Hybrids ?

[daylilydude]

OK now no rock throwin i was just hopin that this site would let me talk about hybrid maters and not be like a few that i look at (i'm not sayin names!) but there are a few that avoid you like the plague if you mention anything about hybrids ! These i grow for my own personal use and for the soup kitchen in town . I get a whole lot of maters ripein at the same time so that works out good for the soup kitchen and this year will be our very first time cannin maters (wish me luck!) we generally just freeze them for sauces and soups but my wife would like to can whole maters so she can eatem right out the jar. Now my question is does anybody else here grow them and which ones do you grow ? I'm growin some new ones to me this year they are :
Super Boy Hybrid
Early Girl Hybrid
Porterhouse Hybrid
Little Brandywine Hybrid
Now please if anyone knows of a o/p or heirloom that can give me mucho maters that ripen at the same time let me know cause i sure would try them!

P.S. If talkin bout hybrid maters is going to upset ANYONE let me know and it won't happen again ! I promise !

[Compost Pharmer]

Go ahead, talk all you want about hybrids. If hybrids work for you, hybrids work for me. Maybe we'all can learn somethin from you and your experiences growing them.
So post away.

[Pharmer Phil]

I don't understand why you'd want hybrids, they have inferior taste, and speaking for myself, I don't have any quantity issues.
Maybe a soil test is in order DLD?

[daylilydude]

OK let me splain why i'm growin dem ! First of all this is my Very first year with growin O/P and Heirloom maters i have been growin hybrids for a looooong time (better boys,celebrity's , early girl's, big boys, ect ect ) I would just go to the hardware store or Walmart and get what they had and plunk in the ground so i know i can grow those but i'm not sure about O/P 's cause i have never grown them so what i should have said was i'm growin the hybrids as kinda like a back-up cause i want to make sure that i have tomatoes for us and most definitely the soup kitchen ! They helped me and my son out when we first moved here 13 years ago when we had nothing . So every year since that i have had a garden i made sure that i had veggies to help them out. Now the other reason is taste we have no idea what these O/P's taste like so all we know is the taste of hybrids so we will kinda be experimenting with the different ones to see which ones we like best so we can go from there i'm growin 20 different o/p's / heirlooms out of the 1000's that are out there. So what i thought i would do is every year grow 20 or 30 different ones and pick out 2 or 3 of those and grow them with different ones the next year until we happen to find the ones that we like the best. Does that make sense ?

[mickee311]

I don't see the problem in growing hybrids if that's what you want to do. My tomatoes were all in containers and with veggie potting mix and my hybrids did a whole lot more at the same time than the heirlooms did. My heirlooms put out a decent quantity, but it was all throughout the late summer when they ripened, not at the same time. And I got more off the hybrids at one time than the heirlooms put together. I dunno.

[crazy1]

Well DLD, first if you're growing that many different types you will most DEFINATLY have cross pollination between the OPs' and the hybrids. So you'll never actually know if you're even eating the true tomatoe you planted. Have you had a soil test? Always a very good idea!!!!! Now I also think it's great you're helping the soup kitchen.
But look at your siggy...................Not a company that supports hybrids.
And with that many tomato types in a small area, there's really no point in saving seeds. Odds are they won't be true.

[daylilydude]

I have removed the sticky because i don't feel that my seeds would be pure enough because of the hybrids . I tried to remove my growers bio on seed savers unite forum but it says that a moderator has to do it so please remove it for me ! Sorry for all the confusion.

[crazy1]

well DLD that wasn't the idea I had in mind. But if thats what you want then OK. We like having you as part of the group. Your flower seeds are going on the board as we revamp it. So you ARE STILL IN!!!!!!
What I ment was more along the lines of how will you know what they taste like if they are cross bred. Thats all.

[daylilydude]

No crazy i removed it because i was sittin here thinkin bout what you said and it hit me like a brick that if they did cross and we sold them there it would cause alot of problems and i sure didn't want to cause any of that beings you and phil are working really hard to make a go of it . I just hope that in a year or 2 when i get some more knowledge on O/P's that i would be able to help out then .

[crazy1]

Alright Bro, as long as you know you're always welcome back in and we'll be waiting fer ya

[jack]

Gidday

Most hybrids are not viable so they will not cross with your other breeds.

[jeanette]

i plant both.. just on different ends of the garden, i liked the heirlooms, both yielded great.. i think the 'looms had bigger fruit though... and they had much more flavor.. almost too much sometimes, they seemed kinda strong and sour but very tastey..

so here's my expert opinion ;D (last year was the first year i planted the 'looms.. ;D) i'm going to plant both again..

