Reading up on your adventures was the perfect compliment to my coffee this morning! Thanks for taking the time for your detailed reports, I love reading posts like this. Those Rodneys sure bear a nice looking collection of tomatoes.

I share your position on tomatoes that have a very narrow edible window. I grew one like that 2 years ago--Thorburn's Terracotta from Baker Creek. Quite delicious if you ate it in the first 2 days of picking, otherwise turned to a mushy blah mess.

Looking forward to future updates on your projects!

So what did you use to get the determinate gene? The only semi-det I see is Black Sea Man and not even sure if that color is black. I don't see any fully determinate. Seems like that would make things really hard.

[QUOTE=BigVanVader;677020]So what did you use to get the determinate gene? The only semi-det I see is Black Sea Man and not even sure if that color is black. I don't see any fully determinate. Seems like that would make things really hard.[/QUOTE]

Yeah one of the reasons I was determined to create some determinate black lines, is because I couldn't find one to work with. I've grown "Black Sea Man" from three sources and none were determinate. I am okay with a "semi-determinate" condition - I mean, the sp/sp gene is present to produce the high fruit to shoot ratio (one or two leaves between clusters up to terminal bud). Even though the number of leaves between clusters varies a lot. If the plant will extend itself by putting out new shoots from the terminal tip, that's fine by me too. Where even a compact indeterminate will always have three leaves between every cluster, so will have a lower fruit to shoot ratio.

The Black Nipper cherry was my first determinate, the sp gene came from the mother Napoli a Fiaschetto which is a tasty red pointy saladette sized fruit, crossed with Black Cherry. N a F incidentally is a perfect-for-me medium sized determinate with sturdy and healthy foliage/stem traits. Not especially early, about the same as Black Cherry.

Both Rodney and Skipper are from a cross between the determinate Black Nipper F2 and an F1 of Zolotoe Serdste X Black Early. Zolotoe Serdtse is "semi-determinate" as well, but I don't think those genes played a role since these genes are tightly linked to Beta orange and I didn't find any Beta in the F1 with Rod and Skip.
So the determinate gene and maternal DNA (chloroplast and mitochondrial) also comes from Napoli a Fiaschetto in these lines.
Incidentally there was an indeterminate "beef" type in the Rodney F2 I grew out - very flat and ruffled with lovely silky texture and sweet taste, but the downside, a lot of fruit deformities. So it's not impossible that another good determinate could be found with bigger fruit among those F2 seeds, but there are so many different size and shape genes that what you get at that stage is a total crapshoot and would take a lot of space. This is where farmers get leery of playing with unstable genetic stages, because it may affect marketable crop and a loss of needed income.

The Sundog beefs are from a cross of Zolotoe Serdtse X Indian Stripe. So the Beta and also the determinate gene in that one came from ZS, black beef shape from IS. Did not find the sp/sp until F3 and didn't recognize it until nearly end of season as the plants were slowly doing their thing outdoors in the cool.

I wouldn't mind at all having a black determinate like Rodney but twice the size. It's not a bad place to start from, and cross with a great black beef, you should get 1/4 determinates in the F2. OTOH I don't know how many F2 determinates you would have to go through before finding great fruit in that package. If the quality defects that have cropped up in other determinate selections (small fruit, sour fruit, mealy fruit!, disease susceptibility) are due to a linkage that has been broken or bypassed already, then it may be relatively easy to cross to get larger beefs.:)
Optimism... all gardeners are optimists! ;)

@jmsieglaff It's only worth writing it up if people enjoy it :) Thanks!
Incidentally, I tried looking for an early "tell" again - looking for correlations between petal number, locule number and size. I know there is some correlation possible, at least I know big fluffy blooms with lots of petals turn into big beefs, but the Rodneys didn't have any quite that big. Petals varied from 5 to 7-8 in the first flowers and I dutifully wrote those down. But the correlation with size of fruit and locule number wasn't there. One problem was, the number of petals varied, so you couldn't count on the first flower as a tell.

At least one of the plants ID'd as 5-petals did turn out to be a small round cherry sized fruit, but another 5 petal turned out to be "Greypot 3P5" our taste winner with 4 locules and no smaller by weight than the "Whitepot" with 6 locules.
The two plants in the green tub were given the "primo space" because of 7-8 petals. Their fruit were no larger than the others. Not as big as Terracotta East with 5 locules.
I also saved seed from one extra tasty outdoor "Buffpot" which iirc had 7 petals as well, but only 3 locules.

So the petal "tell" was a total nonstarter. :( Try, try something else. ;)

[QUOTE]I wouldn't mind at all having a black determinate like Rodney but twice the size. It's not a bad place to start from, and cross with a great black beef, you should get 1/4 determinates in the F2. OTOH I don't know how many F2 determinates you would have to go through before finding great fruit in that package. If the quality defects that have cropped up in other determinate selections (small fruit, sour fruit, mealy fruit!, disease susceptibility) are due to a linkage that has been broken or bypassed already, then it may be relatively easy to cross to get larger beefs.
Optimism... all gardeners are optimists! [/QUOTE]

If your up for sending me some seeds I'd try it. I've never done any breeding work but I would be up for crossing Rodney with a few blacks and doing small growouts. I'm sure I could get some other tomatovillians to help me, plus I have a few gardener friends that would grow some for me. I feel like a tasty det black would fill a huge hole in the current tomato world.

[QUOTE=BigVanVader;677049]If your up for sending me some seeds I'd try it. I've never done any breeding work but I would be up for crossing Rodney with a few blacks and doing small growouts. I'm sure I could get some other tomatovillians to help me, plus I have a few gardener friends that would grow some for me. I feel like a tasty det black would fill a huge hole in the current tomato world.[/QUOTE]

I'm game. Send me a pm. :)

Is Southern Night a true black determinate? PL, and very nice plant for me with large beefsteak fruit.
GG

Southern Night is a true determinate according to TomatoEden.com:

[URL]http://tomatoeden.com/?45,southern-night[/URL]

And the plant supposedly only grows 30inches tall!


Of course there's Boronia from the dwarf project thats determinate...
[URL="https://www.victoryseeds.com/tomato_boronia.html"]
https://www.victoryseeds.com/tomato_boronia.html[/URL]

And Chocoladnoye-chudo (don't ask me to pronounce it!)

[URL]http://tomatoeden.com/?75,chocoladnoye-chudo[/URL]


Al

Those look interesting! :) I hadn't heard of either, before your post.
I see that seeds of CC are available on this side of the pond from Tania, assuming Shok- and Chok- are the same:
[URL]http://t.tatianastomatobase.com/wiki/Shokoladnoe_Chudo[/URL]

Rodney seeds are up.

Score!!! :D You're way ahead of me. :)

Been in the mid 70s here, feels like Spring already. I'm getting the fever now :lol:

That's awesome. Don't worry, they can take a few cold nights if you get em. We're stuck in winter here now for awhile it seems. Soon time to start, all the same.:wait: