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Solanum lycopersicum (tomatoes) with Craig LeHoullier!
Episode 3523rd February 2024 • Song and Plants • Carmen Porter
00:00:00 01:00:31

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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/

Transcripts

Carmen:

Welcome to Song and Plants.

Carmen:

My name is Carmen Porter.

Carmen:

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.

Carmen:

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

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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.

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

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

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the right variety, but the wrong history.

Carmen:

Gardening is like life.

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

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

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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

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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

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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.

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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.

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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

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gives the plant almost black shoulders.

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

Carmen:

tomato colors are confused anyway.

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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

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

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which do not have anthocyanin.

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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.

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

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actually think is utterly delicious.

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

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bitterness in the flesh of the tomato.

Carmen:

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

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to find one that I truly love.

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Have you tried indigo kumquat?

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Tomato man! Craig: Not yet.

Carmen:

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

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It's the yellow, sort of yellow orange with

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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

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usually the last one to die for me.

Carmen:

But it's harder to source.

Carmen:

I haven't found it.

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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

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

Carmen:

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

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

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maybe 50 of them to find a couple.

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

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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!

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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?

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

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diversity of color and size?

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Tomato man! Craig: Hmm.

Carmen:

Yeah.

Carmen:

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

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little pea sized, weedy things.

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They made their way up into Central America.

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Unfortunately the way that tomatoes got into Europe were

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through, the Aztec conquests.

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

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

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grown in South and Central America.

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

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

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different colored ones, larger fruit.

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

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

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

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Yellows and reds probably big lumpy guys.

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

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

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

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

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

Carmen:

colored from that plant that I discovered.

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

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things in Europe from the 1580s.

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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

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the mid 1800s , probably 1840, 1850.

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

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known as the deadly nightshade family, but the tomatoes considered

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

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

Carmen:

That shows one listing and no description.

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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

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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

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

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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

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

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

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good and plant a thousand plants.

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And find one or two that were obviously far superior.

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That became the basis for tomato improvement in the

Carmen:

US from about 1870 onward.

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

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

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Now that's not that many years.

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So horticulturally in our country, the tomato has been undergoing

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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,

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

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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

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the flowers like you were saying.

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

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save the fruit from that plant.

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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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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selection and get improvement.

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

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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.

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

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that act revolutionized tomato breeding.

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And seed companies really focused on selling just hybrids between the

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

Carmen:

So all these heirloom varieties, open pollinated varieties were

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

Carmen:

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

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And now hybrids and open pollinated varieties can

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peacefully coexist with each other.

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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

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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

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strongly since the mid eighties.

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

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living, I believe, in Iowa at the time.

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And Kent was quite a visionary thinker.

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

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

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

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

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

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friends, they'd probably go extinct.

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

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

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

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

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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

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it the phone book of seed varieties.

Carmen:

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

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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

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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.

Carmen:

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

Carmen:

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.

Carmen:

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.

Carmen:

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.

Carmen:

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.

Carmen:

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

Carmen:

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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