Weird tomato

One of my San Marzano tomatoes has different leaves , heart shaped rather than lobed like all the rest . Wonder what it'll grow ? Guess I'll just have to wait and see ... I have that seedling marked , and plan to keep track of where it gets planted . Pretty much everything has come up now except the anaheims and jalapenos , but they'll get there . Some of the tomatoes are almost 4" tall now . Hopefully I can get to the end of February before I have to go to the 4" pots . By then I'll have my "little greenhouse" built onto the south side of the house and will have room for them .

Reply to
Terry Coombs
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Could be a sport or even something weird, happens from time to time. Our little tomatoes are about three inches tall now, will be planting out soon. Temperature here at 1453 was 82F, nice sunshine, light wind out of the north,forecast is more of the same this week. Should be planting out by mid-February or, at the latest, March 1.

Still harvesting winter crops but they will start seed stalks with all the heat soon. Still lots of beets, cabbage, etc. may have to offer some to neighbors as the kids, etc. are getting tired of it. Some of the grands would rather eat at Mickey D's rather than out of our garden. Young people, huff da!

George

Reply to
George Shirley

that is part of the fun of gardening. :)

i've never tried to sprout pepper seeds in warm water, but i wonder if that would work, an airstone, small aquarium heater and a close eye on the water quality. hmm... wish i had more space for playing here.....

there's a mosquito buzzing around. must be a male, it's not biting.

songbird

Reply to
songbird

Sounds like "Potato Leafed," usually a trait of older heirlooms. Either a cross or a sport. Could be interesting...

Reply to
Gary Woods

You and George both used the term "sport" . I've heard the term , but am unsure of it's meaning . These were all open pollinated seeds I got on the internet and I have been very pleased with the germination rates , easily

99% in the ones i got . It'd be nice I guess if this were a throwback . It'll be planted and monitored , it's got me curiouser and more curiouser !
Reply to
Terry Coombs

AKA "mutation;" a spontaneous change. More likely, though tomatoes don't cross easily, a stray grain of pollen from across the field. Things like this are always fun to follow.

Reply to
Gary Woods

I've read the other replies in the thread, (and certainly agree that it's possible that it could be a sport - but it could also be some other things) but at 4 inches high, that is still a fairly tiny tomato plant. How sure are you that this tiny tom. has yet developed it's proper leaves as opposed to possibly more juvenile leaves?

Reply to
Fran Farmer

A sport is a natural hybrid, one that mankind didn't breed to be different. Occurs frequently in nature. When I was hybridizing chile plants I would occasionally get a plant that was not like the parent plants in any way. Sometimes they worked out fine sometimes they were totally useless. Ma Nature works in mysterious ways to confuse humans. I think it may be deliberate.

Stay curious and you might find the latest high dollar plant for the whole world. When early man first began actually planting wild seed to grow for food he or she also started manipulating the plants to get better yield, taste, etc. It ain't over yet.

Reply to
George Shirley

That sounds pretty normal for a given package of seeds.

Several years ago my gave up on buying packages of Blue Lake pole green bean seed. Usually 3 out of 8 plants would be some other kind of bean. So now we let some of the pods mature and save their seeds for next year.

Last year we planted acorn squash seeds. Pulled all but two. One turned out to be cross with a pumpkin. Huge acorn squash that were hollow and tasted like pumpkin. Deer got all the rest.

Each seed in a tomato is from a different particle of pollen on the mother flower. You never know where the insect has been before it got to the flower that was the source of your seed.

My wife has some tomato plants germinated and a couple of egg plants. Still 2 months away from when we can work the garden and plant the early stuff here in the Central Oregon desert.

Did you get my email relating to the Coombs ferry on the White river in Missouri?

Paul

Reply to
Paul Drahn

That isn't my understanding of the term. You can get sports on only one part of a plant, say one branch, which says to me it is a spontaneous mutation that has happened during the growth of the plant affecting the cells descended from that mutant but not the rest. A wild hybrid would affect the genes of the whole plant not just part.

Reply to
David Hare-Scott

It is easy to work that out. There are exactly one pair of cotyledons which will be at the bottom. Any above that are true leaves.

Reply to
David Hare-Scott

Around here both of those equal a sport as far as I know.

Reply to
George Shirley

So far there are four true leaves , all heart-shaped .

Reply to
Terry Coombs

Nope , did you send it to the msn.com email address ? If not , send me one there and I'll respond with the one I use as my primary .

Reply to
Terry Coombs

Paul Drahn wrote: ...

i've never had that poor of results from seed packages of any kind. i don't buy too many each season so perhaps i avoid it that ways.

last year the thick podded snap peas were not very good for germination, but a few did come up, and then got repeatedly eaten by the woodchucks, so i will have to buy those again this year to try again.

my eating bean varieties are wax and several types of green, but here or there within them there will be a reversion to another type (bush bean that ends up growing into a vine, pod is stringy, pod is wrong color or shape, beans when shelled are obviously not true to type).

i try to keep the fresh eating varieties in their own patches separate from the other shelling or dry beans that i grow. it doesn't always work as the bees are doing their thing, but it does help.

at the moment i have more varieties and cross- breeds than i'll ever be able to grow out and test. my classification and sorting work is at a stall for a while. for each named variety that i used to have i've now got a half dozen to a few dozen variants/cross-breeds. it's interesting to see what i think is going on and then try to grow them out and see if the cross-breed will grow true to the new pattern, shape, size, color, texture, form, habit, ...

i need a lot more room. :)

songbird

Reply to
songbird

Technically true, but my tomato seedlings (especially the "runts") often have ill-formed true leaves early on. I'm not saying that is happening here, just that it can happen.

Reply to
Drew Lawson

Nope , the leaves are perfectly formed little hearts . The second pair of true leaves have a tiny pair of leaves behind them , same as the "normals" .

Reply to
Terry Coombs

I think I'll do a bit of a quibble about that, but only a minor one because of a recent seedling example I seem to recall that I had. Since I can't now remember which seeds I was raising and why I noted it at the time, or even that I gave it more of a thought than a glancing "That's a bit odd" in passing, then I do think it might be possible for the seedling to still come good and be what it's supposed to be.

Sorry, I know that doesn't make a lot of sense, but I'm pretty sure I had a similar "problem" that turned out not to be a problem with some seeds I was raising recently.

On that strongly stated stance, I'll pop back into my box and close the lid...........

Reply to
Fran Farmer

Perhaps it's doing that because St Valentine's day is coming up.....

Reply to
Fran Farmer

How many people are you feeding 'Bird? You must have a huge harvest.

Reply to
Fran Farmer

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