Episode 35

Solanum lycopersicum (tomatoes) with Craig LeHoullier!

Published on: 23rd February, 2024

Craig LeHoullier shares profound insights into the world of tomato growing, breeding and tasting!

Opening tune: Solanaceae by Carmen Porter (https://carmenporter.com)

Craig LeHoullier's Links:

Craig's website and blog: https://www.craiglehoullier.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nctomatoman/

https://victoryseeds.com/

Transcript
Carmen:

Welcome to Song and Plants.

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My name is Carmen Porter.

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In this episode, I was joined by the NC tomato man, Craig LeHoullier.

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His involvement with the Seed Savers Exchange and the preservation

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of heirloom varieties and their histories is exciting and fascinating.

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He has developed cultivars, educated gardeners, and author two fabulous books.

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His knowledge and experience in the realm of tomato genetics is a wonder-filled

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adventure that he graciously shares.

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I hope you enjoy our conversation.

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So welcome to Song and Plants.

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Would you mind introducing yourself?

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Tomato man! Craig: Sure.

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My name is Craig LeHoullier.

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Some people know me as NC Tomato Man for reasons I won't go into

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now, but it's probably accurate.

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Husband of 42 years to the most wonderful woman in the world.

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Father of two great daughters.

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I cook, I listen to music and yes, I do grow tomatoes.

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wonderful.

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How did you come to becoming the Tomato Man?

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Tomato man! Craig: Oh, gosh.

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The story probably starts way, way back when I was young, 2, 3, 4 years old,

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I was very, very fortunate to have a grandfather who had a big garden and he

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would walk me through it when I was no taller than very short tomato plants.

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And then my dad would also take me to local parks and teach

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me the names of the flowers.

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And I think when I was six he dug a garden in the backyard and we

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gardened together so that , you know, to use an overused pun in a way, that

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planted the seed of gardening in me.

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And it took decades to germinate through the school years and dating and all that.

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But then when I got married, to my wife when I was in grad school, we met

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and our first thing we did that summer was have our first garden in 1981.

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And I've been gardening since.

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I think the focus on tomatoes just came from my love of

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growing lots of different things.

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And there are so many morphological and flavor differences in tomatoes.

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It's probably the ideal crop if you want to grow several thousand

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different examples of the same thing.

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And loving to cook and loving to eat, and loving stories and being able to

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save seeds and share them with people.

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I think tomatoes were the crop that chose me because of all the wonderful varieties

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that people have sent me over the years and the impact that I've been able to

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have in terms of the breeding projects I run and the book I wrote, and the

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number of people I get to associate with.

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So, um, I'm just a lucky guy.

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What can I say?

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Well, there's a lot there.

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Um,

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Tomato man! Craig: Mm-hmm.

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Just a little.

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You asked me short questions, and you're going to get several things you

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can, uh, pick or peck at, so let's go.

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Let's dig.

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What are some of the stories that you've come across, the historically

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significant cultivars that you've grown?

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Tomato man! Craig: Sure.

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Well, the most fortunate one of all was when a fellow named John Green, who

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lived in Sevierville Tennessee, decided to send me of all people seeds of what

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was at the time, an unnamed tomato.

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The letter that accompanied it said, here is a purple tomato that friends

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gave me, and it was in their family that was given to them by the Cherokee

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tribe over a hundred years ago.

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So here it is me, this letter, these seeds, realizing that me and Mr.

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Green may be the only two people in the country that have this.

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It's just a possible assumption.

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So I grew, it was amazed at that color because in 1990, the

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so-called black or purple or brown tomatoes were unknown at the time.

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It was the first one I had seen.

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Since then, I had talked to him a few times on the phone.

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He is passed on now, but it turns out he received the seeds at a garden event

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from a woman named Jean Greenley, who lived nearby in Rutledge, Tennessee.

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Jean got them from her grandfather.

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And her grandfather is the one that received them from the

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Cherokee tribe in the late 1800s.

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One of the things about my wife and I is when we have something

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great, we can't wait to share it.

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So gardeners are particularly wonderful about that.

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We don't hoard our discoveries, we drop them on people's porches

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or mail it to them or whatever.

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So I wanted to find a way to get this tomato out and about.

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I named it Cherokee Purple based on the information in the letter, and I sent it

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to my friend Jeff McCormick, who ran the wonderful seed company Southern Exposure

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Seed Exchange in Virginia at the time.

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Jeff grew it and he called me back the next year and he said, I love the flavor.

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The color's really ugly.

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It looks like what happens if you bump your leg into a table.

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I don't think people are going to accept it because of that ugly color,

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however, I'll take a chance and order it in very limited quantities

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with a strong caveat only for the adventurous in my 1993 catalog.

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And here we are, what is it, 2023.

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That's 30 years later and almost every farmer's market probably has

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somebody who's selling Cherokee purple.

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So that probably was the indication that I was meant to become involved in this,

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because somehow that tomato found me and I found a way to get it out there.

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And, you know, there's so many others.

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Lillian's Yellow heirloom, another one of my favorites, a fellow named

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Robert Richardson in New York, sent me some seeds once with a letter

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saying, I received this from Lillian Bruce and elderly lady in Tennessee.

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She received it because her sons went to local state fairs, and when they

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found an interesting tomato or some other vegetable or fruit growing, they'd

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always bring Lillian back an example and so I got to grow that and name it

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and send that out to seed companies.

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Anna Russian.

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In 1988, a woman named Brenda Hillenius sent me seeds of this tomato that

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she received from her grandfather, Kenneth Wilcox, who received it from

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a Russian immigrant in the 1930s.

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So just all of these stories, and as I'm sitting here speaking to you in

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my room, I have a box that has the letters of everyone since 1986, which

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is when I started all of this, everyone who sent me seeds through the years.

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And I need to figure out what to do with that someday, because I can't

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just let it disappear when I disappear.

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So that's one of my remaining projects is how do I make sure

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that all of the valuable historical information that I have is out there

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and available for people to look at.

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Just a little technicality.

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So when you're talking about these seeds that have been grown

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and preserved, within families

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Tomato man! Craig: Yeah.

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When you save tomato seeds,

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Tomato man! Craig: Mm-hmm.

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they're self pollinating.

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Tomato man! Craig: Right,

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So what's the difference between a heirloom and a hybrid?

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Tomato man! Craig: exactly.

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, a big difference in that hybrids can never be heirlooms because when you grow

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hybrids, and there are some hybrids I love, such as Sun gold, one of my very

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favorite tomatoes, but that tomato was created in a greenhouse by a company

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deciding that pollen from variety A, which is a secret, when applied to

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flowers from Variety B, which is a secret, and that's one of the things

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about hybrids is nobody except the seed companies know what the parent is.

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That's one of the financial advantages to the companies that sell 'em,

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or the company that creates them.

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The tomato that forms after that pollen is put on the flower the

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tomato that farms contains the hybrid seed that ends up in the packet.

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So that's why they're a little more expensive.

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You could grow sun gold and love it, but if you save seeds

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from it, you'll get tomatoes.

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But you'll get all kinds of tomatoes that vary from things that look like

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the father, things that look like the mother, and other things in between.

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So you have to be really careful if you share seeds that are safe

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from hybrid varieties because literally no one knows, what they

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will be the year that you grow them.

