HL2601's 150xF2

[HL2601]

Started more than 100 seeds 11/1/2019 culled to 7 final micros. First one with ripe fruit today 3/2/2020. Below are the three different leaf/growth types I found.

[HL2601]

[SeanInVa]

Looks great Heide! Have you tasted any of these yet?

[HL2601]

No tasting yet because they are ripe and bright red but still super firm- I want to see how long they stay firm on the kitchen windowsill. The 88's are doing incredibly with that.

[dfollett]

They look great, Heidi. Did any of the carrot leaf make the final cut or did they all grow too tall? They sure look healthy. How do you fertilize?

[HL2601]

The Carrot leaf did make it into the final cut. Interestingly. it was the absolute smallest as a seedling out of 100 plants. It stayed super small for a long time too, maybe first 5 weeks, then suddenly caught up. Now it is more tall than I would like but has ripe fruit and of course the great leaves. Will post pics with a ruler.

I have been fertilizing once per week with a water soluble veggie fert that was broken bag end of season deal at HD last year. I rebagged so I am not sure exactly what it is but its been good. I also sprinkle a little osmocote at repot time.

[dfollett]

The Carrot leaf did make it into the final cut. Interestingly. it was the absolute smallest as a seedling out of 100 plants. It stayed super small for a long time too, maybe first 5 weeks, then suddenly caught up. Now it is more tall than I would like but has ripe fruit and of course the great leaves. Will post pics with a ruler.

I've learned you can't always pick the micros early. Some just keep growing.

[HL2601]

From the three leaf and growth types I found in this line today I culled one type. Plants 3 and 7 were the right height but were narrow, more stick like with very curled leaves. The growth habit just isn't desirable and they were more prone to yellowing of leaves. I am now down to plants 1,2,5,6 and then plant 4 which is the carrot leaf. Here are a group of the tomatoes to compare what they produced.

[dfollett]

A quick question... What's too tall for you? There isn't a right or wrong answer. It depends on you growing conditions. How does the flavor compare with the 88X?

[HL2601]

For me-taller than 18" feels too tall for a micro. I want to be able to keep them under lights during a winter grow. During the summer I am happier to let them spread either up or out.

Taste-So far the 88x is the best. I did like 150x F2-1 and 2 and the carrot leaf can't be ruled out either. ( Still deciding about plants 5 and 6.)They are all more acid than the 88x, but I think less acid and tangy ( and more summer time taste) than say the 33x.

I did pot up the carrot leaf ( plant 4) in a larger pot to put outside. The plant is a good one. I want to keep growing it out.

A question-now that I have a carrot leaf in the 150 will the F3 from those seeds definitely be a carrot leaf too?

[dfollett]

Yes, the F3s and later from that plant will be carrot leaf. If there were potato leaf in the pedigree, I'd say there may be a very small chance you could get a potato leaf occasionally. Since there isn't potato leaf in the pedigree, the carrot leaf should be fixed. Since carrot leaf is recessive to regular leaf, there will be a chance you could get a carrot leaf from any regular leaf F3s.

[HL2601]

Thanks Dan! Another question...have I heard that sometimes flavor may not be as great in an F2 but can be better or change a lot in the F3s? I thought that may have been something folks have talked about with the DTP?

edit-maybe I should have posted this question in the interesting observation-flavor category to get that started?

[dfollett]

Yeah. we ought to get more general conversations going. To your question, I have found flavor to be quite difficult to stabilize. It is like many other traits, some stay with the line, others vanish. Things that are controlled by a single gene (like leaf type) are easy to stabilize. Once a plant is homozygous for that gene, it is fixed. Flavor is controlled by lots of genes. They don't stabilize so easily.