garden news-the stories of these three female tomatoes

GARDEN NEWS-THE STORIES OF THESE THREE FEMALE TOMATOES

this is a photo a a star tomato that was on the central texas gardener pbs show a few years ago
my wife she was teaching in high school
she grew a tomato in their school garden
somehow when the tomato was harvested it got put on a window ledge where it got some morning sun
now
since i have lived with my wife shes refrigerator management for over 40 years i can understand how that little ole tomato got left on that ledge like that and got ignored
my wife she is good at growing things in the refrigerator but not tomatoes

one day she noticed little baby tomato seedlings growing out of the mama tomato
she and the kdis were curious about what was happening so she sent the picture to the central texas gardener pbs show 
this little ole tomato made the picture of the week

what has happened as explained by daphne on the show is a process called
vivipary
basically what happens is the tomato seeds inside that ignored tomato are moist and start sprouting
my one regret is that i didnt save one of those sprouts to plant in my garden 

i would have proudly named it 
mws tomato after my wife she
its probably the only thing she has ever planted that grew
yes her thumbs are both brown

this tomato is called a tammy tomato
its named after my wet suitcase sister in law
why she is called wet suitcase can be read about if you google wet suitcase sister in law in my search bar to the right of my blog
she always reminds of that story 

so this tammy tomato ancestor appeared growing up in her new landscape bed which had a 6 ft wall behind it
the tomato is what you call a volunteer tomato
it just popped up 
sometimes nature does a good job of planting those tomatoes and choosing what does well
well
this one produced tomatoes one season then another season 
thats two season from one tomato plant
for those in texas that will never happen there in mid to northern texas

after the second season i harvested one of the tomatoes
saved the seeds
then last year i planted the seeds and then planted the resulting tomato in my garden
that would be the child of the original tammy tomato
ie generation two

last year it grew and grew and produced tons of small to medium tomatoes
i had planned to winter it over but a big windstorm blew it over and damaged the roots
i managed to save a tomato and saved the seeds

so this tammy tomato above would be the grandchild of the original tomato
or 
generation three

the original tomato was grown in montecito think oprahs city 
it has more fog than my garden does
but it sure loved where it was originally planted
it also in my garden had a more warmer less foggy environment 
it did well

so what happens when you plant a vegetable like the tammy tomato and save the seeds each year the tomato or vegetable gets acclimated to your particular environment
ie
natural selection starts to happen
you have a tomato that does better in your garden then the original one

this tomato is called a linda tomato
the gardener next to me planted this tomato last april
it has been producing all winter long and even today has a lot of tomatoes on it
so
she agreed to let me take a cutting off of it
i put the cutting in a glass of water 
then when it grew enough roots i transplanted it into a pot
later this spring i will plant it in my garden 

if it does well i will save the seeds for next years garden
so
since its a cutting it has the same genes as the mother plant
so it would be generation one

so
next years tomato from the seeds will be the child of the mother plant
that tomato would be generation two

she doesnt know what kind of tomato it is 
so
i named it after her


a couple of weeks ago the pbs show central texas gardener did a whole show on tomatoes
it is linked here

at the bottom is a link to a video of the segment that the man i call the tomato guy did
if you are a tomato planterer you might want to watch this video

so again
this year like i wrote last year and the year before 
i plan only to plant 6 tomatoes in my garden this year
ok
so last year i planted 11 tomatoes
thats  not going to happen this year

i will plant
one tammy tomato variety unknown
one linda tomato variety unknown
one sungold since the grandkids love them as do their grandparents
one cherokee purple a second generation heirloom from my garden
one early girl
one black krim another heirloom

i promise thats all the tomatoes i will plant this year

wink wink 

the organicgreen doctor