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And you could work on them for eight or 10 generations to stabilize something new.

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But for the purposes of this discussion, A hybrid is a created variety that you

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grow the seed and you enjoy the tomato.

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And if you want to grow it from saved seeds, good luck.

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Don't put it in seed libraries because it's not gonna be reliably reproducible.

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Whereas an heirloom has been grown long enough to have developed stable

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genomes, as long as the bees don't visit the flowers from the tomato, you're

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saving seeds from, it will breed true.

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So, there is an analogous term to heirloom, or I would say the

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opposite of hybrid is open pollinated.

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Open pollinated means genetically stable.

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You can save seeds and grow them, and they'll be the same.

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So all heirlooms are open pollinated, but not all open pollinated are

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heirlooms because some of them are still being created today and they

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just, they don't have that aura or mystique of age and longevity.

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An heirloom watch, an heirloom clock.

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Our dwarf tomato project varieties have all been created in the last 10 years.

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They're stable, they're open pollinated, but in no way are

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they heirlooms yet, because they haven't stood the test of time.

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If my great grandkids grow dwarf Kelly Green in 50 or 60 years, eh, I think

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we can call it an heirloom by then, but we just don't know at this point.

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So, you know, we live in this interesting time where because of the

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Seed Savers Exchange forming in 1975 and leading to the preservation of all

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these wonderful non-hybrid varieties, we gardeners now have the biggest

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variety of tomatoes that anyone in history has had to put in their garden.

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Which makes deciding what to grow an extremely interesting and daunting

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task any given year given the thousands and thousands of tomatoes that are

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available for us to choose from.

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One little question.

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What is the difference between

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a hybrid and cross pollinated?

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Tomato man! Craig: So a hybrid occurs when a tomato is cross pollinated.

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So if I, like I did a few years ago, one of the things I wanted

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to find out is what happens if I take two of my favorite heirlooms

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and create a hybrid between them?

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So cross pollination occurred when I took pollen from Cherokee purple and applied it

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to a flower on Lillian's yellow heirloom.

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That was the process of cross pollination.

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A bee can do that if a bee would've flown took pollen from a Cherokee

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purple flower, and then applied it to a flower on Lillian's yellow.

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And then I saved seed from it and didn't know the bee visited it.

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It would not come out looking like Lillian's yellow, and therefore I would

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know that it had been cross pollinated.

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When I'm doing crosses, I like to be the bee.

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So that I know what I'm getting.

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And it just turns out the hybrid between Lillian's Yellow heirloom and

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Cherokee Purple is one of the best tomatoes I've ever eaten in my life.

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Um, it's not available.

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It is only available in the gardens of the person who decides

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to do that particular cross.

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I'm now playing with saving seeds from that hybrid to see if I

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can develop new and interesting varieties that have that excellent

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characteristic that the hybrid did.

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So this is where the chemist or the scientist in me ends up getting

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really excited in the garden.

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And I look at my garden as a laboratory where I can do experiments and it could

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be growing a new variety someone sent me, or growing a hybrid I created, or delving

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into the mystery of what happens if I grow out the results of a hybrid I created.

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But it's as simple as that, cross pollination is the act that

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creates the hybrid variety, either intentionally by you or me, or not

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intentionally by a visiting bee.

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Mm-hmm.

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So if it's open pollinated, then is it often cross

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pollinated, if it's done by bees?

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Tomato man! Craig: So tomatoes are self pollinated the vast majority of the

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time, meaning they have this mechanism.

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Nature's provided this remarkable mechanism of pollination where as

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the flower opens the pollen releases from the anthers and brushes against

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the pistol and pollination happens.

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And if that happens when it should, even if a bee visits that flower,

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it shouldn't cause any difference because the deed's already done.

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What can happen, especially in the middle of the summertime when bees

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are really prevalent in the garden, is the bees can often sneak in with

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pollen from another variety and get it onto the pistol of the flower before

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the anthers of that flower have had a chance to do the self pollination.

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So tomatoes, I would say are self pollinating 70, 80% of the

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time in the middle of summer.

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What I've found, because I grow lots of varieties together and I'm an avid seed

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saver, is if I focus on saving seeds from the very lowest cluster of fruit,

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the first fruit to set, then I'm finding 99 plus percent or more, uncrossed

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seed because the bees are not that busy.

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When it's cool in the spring, they haven't paid much attention to the

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tomato plants, cuz those flowers are way down low on the plant.

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If you wanna prevent cross pollination later in the season, I would advise

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bagging the blossoms, meaning before the flowers open, you can fashion a fabric

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sack to tie around that flower cluster.

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Use a twisty tie to secure it.

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Let the flowers open, let the little tomatoes form in there, and then remove

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that twisty tie and the bag and mark that cluster because that means every

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tomato in that cluster will be guaranteed to be the same as the parent variety.

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You know, a lot of people talk about using separation distances, but I'm

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in my garden a lot and I know that a bee can get from one end of my

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yard to the other very, very fast.

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So even if you have tomato plants separated by a hundred feet, there's

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nothing that will stop that bee from visiting one plant, grabbing pollen,

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taking two seconds to fly that a hundred feet and apply it to another plant.

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So the two methods I use for purity are using the early fruit for seed

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saving or bagging the blossoms.

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Mm-hmm.

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You mentioned also with the hybrid that you created, then

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saving the seeds from it.

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Although they won't be true to the hybrid,

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Tomato man! Craig: Right,

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you plant them out and you said stabilizing the genetics.

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How many generations does it take to stabilize genetics in a new variety?

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Tomato man! Craig: Right.

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Well, this really is how our dwarf tomato project was devised and how we ran it.

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In that Katrina, my Australian friend who did a lot of our early crosses

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would create a hybrid and send it to me.

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And I would grow that hybrid and save lots of seed from it.

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And then I would distribute those seeds amongst our volunteers.

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And, it's really fun because it's like Mendel sitting in his pea patch.

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It follows Mendelian genetics in that dwarf tomatoes is a recessive trait.

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Tall growing or indeterminate tomatoes are the dominant trait.

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So when you save seed from the hybrid, you will see a three to one

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ratio of indeterminant to dwarf.

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So you can immediately cull out three quarters of your seedlings.

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That trait shows quite quickly.

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Then when you grow out as many dwarfs as you can fit, you find

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that you see great variation in fruit size, fruit color, and flavor.

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And that's where the fun begins.

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You start, you pick one that you love, you save seeds from that, and you grow

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some and you'll still see variation, but it will stop to narrow like a funnel.

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So basically, if you're creating a tomato that has lots of recessive

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traits, let's say a dwarf tomato with potato leaf foliage and yellow fruit,

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it will stabilize much more quickly.

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Probably within six generations, maybe 8.

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If you're trying to stabilize a variety that shows lots of the dominant traits

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like a regular leaf dwarf with red fruit, sometimes it will take 10 generations

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to get rid of the unwanted, visitors that show up other, other possibilities.

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So for that hybrid I created between Lillian's yellow and Cherokee purple,

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when I plant seeds of the hybrid that I created, I will see a three to one mixture

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of regular leaf like Cherokee purple and potato leaf, like Lillian's yellow.

