If you plan to save seeds from your OP tomato plants, and want pure seeds with little chance of crosses, it's time to watch your plants carefully. They should be setting flowers or close to it. You want to bag them before they open to prevent any pollinating insects from reaching them. Potato leaf plants are more susceptible to cross pollination than regular leaf plants, but the insects are certainly active in my yard right now. It's open season on all my plants!
The flowers on the Black Pear are already open, so it's too late to bag them. I'll have to catch the next batch of flowers.
These buds are almost ready to be bagged. This year I will try to ensure that everything I save seed from is bagged, so that everything is guaranteed pure - for myself and for trades or give aways.
Full view of one of the raised beds, with the plants in all their glory. I always find it interesting how the rate of growth can vary so much, even between the same variety. I have one Prudens Purple that is more than double the size of another. They all received the same compost and epsom salt in the planting hole, so it's pretty much strictly genetics of those particular plants.This is the patch of Swiss Chard that provided us with our first salad greens. We also threw in some chives and green onions, and spinach and lettuce from the grid garden.
And yes, those are some poor little orphan tomato plants, who have not made it out of the starter trays. I don't know that they will either. I still have probably over two hundred plants, either in 4inch pots, or in starter cells. I don't have room for many more in the garden, and I don't want to grow more than 20 or so in large gallon pots, so I guess some of these babies are going to be compost soon. It sounds silly, but I hate to do that. It feels criminal to compost these little plants that I've grown from seed.
3 comments:
I kept begging people - neighbours, friends and relatives - to take my extra plants off my hands. I finally got rid of the last of my extra tomato plants today!
I'm curious about harvesting seeds from the closed blooms. How does it work exactly? Should the flower look like it does in this first photo here? And then I throw the whole bloom in a bag? Doesn't it rot?
Gillian
Hi Gillian.
I should have been clearer. You don't harvest the blossoms, you cover them with nylon, tulle, mesh, some kind of physical barrier, so the insects can't get at the blossoms. Once the tomatoes start forming, you remove the 'bag' and allow the tomato to mature naturally on the vine. Tie it off with some ribbon or string so that you know exactly which fruits are pure to harvest the seed from. You should also gently shake the blossoms, so they will self pollinate (as tomato do). I think the rate for Regular Leaf plants is 96-98 % pure, even without bagging, but much lower for Potato Leaf plants. But if you want to be %100 pure, (to save a variety, for trades, or selling seeds) bagging will pretty much guarantee purity of the seed. I'll have to post some pictures when I do it!
Gawd, I'm so behind! I bought tulle fabric in the States a couple of weeks ago (dark green to match the tomato leaves no less) and I still have to get around to cutting and sewing them up into little bags. Gah!
Like you I missed the first set of blooms but I've decided not to care. I'll definitely be ready for the next set!
I know what you mean about composting those little extra plants. It's so hard to do! That's probably why they're all still out on my deck, waiting for the day they get pitched.
:(
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