Are you asking for cross OP tomatoes or just talking about it? I find the most vigorous tomatoes are the F1 grow outs. I have received 2 in seed trades that were crosses and one was amazing- just like Kumato. The other was the biggest plant I ever grew. I saved isolated tomato seed and non bagged tomato seed last season. It will be interesting to see. I didn't see much for insects around the tomatoes.

Sorry for not being clear -- I was just looking for opinions/experience on how often people who save OP tomato seeds experience a "chance" cross or hybrid.

I don't bag my blossoms and haven't noticed one happen in my garden yet in 3 years of 15-20 varieties and 50-90 plants per year -- but I realize that isn't much data.

I figured the most seed saving experience is monitoring this forum, but maybe this more belongs in the tomato forum?

Interesting about the vigorous comment though -- one of the reasons I was trying to hybridize the best OP versions I plant just to see what happens...

How did you know that it was a cross when you received the seeds in a trade? Did they tell you it was a cross or was it accidental?

The crosses I have had in trades from tomatoes were accidental since the traders had no idea. It really depends on your insect activity.

Interesting, I was wondering about cross polination as I am new to growing and just started my tomatoes and peppers. I guess I will cover most and leave a few open and see what happens. Thanks for posting this dciolek.

I had a cross a couple years back that I wasn't thrilled with. I grew Anna Russian, a beautiful, early oxheart-shaped tomato. Saved the seeds and planted the next year only to find that it had crossed with another of my tomatoes, probably the Black Krim. The result was a smallish, roundish and not-so-great tasting tomato, even though both parents were delicious. As far as I was able to tell, it's the only one of my tomatoes that year that crossed -- the amish paste and opalka that I saved were the same the next year.

I'm getting commercial Anna Russian seeds this year and will have to look into bagging so I can get some true seeds for next year.

Caryl

If you haven't noticed any out-crosses, then you aren't doing it right, or you aren't very observant. I can pretty much guarantee that even the tomatoes that are least likely to outcross will do so at least 5 percent of the time (though admittedly, some smaller tomatoes with small fruit produce so many of their own blossoms they often don't outcross). But one trouble is that many tomatoes look like each other, especially for the F1 generation (the first generation after the cross), so they aren't noticed.

Here are things you can do to increase the likelihood of finding outcrosses:

1. Know a bit of tomato genetics. Plant tomatoes that are RECESSIVE in some of their obvious characteristics and look for progeny that revert towards normal. For instance Red is usually dominant, so a recessive type, such as a yellow or green tomato tends to be noticed more when it outcrosses. Plant more yellow and green tomatoes and look for strange red progeny in the grow outs.

2. Potato Leaf is recessive to regular leaf. Plant potato leaf tomatoes and look for any progeny that have regular leaves.

3. Cherry tomatoes (in my experience) will often be relatively dominant compared to larger tomatoes, so if you have LARGE tomatoes and suddenly the progeny are smaller, you probably had an outcross.

4. F1 tomato plants are often very unspectactular. They tend to look more AVERAGE in general. Often smaller (medium sized) smoother and rounder, frequently fairly productive and often of unspectacular flavor.

5. Try to plant different tomato plants next to each other. Mix them up on the rows, so large tomatoes are growing next to small tomatoes on each side, or green tomatoes, orange tomatoes and yellow tomatoes are surrounded by red tomatoes. Or the same thing with potato leaf, surrounded by regular leaf.

6. Green Zebra is "a storehouse" of recessive genes and it will frequently be noticed to have outcrossed, when planted next to other tomatoes. That is why there are so many types of plants out there like: Red Zebra, Giant Zebra, Black Zebra, etc etc.

Give some of these techniques a try and let us know. Just remember that the F1 plants are often so amazingly non-descript and "average" that they are often overlooked. It isn't until you get to the F2 and F3 generation that you will start to notice a lot of differences. (Of course this "Average" does NOT apply to certain planned F1 crosses, such as MOST of the "Hybrid" plants we grow, such as Big Boys, Better Boys, Big Beef, etc. In these cases, certain carefully selected lines of tomatoes that blend well together, and produce better than usual results, are deliberately cross bred to produce the F1 HYBRID seed. Growing out some of these is not necessarily a waste of time, since you sometimes get surprising results from the F2 and F3 and beyond for a lot of commercial hybrids. And, as far as I know, no one has YET been able to come up with a line from growing out Big Boys that resembles one of the proprietary, "hidden" ancestors of Big Boy, which is a large, spectacular pink tomato. But if you could do it, people would probably be very thankful to you.)

This post was edited by fcivish on Mon, Jun 10, 13 at 19:42