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And then I can decide, I want to create a new tomato here, do I

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want it to be regular or potato?

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That's what leads you to deciding what you want to grow.

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But grow lots of them because you'll see tomatoes that look like Cherokee purple,

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tomatoes that look like Lillian's yellow and lots of color combinations in between.

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But I am looking on six to eight year projects if I do want to create a new

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stable tomato from that cross that I made.

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And you mentioned, so there's a whole variation of color that comes

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in the genetics, even though the two parents are just two particular colors.

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Tomato man! Craig: Yeah, and this is great.

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You, you are like making me so excited about this conversation.

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I'm going to try to really be as layman about it as I can because genetics

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can get really confusing for people.

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So,

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But it's important to say here, this will keep it simple.

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The way a tomato looks is a combination of different traits

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that could be dominant or recessive.

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So think a common tomato like celebrity or a big boy or better boy.

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It's your supermarket tomato, your red tomato.

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It's red because it has red flesh, which is dominant, and

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yellow skin, which is dominant.

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A tomato like brandy wine has that same colored flesh, but it's got a recessive

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trait for the skin color, which is clear.

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So the only two differences between a red tomato and a

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pink tomato is the skin color.

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Lillian's yellow has clear skin and yellow flesh.

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And Cherokee purple has clear skin and deep crimson flesh.

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It's got another recessive trait that gives it that really dark, dark color.

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So you can get combinations of skin colors and flesh colors

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that combined with each other.

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Last year I ended up with a tomato from that cross in the second

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generation that was pink, but had yellow marbling in it, in and out.

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That was like neither of the parent.

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So the genes combined in a new way.

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And in our dwarf project we had many, many color surprises.

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We would cross, just for an example, a yellow with an orange, and our hybrid

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is yellow, red by color, and then all of a sudden you're working with advanced

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generations and pinks are popping out and reds, so you never quite know.

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And gardeners who love the unknown and love ambiguity and can handle not

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knowing exactly what you're gonna get, breeding projects are a lot of fun to

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participate in because of that sense of mystery and you can't see flavor.

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So that complicates it even further.

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A tomato may look wonderful and you think, oh, I've nailed it.

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And you tasted it and it's bland as can be, like, well, the flavor genes

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did not make it into that particular selection, so we're just gonna go back

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to the drawing board and and try again.

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Then you add the complexity that you and I, for example, would eat

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the same tomato and probably like it differently because we have different

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things we enjoy or we pick up acidity or sweetness at different levels.

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So, As a scientist, I could be befuddled by the number of

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variables in gardening, but I just

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find it thrilling to tell you the truth.

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Cuz it means no, no two gardens are ever gonna be the

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same.

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Absolutely.

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And even growing conditions can affect the flavor and how

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that particular variety grows.

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Tomato man! Craig: You know, it does.

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And one of the things I think that's really frustrating gardeners who are kind

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of new at this, is they're looking for some sure things often because they're

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just starting out and they want some wins but just the fact that certain varieties

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grown in different climates, different seasons, using different cultivation

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techniques, different fertilizers, you can get great variation in results.

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And I think these days where the conditions in a given area

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are starting to really change.

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An example of that is I gardened in Raleigh for 28 years, and in 1992 when

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we moved in, we had two to four days a summer of temperatures at 90 or above.

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When we moved out in 2019, that summer we had 70 days of 90 and above.

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That heat is going to change how the diseases affect and which diseases

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affect your plant, which critters are going to affect your plant,

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cuz the populations of bugs and insects and worms are gonna change.

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The fruit set, some of the varieties that gave me 30 pounds

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a plant in Pennsylvania were giving me 10 pounds a plant in Raleigh

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because all the flowers dropped off.

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They couldn't take that 90 degree heat.

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So really a handheld recorder or a good garden log is a gardener's best friend.

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So you can take note of all these observations and then make changes

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the next year, new varieties, a different way of growing, to see

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if you can keep one step ahead and keep having successful gardens.

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And I suppose doing things like sharing seeds and growing

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heirlooms for multiple seasons.

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You can start to have them acclimatize to your growing conditions.

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Tomato man! Craig: This is a fascinating topic because what I've found is,

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it isn't so much the genetics of the seed is changing so much that

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gardeners are starting to select for certain traits that may be

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slightly variable in a given variety.

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So for example, let's say that I share seeds of brandy wine with someone in a

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very different climate and they grow 10 plants and one of them, over the course

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of a year or two does quite differently.

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What they've probably done is identify something in that array

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of brandy wine seeds that has a slightly different set of genes.

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You would have to actually do a lot of genetic fingerprinting on all of the

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seeds that we're getting from different companies to see how pure they are.

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One interesting example of this is I was working with a group from MIT and

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they wanted to look at the genetic condition of certain varieties that

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have been around a while, and one of the ones they chose was Cherokee Purple.

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And they obtained seeds from a lot of different sources,

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different companies, et cetera.

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They were looking at other varieties too.

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One named black crim that looks a lot like Cherokee purple but has a very different

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country source and different flavor.

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And what they found was about one third of the companies was not

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selling Cherokee purple, even though it was called Cherokee Purple.

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They were selling black crim.

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Another third of the companies were selling neither because the Cherokee

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purple had become so crossed up through poor seed saving over the years,

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or starting with a bad seed source.

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I got into heirlooms in the mid eighties, and it was kind of the beginning

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of the heyday of heirloom tomatoes.

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And one of the wonderful things that's happened since is so many little seed

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companies have popped up, but also the people who are trying to just take

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advantage and make a little money off it that show up on eBay or Amazon.

Carmen:

What's happened is a lot of our heirlooms had become, I guess for want

Carmen:

of a better word, polluted genetically.

Carmen:

So if one purchases Cherokee purple seed that everybody's raved about

Carmen:

and it does poorly in their garden, they can't assume that it was their

Carmen:

garden or the way they grew it.

Carmen:

They might assume that they just got a bad sample of seed and they'd want to maybe go

Carmen:

to Garden Watchdog and look at the reviews of various seed companies to see if people

Carmen:

have written in reviews saying that maybe the quality of the seed isn't up to snuff,

Carmen:

either germination wise or purity wise.

Carmen:

So it has been a really interesting struggle to see over the last

Carmen:

10 or 15 years, seed catalogs or listings online where histories

Carmen:

have been altered or manipulated.

Carmen:

The wrong variety, you can look at the picture and you know that it's the

Carmen:

right description, but it's the wrong variety or it's the right picture and

Carmen:

the right variety, but the wrong history.

Carmen:

Gardening is like life.

Carmen:

95% of the people are gonna be good actors and do their best.

Carmen:

And there's always gonna be 5% who try to take advantage and are

Carmen:

not honest or truthful, or the quality is not what it should be.

Carmen:

I would never divulge who or what or what I've found just to

Carmen:

say, beware and do your research.

Carmen:

The internet, as you know, and everybody knows, has a lot of information.

Carmen:

Not all of it's correct.

Carmen:

And, and, uh, one just has to be careful, use multiple sources.

Carmen:

But that's just the way things are.

Carmen:

Right.

Carmen:

Change is inevitable.

Carmen:

Nothing is perfect.

Carmen:

And gardening is just another one of those journeys where you learn

Carmen:

a lot about life along the way.

