Re: [tomato] green zebra developer?
Julia and/or Robert Biales (Tomato@GlobalGarden.com)
Thu, 18 Jan 2001 09:21:16 -0500
> To Byron and others,
>
> I wouldn't mind it so much if the Green Zebra will open some doors
for
> me. I developed the Green Grape tomato too, but only a few places on the
> web or in catalogs will show that I have developed them through
old-fashioned
> breeding.
That too? I have a question about the Green Grape. For some reason my
plants all turned out with bitter tasting fruit -- not a whole lot but
enough to have you not wanting a second one.
I'm an organic food trade gardener in the Adirondack mountains in New
York -- very acid soil, very sandy, fairly extreme temp swings -- we can go
over a hundred and that night be below fifty come August, a lot of plants
are 'quirky' around here. The plum lemons that are marked 100 days on the
packet are one of the first to come in. I've had the best results so far
with Siberia heritage seeds but always look for materials that would do well
up here.
I'm thinking that perhaps I'm dealing with a heat load combined with some
plants being really sensitive to chilling and sulking about it worse than
others.
I have some great clones going for almost ten years but around frost two
years ago got really raving sick and no one besides me knew how to cut them.
the seeds I had saved have never lived up to their parents.
I'm trying to find some seed suggestions to replace my really fruity 'poor
man's orange juice' type of cultivar, a nice fresh paste plant that will
crank 'em out reliably all summer, and what have you for fun.
The cultivar that made really good juice looked like a two to three ounce
zapotec only dark orange, the cultivar that made really good fresh sauce
looked like suit buttons -- really dark red and flattened, and small -- each
fruit about the same size an ounce and a half. Even production, reliable
from early on to frost. I got them as clones and they were not stable as
far as seeds. Pretty little things,both of them, on fairly large plants.
Getting these capabilities back -- the actual characteristics of the plants
are desirable but secondary.
I do love the Zebra, though -- you would know why it too comes in ahead of
the packet and makes such sweet/tart ambergreen balls, so many and such good
keepers.
JulieB