In the April 2020 issue of Growing For Market, I focused on the selection side of tomato breeding. In this follow-up article, I will discuss how to make crosses and manage breeding projects. The nuts and bolts of crossing tomatoes Crossing two different tomato varieties can be done by physically moving pollen from the flower of one variety to the flower of another. This is accomplished in a series of steps. First, one variety is chosen to be the mother and another the father. I like to use smaller-fruited varieties as mothers. This seems counterintuitive, but from experience I have found that large beefsteaks produce fewer seeds per fruit and take longer to ripen.