Carmen:

Mm-hm and even sometimes accidents happen, like you were

Carmen:

saying a bee can get in there and

Carmen:

Tomato man! Craig: yes.

Carmen:

I bought hybrid sun gold seed from Johnny's once, and I grew

Carmen:

it, it was a red cherry tomato.

Carmen:

And so happened is, and Johnny's, does not produce the hybrids.

Carmen:

Hybrids are produced by different companies, mostly in Europe and Asia,

Carmen:

and it could be that a bad batch, a bad hybridization occurred in some of one

Carmen:

of the parents ended up in the envelope.

Carmen:

So it's best to assume no harm.

Carmen:

Victory Seeds, which is one of my very favorite seed companies,

Carmen:

they're working with us on a lot of the dwarf projects, and we're

Carmen:

an amateur dwarf breeding project.

Carmen:

There's no way that we can grow thousands of each out and do culling for five

Carmen:

years to guarantee that each one of these things is gonna be genetically stable.

Carmen:

So customers will occasionally pop up saying, you know, I grew

Carmen:

Firebird Sweet, it's supposed to be pink with gold stripes.

Carmen:

Well, it's yellow and orange stripes.

Carmen:

Mike will usually send me the email and I'll say, I bet you it was delicious.

Carmen:

Sorry about that.

Carmen:

You just got a little bit of firebird sweet's instability still showing

Carmen:

itself, but save seeds, grow it.

Carmen:

You may have something great that you can work on.

Carmen:

Mm-hmm.

Carmen:

Yeah, absolutely.

Carmen:

One thing about color that I'm a little bit curious about

Carmen:

is how does the black fit in?

Carmen:

Tomato man! Craig: Black is a term that some seed savers, gardeners or

Carmen:

companies, decided to start using for tomatoes that have the dusky

Carmen:

coloring that occurs when some chlorophyl is retained after ripening.

Carmen:

So if you cut open Cherokee purple or Cherokee chocolate, it has

Carmen:

a deep, crimson red interior.

Carmen:

But around the seeds, the seed gel is greenish.

Carmen:

And if you look at the shoulder of the plant, that green retention of chlorophyl

Carmen:

gives the plant almost black shoulders.

Carmen:

But what it has done, it has created a ton of confusion because,

Carmen:

tomato colors are confused anyway.

Carmen:

Even if you look in the Seed Savers catalog, there are pink tomatoes

Carmen:

in the red section, there are red tomatoes in the pink section.

Carmen:

If I look at various seed catalogs, there are pink tomatoes in the purple section.

Carmen:

And I think the term black was intended to be used for tomatoes that are brown

Carmen:

and purple, but it has been confused.

Carmen:

And none of the color terminology is actually being applied in a

Carmen:

100% standard fashion right now.

Carmen:

And there's a lot of confusion around it

Carmen:

And there's also the indigo.

Carmen:

Tomato man! Craig: Now that, all of those tomatoes that have the truly

Carmen:

black, blue shoulders, particularly when they're exposed to sunlight, are

Carmen:

offspring of an experimental variety that was collected somewhere elsewhere, maybe

Carmen:

South America, that had a mutation or a gene that showed that black blue coloring.

Carmen:

That's been used now to breed tomatoes such as indigo rose, black

Carmen:

beauty and any number of them.

Carmen:

So that is the presence of extra anthocyanin in the plant.

Carmen:

So the tomatoes with the black shoulders are totally different and

Carmen:

completely unrelated to the purple browns, which are black tomatoes,

Carmen:

which do not have anthocyanin.

Carmen:

To further add to the confusion, though, some of those purple and brown tomatoes

Carmen:

have been bred with anthocyanin varieties.

Carmen:

So now we have black, black tomatoes.

Carmen:

I have yet to taste a dark purple, black, purple shoulder tomato that I

Carmen:

actually think is utterly delicious.

Carmen:

And I almost wonder if that anthocyanin pigment is leading to a little bit of

Carmen:

bitterness in the flesh of the tomato.

Carmen:

I actually have tried several of those varieties and I've yet

Carmen:

to find one that I truly love.

Carmen:

Have you tried indigo kumquat?

Carmen:

Tomato man! Craig: Not yet.

Carmen:

It's a hybrid, but it's a cherry tomato.

Carmen:

It's the yellow, sort of yellow orange with

Carmen:

The black or the indigo.

Carmen:

And it actually has a lot of sweetness.

Carmen:

It's productive and it also, is quite cold, hearty, cuz it's

Carmen:

usually the last one to die for me.

Carmen:

But it's harder to source.

Carmen:

I haven't found it.

Carmen:

I had it a couple years and then I wasn't able to source it again.

Carmen:

But I tried to plant out seed to see what would happen.

Carmen:

And I planted out, of course, it being a hybrid, I didn't expect to to be

Carmen:

true, but I didn't get a single yellow.

Carmen:

Tomato man! Craig: Yeah, yellow is a recessive trait.

Carmen:

So what that indicates to me is you're gonna have to grow out

Carmen:

maybe 50 of them to find a couple.

Carmen:

So I've grown about 5,000 different types of tomatoes and now of

Carmen:

course you've given me my 5001st to look forward and to try someday.

Carmen:

We actually have one called Minette that's coming out of our dwarf project

Carmen:

that my friend in Washington worked on and we're sending that up to victory.

Carmen:

So that may be one that tastes good and is yellow and is a dwarf.

Carmen:

So if you would like to try that, I will send you some seeds.

Carmen:

that would be fantastic!

Carmen:

Tomato man! Craig: Good.

Carmen:

So where do we go from here, Carmen,

Carmen:

you've taken me down in the rabbit hole of tomato genetics and, and all that.

Carmen:

But it, it's such great fun.

Carmen:

I can't wait to find out where you're gonna bring me next.

Carmen:

Well, how about where do tomatoes come from?

Carmen:

Where are they native to, and how do they end up with such

Carmen:

diversity of color and size?

Carmen:

Tomato man! Craig: Hmm.

Carmen:

Yeah.

Carmen:

Well, tomatoes seem to originate in coastal South America, probably as

Carmen:

little pea sized, weedy things.

Carmen:

They made their way up into Central America.

Carmen:

Unfortunately the way that tomatoes got into Europe were

Carmen:

through, the Aztec conquests.

Carmen:

So it was the 1580s and by that time there was a presumption, that there

Carmen:

was some, essentially breeding work being done where they were being

Carmen:

grown in South and Central America.

Carmen:

And it's not surprising because a tomatoes genome contains lots of different

Carmen:

recessive traits that can show, that can give you those different looking plants,

Carmen:

different colored ones, larger fruit.

Carmen:

Since they were growing there for probably thousands of years, it's very likely that

Carmen:

the tomatoes that made their way to Europe in the 1580s had, you know, the pomodoro

Carmen:

or the golden apple, certainly cherry sized ones, probably plum sized ones.

Carmen:

Yellows and reds probably big lumpy guys.

Carmen:

And how a lot of the different colored tomatoes, it's a rare way

Carmen:

they form, but every now and then a tomato will just throw a mutation.

Carmen:

And I'm convinced the way that Cherokee chocolate came into existence out of

Carmen:

Cherokee Purple was, I was lucky enough to grow a seed where the skin color

Carmen:

mutated from clear to yellow because everything then on has been chocolate

Carmen:

colored from that plant that I discovered.