[trudy]

DLD b4 I found the heirlooms I planted the hybrids to. I just never thought about heirloom veggies of any kind b4. I kinda like the fact that they produced all at once, but after that I still wanted mators throughout the season. Around here you can pick your own mators from farmers fields, I usually ask what variety they plant and last year where I picked was called Tallidaga (sp). Then I think year before that a farmer friend of ours had planted Amillia. Both these were large mators and sorta acidie. I grew up on hybrids so I don't mind them really. I like planting for myself the heirlooms. The heirlooms taste is better to me, an they make a great sauce. I have a small garden that some years just doesn't produce enough for my families needs, so to the fields we go. trudy

[colorado]

DLD, your tomatoes will not mix the first year out. You get what you planted. Rather hybrids or OP's. Yes, they can cross but it is the seed from those tomatoes that can be crossed. Plants you set this year if pure to start with will get you what you planted. I am setting Better Boy and Early Girl. Seed I bought. That is kind of tomatoes they will get me. Now If I save the seed from these hybrids I could get crosses or in case of hybrids I could get their parents or mixture of their parents. I saved Early Girl seed two years ago and planted last year a few to see what they would do. I got EG and I got some potato leaf EG. One other EG had nice larger tomatoes. PL had a different shape tomato. Then they say you have about 5% change of crosses if you do not isolate. My BB and EG seems to resist the virus curly top better than OP's. Yes I pull plants up and get rit of them. Roma now the bugs will take them out. Hybrids seem to be a little tougher, stronger plant. Seeds from OP's as I said have small chance of crossing but they can. But it is the saved seed and not tomato this year that can cross. Saved hybrid seeds can grow. My row of BB was a row like BB.

I saved seed from an odd OP eggplant. Those seed are sterile I think as none came up. It was a purple and green eggplant from Black Beauty. So there can be cases of freak sterile plants.

I have mixed red tomato seed I saved up and when I did I classed by size, small . medium and large. I have have a couple hundred large in the seed trays now and they will be sold for canning tomatoes. I will grow out and sell. At the price of seed it will not run me a lot of money to have a patch of canners. Normally I save seed only of one kind to a thing.

Now peppers cross real easy like but not tomatoes.

[jeanette]

i get alot of volunteer tomatoes, i pick a few to let grow, these would be like, celbs, early girl.. they are a bit smaller and the skin is thinner(i like that) but they produce like mad.. i don't recall every having any thing cross in my garden except summer squash. what do peppers cross with colorado? do they turn to some freakish thing or are they edible? gardening is so exciting..

[daylilydude]

Jeanette i'm not Colorado but peppers will cross with each other and as far as being edible well sometimes that can suprise ya ! Case in point when i was a young'en my father always grew bell peppers well this time he planted half the row in bell peppers and half in a hot pepper (can't remember which?) but any how the next year my father grew them from seed he had saved and my mother made a stuffed bell pepper with spanish rice for supper one night and my father was late gettin home so he wanted to know how come we were not eatin dem and we kept tellin him they was to hot well my proud father took a bite and decided to take us to A/W so we could eat burgers and the best dang rootbeer in the world.

[trudy]

As friend of mine years ago sent me some bell peppers that had crossed with some tomatoes. He didn't think I believed him and wanted me to see for myself. They were the shape of bells, but the inside was a tomatoe. I showed them to my boss an she was gonna send them to Auburn Univ. but I think they went bad first. Really odd looking. trudy

[colorado]

You can buy seed for tomato peppers. They are hollow like bells and you stuff with salad stuff or like you would a pepper and bake. You can get in red, green and yellow. Been around for years. These are not pepper and tomato mixed. Are a stuffing tomato. Yeah, they look like peppers but are not.

Hot and sweet peppers sure need to be kept apart if you plan to save seed. I have one crossed pepper so far and it is really nice and sweet and big. So far not tomato crosses.

[trudy]

I don't doubt you Colorado, but this peppers insides was a TOMATOE, Not hollow, had the seeds, gel coats an the whole deal that a tomatoe did, only the outside was the shape of a bell, with almost a mixed texture of a mator an bell in one. Are u saying there is a plant that produces seeds intentionally like this? Trudy

[colorado]

That is something, Trudy. Hope you saved a lot of seed. Stuffing tomato is core of seeds in the center but hollow around that. Cleans out like a pepper. I thought peppers and tomatoes were two different plant families and could not mix. Stuffing tomato could mix with another tomato I guess. Too bad your friend did not get them sent in.

[trudy]

Yeah I wish he had saved some of the seeds or I had one. Back then I wasn't into the seed saving thing. Next time I talk to him I'll ask just in case. trudy