Saturday, April 14, 2012

Mexican Queen



     This is the F2 of Mexican Queen. The F1 generation was regular leafed. My sole planting for this year turned out to be potato leafed so subsequent generations should retain this foliage.
   German Queen is a large pink potato-leafed beefsteak tomato with a mild but rich taste and a lot of flesh in comparison to the gel. The plant is fairly large and fairly resistant to disease and environmental stress. Like Marianna's Peace, which it reminds me a lot of, German Queen is a modest producer.
     Mexico Midget is a wild variety from Mexico that puts out a profusion of small, currant sized packs of flavor. Rather than the generic sweetness of most cherries, Mexico Midget has an amazingly full flavor. It also almost never splits from rainfall and is a heavy producer once it gets going. The plant itself is slow to germinate, wispy, and grows very long vines.
     Mexican Queen has a fair amount of gel and the dominant flavor is more MM than GQ. More productive than GQ but less than MM. Overall this variety seems to split the difference between the two. A fun little tomato from two great parents. Bred in the USA from Mexican and German parents.



Friday, April 6, 2012

Gimli

     This is the F3 of my cross between Large Red Cherry and Hillbilly Potato Leaf. Go here for an overview of gene segregation in tomatoes subsequent to hybridization: http://kdcomm.net/~tomato/gene/genes2.html
     My growouts were limited to a few plants per generation and so far only one plant at F3 showed any variation. Hillbilly Potato Leaf is, unsurprisingly, potato-leafed and Large Red Cherry has regular foliage. Gimli is regular-leafed and like both parents, produces a very large plant. In 2011, this was by far my largest plant, nearly twice as tall as the next largest plants. The fruit split the difference between both parents. HBL is yellow shot with orange and red. LRC is red. Gimli is a fairly uniform orange. Gimli is a very small beefsteak with a mild sweet taste that is slightly more acidic than HPL. Below is a pic of the fruit from my one variation along with some Yellow Pear tomatoes. This plant bore heavily ribbed fruits that were more acidic and had more gel. Bred in the USA.