Carmen:

So the tomato had a nice time of it, helping people cook wonderful

Carmen:

things in Europe from the 1580s.

Carmen:

And then they made their way into America probably in the 1700s here and there,

Carmen:

sprinkled around, but not in a widespread fashion as a culinary plant until

Carmen:

the mid 1800s , probably 1840, 1850.

Carmen:

Whether it was, because they were part of the nightshade family, otherwise

Carmen:

known as the deadly nightshade family, but the tomatoes considered

Carmen:

poisonous and the variety available to grow in the US was extremely limited.

Carmen:

I have a catalog from 1840 from the Breck Seed Company of Boston.

Carmen:

That shows one listing and no description.

Carmen:

It just says tomato.

Carmen:

We actually have to look at European art in the 16, 17 hundreds, those still

Carmen:

life paintings, to understand that the tomatoes that they favored were often

Carmen:

what we call the ugly heirlooms now, multi lobed, flat creased really, really ugly.

Carmen:

So the very first tomatoes that ended up in American gardens when people decided

Carmen:

they were good to eat, maybe four or five different varieties, all lumpy, all ugly,

Carmen:

lots of waste, a yellow one, a red one.

Carmen:

There was a pink called, Fiji that showed up in the 1860s.

Carmen:

And it really wasn't until Alexander Livingston decided that he could

Carmen:

create new varieties by doing what you just did with your kumquat variety.

Carmen:

He would take a variety that a seedsman was selling that wasn't very

Carmen:

good and plant a thousand plants.

Carmen:

And find one or two that were obviously far superior.

Carmen:

That became the basis for tomato improvement in the

Carmen:

US from about 1870 onward.

Carmen:

And really we're still kind of riding the wave of that, the incredible

Carmen:

proliferation of tomato varieties between roughly 1870 and where we are today.

Carmen:

Now that's not that many years.

Carmen:

So horticulturally in our country, the tomato has been undergoing

Carmen:

improvement for, you know, 150, 200 years, something like that.

Carmen:

I don't know why people never thought it was delicious in this country,

Carmen:

but that fear, fear of other, fear of poisoning, fear of the bad smelling

Carmen:

foliage, you know, people put off gratification for quite a while.

Carmen:

Hmm.

Carmen:

And so that selection process that you're talking about,

Carmen:

He would just choose that one particular plant and then bag

Carmen:

the flowers like you were saying.

Carmen:

Tomato man! Craig: He would choose that one particular plant and just

Carmen:

save the fruit from that plant.

Carmen:

I'm not sure, back in 1870, he thought about bagged flowers.

Carmen:

See, and it's interesting because if you look at old seed catalogs, they

Carmen:

didn't understand plant genetics very well because you'd see descriptions for

Carmen:

melons or tomatoes saying, you know, these seeds cost extra because we save seeds

Carmen:

of the most perfectly formed fruit on the plant to produce a better variety.

Carmen:

And of course, the variety would be no better because all of the

Carmen:

fruit, everything on a plant is gonna be the same genetically.

Carmen:

So Livingston in 1870 is the one who broke the code.

Carmen:

He's the one that realized you can't do single fruit

Carmen:

selection and get improvement.

Carmen:

You have to do single plant selection and plant breeding pretty much from his day

Carmen:

on is around finding that superior plant as a starting point to improve your crop.

Carmen:

They weren't really doing a lot of intentional crossing back then.

Carmen:

The first hybrid tomato that was sold was actually Burpee's 'big boy' in 1949, and

Carmen:

that act revolutionized tomato breeding.

Carmen:

And seed companies really focused on selling just hybrids between the

Carmen:

early 1950s and when the seed savers came on board in the mid 1970s.

Carmen:

So all these heirloom varieties, open pollinated varieties were

Carmen:

going extinct at a rapid rate because of the rush to hybrids.

Carmen:

And it was the Seed Savers Exchange that actually stopped that.

Carmen:

And now hybrids and open pollinated varieties can

Carmen:

peacefully coexist with each other.

Carmen:

And both of them are available through different catalogs.

Carmen:

So it's been a short journey for the tomato in this country, but a but an awful

Carmen:

lot of breakthroughs and progress and, excitement in just a short amount of time.

Carmen:

Can you tell me a little bit more about the Seed Savers Exchange?

Carmen:

Tomato man! Craig: Yeah.

Carmen:

Probably my favorite organization one that I have supported, so

Carmen:

strongly since the mid eighties.

Carmen:

So in 1975, there was a couple Kent Whealy and his wife Diane, and they were

Carmen:

living, I believe, in Iowa at the time.

Carmen:

And Kent was quite a visionary thinker.

Carmen:

Diane, his wife had grandparents that came over from, Germany and

Carmen:

they had given Diane three types of seeds, a morning glory and a

Carmen:

tomato and a bean, and they became centerpieces in the Whealy's gardens.

Carmen:

And Kent had to think about what if they wouldn't have given us these

Carmen:

seeds and we didn't grow them out and start sharing 'em with our

Carmen:

friends, they'd probably go extinct.

Carmen:

And then he thought about rural America and how many seed sellers or the mice get

Carmen:

in and eat the seeds or the farmers die and never pass those on to other people.So

Carmen:

the Seed Savers Exchange simply started as a mechanism to allow gardeners who

Carmen:

are maintaining wonderful open pollinated varieties to provide their address so that

Carmen:

people could request seed from them, make a list of what they have, and gardeners

Carmen:

who are part of this exchange can then share seeds, as a step to helping ensure

Carmen:

that those varieties don't go extinct.

Carmen:

So it started in 1975 as a newsletter with seven people involved.

Carmen:

And now it sends out an annual yearbook that's about an inch thick, I call

Carmen:

it the phone book of seed varieties.

Carmen:

That's where you can, you can get 10,000 different types of tomato seeds or

Carmen:

several thousand types of bean seeds.

Carmen:

In a way, it's the cultural horticultural heritage of our botanical history.

Carmen:

And I think maybe about 20 years ago, to help finance all of the work that

Carmen:

it does in terms of maintaining the database and maintaining a seed bank,

Carmen:

because if you listed varieties in their yearbook, the Seed Savers would

Carmen:

request a sample so that they could maintain it in cold storage there.

Carmen:

A lot of their samples made their way to the Svalbard vault in

Carmen:

Norway and are being kept there.

Carmen:

So they formed a catalog selling samples of some of their most

Carmen:

wonderful varieties as well.

Carmen:

So, Today the Seed Savers is the organization that runs, the sharing

Carmen:

database as well as a company that you can get really high quality open pollinated

Carmen:

varieties as well, and has also gone really big into gardening education and

Carmen:

culture and understanding seed names.

Carmen:

I've been out to Decorah Iowa to give talks a few times.

Carmen:

And every talk I give, I like to give credit to them because if it wasn't for

Carmen:

them forming in 1975, you and I would probably be growing hybrid tomatoes

Carmen:

in our garden, and little else.

Carmen:

So it was a game changer,

Carmen:

And how did the seed companies convince people to start growing hybrids?

Carmen:

I understand there's the term hybrid vigor and that you get slightly more

Carmen:

uniformity or predictability potentially.

