Market Farming

["Christine & Marlin" <glenecofarm AT planetcomm.net>]

Dear Lucy,

Thank you for sharing your experiences with tomato crossing and your
suggestions.  I think I will copy what you wrote over to a Word document so
I can look it over again as next year approaches.  In one way or another I
plan to play with this thing for a couple of years.

Your experiences are really interesting.  It reminds me of an experience I
had about 40 years ago as a teenager when I discovered an accidental cross
of strawberry popcorn with a sweet corn variety I can no longer remember and
planted the seed the following year. I got all kinds of crazy expressions
and combinations of the widely divergent traits of the two types, none of
them close to desirable.  However I did observe something reasonably close
to a Mendelian distribution of some things such as ear length, kernel color,
and shuck length.  What intrigued me most was the appearance of a few
bicolored ears (yellow and white kernels), peculiar to neither variety.  I
didn't carry the experiment into a second year.

Oh by the way did I thank you for your help and suggestions for setting up
my blog? If not, you have it now.  I have looked at yours several times and
have gotten a few ideas for mine.  I have yet to successfully post links to
my blog and have not tried much lately as I have limited time to fool with
it. That is also the reason I have not posted an awfully lot recently.  I
hope to do more after the end of the season when I have a little more time
and a digital camera.  Here is the handle in case you may have lost it and
would like to look at my most recent "musings".  www.gleneco.blogspot.com
If you want to post the link on your blog, you have my permission.

Marlin Burkholder

It should work but it will take you at least 5 years to get a stable 
type. I had opalka cross with pink brandywine and now get striped 
tomatoes that look like neither parent in shape. the plants themselves 
are not like either parent either looking more like a sungold cherry tom 
plant more than anything. I am on year 3 for stabilizing this cross and 
seem to have mostly striped fruit this year. Last year I had all sorts 
of fruits from round small red to oblong pinks to this sort of peach 
shaped striped fruit. I believe I counted 8 different expressions in the 
fruit. This year I seem to have either pink or stripped roundish fruits 
with a pointed end, all softball sized or larger.

The one thing I did not do right was the first year I did not plant 
enough of these. I believe I planted about 300 seeds and kept about 50 
plants. If I were to do this again I would plant around 2000 seeds and 
transplant 1000 plants rouging out the plants I did not like after the 
fruit appears-I would not go by just the potato leaf trait, you might 
just destroy your best plants if that is the sole criteria. I'd wait it 
out until you start getting ripe fruit the first year. The second year 
you can be far more draconian with rouging because you should have a 
much better idea of what you want/what to expect.

Lucy Goodman
Boulder Belt Eco-Farm
Eaton, OH
http://boulerbelt.blogspot.com