit was ripe at least a day or two ago. It's from a plant grown from seeds I saved myself.






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I had ripe Jerusalem tomatoes, today: a small one (riper) and a big one.  I liked the taste of the bigger, less ripe one more. The flavor didn't wow me, but I plan to grow it again. The plant was showing some mild disease symptoms: That may have impacted the flavor.


Small one:

Big one:



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So, my Black Beauty cross had ripe fruit by today. I them (there were two). One was riper than the other. The ripest one had a sweet taste to it, in a certain way (not super sweet, but definitely sweet). The less ripe one tasted the same, except with some of that tomatine-type taste (or that's what I call it) that I've tasted prominently in Coyote and Matt's Wild Cherry.

Sweetie (a cherry tomato) is the only likely candidate that comes to mind for this cross, of all the tomatoes I grew in 2017. I think Sweetie was the only red cherry I grew without anthocyanin fruit, other than some Husky Cherry Red growouts (which probably wouldn't have produced these results, and probably would have tasted quite a bit different). It should be noted that Black Beauty had surprisingly large fruit in 2017, and Sweetie had tiny fruit.

If you're interested in F2 seeds from this cross, feel free to let me know. I prefer the cross to Sweetie, but I prefer the original Black Beauty to the cross.

Here are pictures I took today of the cross. They look pink in the picture, but they looked red in person. Black Beauty in 2016 was very pink in person. The ripest one split a little while after I harvested it.





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Here is a picture of fruit from my Frosty F. House cross (it's not representative of the remaining fruit on the plant). It was meaty and quite unlike last year's. The plant is almost a multiflora.


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