Carmen:

But I haven't found that to be particularly the case.

Carmen:

Tomato man! Craig: neither have I.

Carmen:

So to me there are certain crops that may show a little bit of hybrid vigor,

Carmen:

but they tend to be imperfect flowered crops where you have male and female

Carmen:

on different parts of the plant, such as maybe squash or things like that.

Carmen:

But I've never seen hybrid vigor in tomatoes, peppers, or eggplant.

Carmen:

In fact, I've seen often more vigor in my open pollinated varieties

Carmen:

than in the hybrids that I've grown.

Carmen:

So there's a few things.

Carmen:

I think companies started producing hybrids because it was a way to work

Carmen:

some disease tolerance and resistance into some of the crops to get people

Carmen:

who were having trouble growing certain crops in various areas.

Carmen:

So the first ones for tomatoes were to insert, by breeding, inserting

Carmen:

some genes for Verticillium wilt tolerance or resistance, fusarium

Carmen:

wilt and root knot nematodes.

Carmen:

That was one thing.

Carmen:

The other is, selling hybrid and having people fall in love with it kind of

Carmen:

holds you hostage to coming back to the companies that sell that hybrid to buy it

Carmen:

again, because as we said at the beginning of our talk, you can't save seeds from

Carmen:

a hybrid and then call it an heirloom.

Carmen:

They don't reproduce.

Carmen:

So, probably a little bit of a financial advantage to seed companies to start to

Carmen:

sell hybrids because then you're starting to create a more certain, customer base.

Carmen:

So to me, companies like Southern Exposure Seed Exchange and Victory

Carmen:

that depend exclusively on heirlooms.

Carmen:

I really love for people to support them.

Carmen:

Because let's say you go to Victory and buy Cherokee purple, you can

Carmen:

save seeds and never have to go back and buy it from them again.

Carmen:

So these companies that focus all on non-hybrid have to trust that if somebody

Carmen:

likes three varieties, they buy from them, yeah, they'll save seed and share 'em,

Carmen:

but they'll come back to that company and maybe try three or four more varieties.

Carmen:

So it's a very different business plan, I think.

Carmen:

So I think it started out maybe in good faith as a way to to create hybrids that

Carmen:

will lead to a better garden performance.

Carmen:

But I think then the profit motive of it showed up a little bit.

Carmen:

That then started really impacting, the work that was being

Carmen:

done for non-hybrid varieties.

Carmen:

It dropped off nearly to nothing and all efforts went into creating hybrids.

Carmen:

And all of this has happened really just since the 1950s.

Carmen:

So we've seen a lot of change just in the last 70 years of gardening

Carmen:

in terms of hybrids and heirlooms and maybe today's point of Dayton.

Carmen:

There are great hybrids, there are great heirlooms, there are great

Carmen:

open pollinated and gardeners can find whatever they need to make the

Carmen:

garden, whatever they wish it to be.

Carmen:

Mm-hmm.

Carmen:

I think that there is more interest emerging in terms of seed sovereignty

Carmen:

and people wanting to be able to do more themselves and learn

Carmen:

how to feed themselves as well as develop their own (yes) varieties

Carmen:

Tomato man! Craig: Yes.

Carmen:

So I've been involved with quite a few groups in the last few years talking

Carmen:

not only about seed sovereignty, but you know, returning land to the

Carmen:

proper owners, returning the names of the seed to the proper names.

Carmen:

And I think this is all good, and I think it does make some people uncomfortable.

Carmen:

I think one example, you know, we've created 145 dwarf varieties

Carmen:

now, and one of them we developed 10 years ago was named by the

Carmen:

developer as Dwarf Golden Gypsy.

Carmen:

And two or three years ago, when I started getting involved in some of the groups

Carmen:

that some of the names of seeds that have been out there forever are really

Carmen:

quite harmful to some people culturally.

Carmen:

So that variety is now Dwarf Golden Tipsy, T I P S Y, it rhymes with

Carmen:

gypsy, however it works because Tipsy is the name of the family that we

Carmen:

created, that we bred that tomato from.

Carmen:

I've been involved with quite a few discussions lately about

Carmen:

taking a look at gardening.

Carmen:

I collect a lot of seed catalogs and some of those catalogs from the mid

Carmen:

18 hundreds to the early 19 hundreds are extremely hurtful to the point

Carmen:

where there are just many, many images that I would never show at my talks.

Carmen:

I have this saying I like to say is that gardeners may save the world.

Carmen:

They're certainly gonna change the world.

Carmen:

And I think through gardening we can heal wounds.

Carmen:

We can make things better for more people.

Carmen:

And I think all of us who garden, this is just a little something we,

Carmen:

can keep in mind to make it a more meaningful experience for us and for

Carmen:

others.

Carmen:

Mm-hmm.

Carmen:

To get back to the genetics just a little bit, what is flavor ? What is

Carmen:

playing in when it comes to flavor?

Carmen:

Tomato man! Craig: Flavor is so complex because, there are the

Carmen:

flavor characteristics that the genetics of the tomato variety

Carmen:

working with the conditions create.

Carmen:

And it's kind of like wine or dark chocolate or coffee where you end

Carmen:

up with all of these words that can describe different nuances.

Carmen:

So a tomato can be fruity, it can be musty, it can be tart or effervescent.

Carmen:

It can be peachy or sweet.

Carmen:

And there probably are some absolutes.

Carmen:

If you do inject tomato juice into a gas chromatograph, you would probably

Carmen:

see a bunch of peaks that would equate to different chemicals that actually

Carmen:

have different smell characteristics.

Carmen:

But then you have the variable of people's own particular pallets that

Carmen:

are gonna interact with those compounds.

Carmen:

And somebody's peachy may be another one's lemony.

Carmen:

Somebody's tart may be another one's sour.

Carmen:

But flavor is really the result of the photosynthesis that the plant gets.

Carmen:

So the leaves are taking in all of this energy and it's chemistry that's

Carmen:

being done in the plant, and then the tomato hopefully will reach its maximum

Carmen:

potential and take on all of these flavor characteristics that they're coded for.

Carmen:

So two more interesting points about color.

Carmen:

I think some varieties do seem to vary depending on where

Carmen:

they're grown or by season.

Carmen:

And then there are also some varieties of my collection that whether I've grown them

Carmen:

in three different gardens in Pennsylvania or two different gardens in Raleigh, or

Carmen:

here in Hendersonville, North Carolina.

Carmen:

They're always wonderful.

Carmen:

So I don't know what that is.

Carmen:

Is it just that some varieties have such strong flavor genetics that it can swamp

Carmen:

out any ill effects that the plant may suffer from less than adequate conditions.

Carmen:

So it's fascinating to me, and I've had kind of a discussion with someone

Carmen:

I met on another message board.

Carmen:

He claims that the only difference in tomato flavor is when you pick it.

Carmen:

And I've said, oh, absolutely not.

Carmen:

Mm-hmm.

Carmen:

Tomato man! Craig: You know, I've grown enough tomatoes in enough locations

Carmen:

to know that there is something to particular varieties that, that just

Carmen:

don't taste very good or so good you dream about them during the winter because

Carmen:

you can't wait to taste them again.

Carmen:

Last year when I was working with Joe Lamp'l on the course that we put together,

Carmen:

I went to his house and between the two of us, we had 15 of our favorite varieties

Carmen:

at almost the peak of perfect ripeness.

Carmen:

And we did a blindfolded tasting.

Carmen:

And it was fascinating.

Carmen:

And because I had this worry that maybe our perception of flavor is

Carmen:

influenced by our, love for the variety, having received it from

Carmen:

certain people or when we grew it, what we were doing in life at the time.

Carmen:

You know, you and I before this talked a little about classical music.

Carmen:

So I collected Mahler symphonies for a while.

Carmen:

Invariably, the first time I heard each symphony became one of the favorite

Carmen:

versions of that symphony, even if I heard it conducted by 24 other conductors.

Carmen:

So is that type of a similarity preference playing in?

Carmen:

So we did this blindfolded taste testing, and two of the tomatoes that

Carmen:

I rated a nine were Cherokee purple and Cherokee chocolate, which when I'm not

Carmen:

blindfolded, I rate a nine out of 10.

Carmen:

So I took comfort in that, that my pallet actually can relate to a

Carmen:

tomato on just its inherent basis.

Carmen:

Not that I like the way it looks, or I know what the variety name is.

Carmen:

If anybody who's listening to this or even you, Carmen, has not tried

Carmen:

a blind tomato tasting sometime it is so, I was gonna say it's

Carmen:

eyeopening, but that's a terrible pun.

Carmen:

It's eye closing.

Carmen:

But it's wonderful because you never focus so much on what flavor means to your

Carmen:

palette is when you're blindfolded and you don't know what you're eating, you don't

Carmen:

know what's in your mouth at that point.

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You end up concentrating so hard and you're trying to form words

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about what you're experiencing.

Carmen:

So that, that's a little bit about flavor from two different points of view.

Carmen:

And my last word on flavor is color and flavor in tomatoes don't correlate.

Carmen:

In my run through my galaxy of four to 5,000 different varieties, I could

Carmen:

find anyone listening on this call, bland or delicious , tart or sweet

Carmen:

examples of tomatoes in every single color in potato leaf or regular leaf.

Carmen:

It, it's like people may have blue eyes or brown eyes.

Carmen:

It's all in the genes.

Carmen:

Doesn't mean better or worse.

Carmen:

Same with tomatoes.

Carmen:

They may be an assortment of different colors and shapes and

Carmen:

sizes, but the flavor is gonna be uniquely their own, determined by the

Carmen:

genetics of that particular variety.

Carmen:

Oh, interesting.

Carmen:

That was actually gonna be my next question.

Carmen:

Like I was wondering if the green or the black would help photosynthesize

Carmen:

more sugars or just if there's any correlation but I guess not

Carmen:

Tomato man! Craig: no, none, here well, anecdotally, green flesh

Carmen:

tomatoes, I have grown very few green flesh tomatoes that I don't love.

Carmen:

And it may be because I just haven't grown enough, because it's very,

Carmen:

that's a very recessive trait, green flesh tomatoes, when they're ripe.

Carmen:

Green Giant is one of the best five tomatoes I've ever grown.

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Dwarf Emerald Giant, one of its children out of our dwarf tomato breeding project

Carmen:

is one of the best tomatoes I've ever had.

Carmen:

And Captain Lucky, which I grew for the first time last year,

Carmen:

which is a green tomato with purple swirls in it was the best tomato

Carmen:

at our blindfolded tomato tasting.

Carmen:

It was the best tomato in my garden last year out of 60 varieties.

Carmen:

So go figure.

Carmen:

It's just, you gotta grow it to try it.

noise:

Yeah.

Carmen:

So what are some, well, you mentioned a few just there,

Carmen:

but what are some standout varieties that you would recommend?

Carmen:

Tomato man! Craig: Sure.

Carmen:

Heirlooms that you'd recommend people try?

Carmen:

Tomato man! Craig: Okay.

Carmen:

I'm gonna go by color cuz that's how my mind works on this.

Carmen:

So scarlet red tomato, your typical, it's the big boy or grocery store

Carmen:

color, but these are heirlooms.

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Nepal, Nepal is the tomato that converted me from

Carmen:

hybrids to heirlooms in 1986.

Carmen:

Johnny's selected seeds still sells it.

Carmen:

I got it from them back in 86.

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It doesn't look like anything special, but it's amazing.

Carmen:

And two other reds that I would mention would be Aker's West Virginia

Carmen:

and Andrew Rahart's Jumbo red.

Carmen:

And those are the two typical big red beef steak types that, you know,

Carmen:

you'd find at a farm stand when you were a kid or off somewhere with your

Carmen:

grandparents and stopping at a market.

Carmen:

For pinks, Dester, Polish, Brandywine, and I know Brandywine is so controversial.

Carmen:

There is a lot of bad Brandywine floating around out there, but I'm lucky to

Carmen:

have the original strain that went from the Sudduth family to Ben Quisenberry

Carmen:

to a Seed Saver named Roger Wentling.

Carmen:

Then he sent it to me in 1987, and when it is having a good season,

Carmen:

it's the best tomato I've ever eaten.

Carmen:

For Purple Tomatoes, definitely Cherokee Purple, Indian Stripe, JD's Special

Carmen:

C-tex, which is a little more obscure.

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For brown tomatoes, of which there are not that many that I've had,

Carmen:

but definitely Cherokee chocolate.

Carmen:

Yellows, Lillian's Yellow Heirloom, Hugh's, h u g h apostrophe s.

Carmen:

For bi-colors, the yellow tomatoes of the red swirls.

Carmen:

There's only two that I love, and they were the result of a bee visiting

Carmen:

just the right plant in my garden.

Carmen:

Lucky Cross and A Little Lucky, they're just, they taste like a

Carmen:

Brandywine, but they've got that yellow with the red marbling in it.

Carmen:

Green, definitely Green Giant or Cherokee Green.

Carmen:

There are not that many great white flesh tomatoes.

Carmen:

Maybe Great White is the best that I've had.

Carmen:

And orange, I would say Yellow Oxheart or a Yellow Brandywine.

Carmen:

And for striped tomatoes, I would say Pink Berkeley Tie Dye.

Carmen:

So that's kind of a, a run through, just, just some of my favorites, just

Carmen:

by colors and Sungold, of course, which is a hybrid cherry tomato that none

Carmen:

of my gardens is really ever without.

Carmen:

I think anybody listening to this will probably say, yeah, we've heard Craig

Carmen:

talk about those a few times before.

Carmen:

And, You know, when I got to write Epic Tomatoes, one of my favorite parts

Carmen:

about that was being able to have these pages that I get to feature my favorites

Carmen:

that I've experienced throughout the years with history behind them.

Carmen:

So, I think all of the ones I mentioned, the vast majority are probably in my

Carmen:

book cuz I've loved them for so long.

Carmen:

Mm-hmm.

Carmen:

And is the cherry tomato size, is that a recessive or a dominant trait?

Carmen:

Tomato man! Craig: Interestingly, cherry is quite dominant.

Carmen:

So if you cross, well, here's an example: there's this teeny tiny

Carmen:

tomato that is very, very popular with people who know me called Mexico Midget.

Carmen:

And the reason it's only popular to people who know me because it

Carmen:

doesn't germinate like other tomatoes.

Carmen:

So no seed company that I know of can sell the authentic strain because it

Carmen:

doesn't meet germination standards.

Carmen:

However, I got it from a fellow in California, and it is incredible.

Carmen:

It has the flavor of a one pound beef steak, delicious tomato, in

Carmen:

this literally the size of a pea.

Carmen:

We're talking a pea.

Carmen:

so I crossed that and I do think it is very, very, closely related to

Carmen:

the ancestral wild tomato and what it probably looked like on the the coast

Carmen:

of South America or in Central America.

Carmen:

So I crossed that with a dwarf that has one pound fruit,

Carmen:

that's a pretty big tomato.

Carmen:

The hybrid was the size of a typical cherry tomato.

Carmen:

And I found this in a few other crosses I did, where I would use a, maybe a

Carmen:

one ounce plumb shaped tomato crossing them with one pound beef steaks.

Carmen:

And almost invariably, the F2s that I've been finding in F3s

Carmen:

have all been on the small side.

Carmen:

So the cherry size is quite dominant and a bit challenging to overcome.

Carmen:

If you wanna, if you wanna work the flavor of a cherry tomato

Carmen:

into a larger tomato, it's

Carmen:

gonna take a bit of work.

Carmen:

Hmm.

Carmen:

And what about in terms of the shapes?

Carmen:

What are the more dominant?

Carmen:

Tomato man! Craig: Yeah.

Carmen:

So a few things that surprised me when I did a bunch of my crosses is

Carmen:

that heart-shaped, which you'd think is recessive, is partially dominant.

Carmen:

If you cross a typical round to flattened tomato with a strong

Carmen:

heart-shaped tomato, the hybrid is gonna be slightly heart-shaped.

Carmen:

If you cross a non-striped tomato with a striped tomato, the

Carmen:

hybrid will be slightly striped.

Carmen:

So stripes have partial dominance if you cross a normal tomato with a tomato that

Carmen:

has that anthocyanin black shoulder.

Carmen:

That anthocyanin is partially dominant.

Carmen:

And the only way I really found these out was by doing the crosses.

Carmen:

Now, variegated foliage is a fun trait to play with, and that is recessive.

Carmen:

So if you cross a normal foliage plant with one that has the white variegation on

Carmen:

the green, the hybrid will be all green.

Carmen:

But then when you grow out and save seed, 25% of the

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seedlings will have variegation.

Carmen:

And once you stabilize it, it carries through for the

Carmen:

rest of your, of your work.

Carmen:

So when you stabilize a recessive trait in the F2 generation, then you've got it.

Carmen:

So with dwarfs, we cross indeterminate with dwarfs.

Carmen:

We grow out the hybrid, then we save seeds.

Carmen:

75% are indeterminate, 25% are dwarf.

Carmen:

But now you've got it.

Carmen:

That dwarf characteristic will, will carry through for 100%

Carmen:

of your plants going forward.

Carmen:

So, I'll tell you once you get into this crossing tomatoes bug, it is endless

Carmen:

infinite and can make your garden space disappear and can drive your friends crazy

Carmen:

because you start wanting to use their garden plots to run your experiments in.

Carmen:

Yeah, but could they complain if they're getting good tomatoes?

Carmen:

Tomato man! Craig: They don't complain.

Carmen:

Most people have fun, so, you know, I'll typically give a talk and talk about the

Carmen:

dwarf project and I'll get three to five additional volunteers you know, you have

Carmen:

a room of a million gardeners and one or two of them will be heirloom obsessed.

Carmen:

Same thing about plant breeding.

Carmen:

Put a million gardeners in a room.

Carmen:

One or two of them will become obsessed about breeding.

Carmen:

So it's always gonna be the road less traveled, these nichey projects,

Carmen:

but to me that's what makes them fun.

Carmen:

There's so much to learn.

Carmen:

So how can people find you in your project?

Carmen:

Tomato man! Craig: Sure.

Carmen:

My website is kind of a one stop shop, craigLeHoullier.com.

Carmen:

And on there I have a blog that I was very active in the blog last

Carmen:

year and I've taken a little break and I'll be getting it going again.

Carmen:

I have some videos of how I start seeds, the story of the Dwarf tomato project.

Carmen:

The other place to find me is on Instagram @NCTomatoMan.

Carmen:

And typically, the last three years from about March to August or September,

Carmen:

I spend 45 minutes each Thursday or Friday, usually 3 in the afternoon,

Carmen:

taking people on a tour of what's growing and answering lots of questions.

Carmen:

So those really are the two ways.

Carmen:

You know, Epic Tomatoes and Growing Vegetables in Straw

Carmen:

Bales are in most libraries.

Carmen:

Or if people do want signed copies, they can just contact

Carmen:

me at nctomatoman@gmail.com and we can, work that out.

Carmen:

So, I'm not too hard to find, although being out in the rural area and being

Carmen:

retired, And having done my two years intensely with Joe Lamp'l building the

Carmen:

tomato course, this is a year I'm gonna take things a little bit easier, so

Carmen:

Well earned.

Carmen:

Tomato man! Craig: Do more hiking in other words.

Carmen:

Nice.

Carmen:

And I'll put all the, all the links in the show notes.

Carmen:

Tomato man! Craig: sure.

Carmen:

Great.

Carmen:

This was a lot of fun, Carmen.

Carmen:

Well, thank you so much for joining me.

Carmen:

I really appreciate it.

Carmen:

Thanks for listening.

Carmen:

As mentioned, the links are in the show notes.

Carmen:

I highly recommend checking out Craig's site.

Carmen:

I grew out a few of his dwarf varieties last season and they outperformed

Carmen:

most of my favorite cultivars.

Carmen:

He's doing amazing work!

Carmen:

This was the first episode for the new tune Solanaceae.

Carmen:

If you'd like to hear the entire song, it's on my website, CarmenPorter.

Carmen:

com.

Carmen:

If you're enjoying the podcast, please share it with a fellow plant lover.

Carmen:

Let's grow this community.

Carmen:

As always, I love hearing from you.

Carmen:

Happy garden planning.

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About the Podcast

Song and Plants
Botanical musings and music
Learning the binomial nomenclature (scientific names) of biota is a fascinating way to glean insight into the natural world. Though daunting at first, they can become familiar and accessible with the help of melody and context. This podcast will present tunes where the scientific names of species comprise the lyrical content. Episodes will describe habitats, growing conditions, nutritional information, and locate species within their taxonomic hierarchy. Historical significance, interviews and anecdotal stories will also be presented. Each musical release will inspire eight weekly episodes. Come grow with me!

About your host

Profile picture for Carmen Porter

Carmen Porter

Growing up, my playground was the forest and orchard behind my house which were teeming with fascinating flora and fauna. I was the little girl singing to her extensive plant collection and pet caterpillars. After leaving home for too many years to pursue higher education and wander around the world, I returned to plant a garden. There are currently more than 500 cultivars of fruits and vegetables growing around my house.

'Song and Plants' came about when I started writing music to help me learn the binomial nomenclature (scientific names) of local biota. The podcast accompanies the tunes by providing information that extends beyond the lyrical content.