japanese pink cherry or rebel yell x ? dwarf
 

are there any projects combining either of these two with a dwarf? they are both great but huge plants.... just a suggestion otherwise?

If anyone wants to do additional crosses, go for it! I didn't get to add to our families this year (thank goodness - we've so much on our plate already). good ideas, Carolyn.

I know that I hardly ever post on the dwarf project part here, but I'm interested in dwarfs where a parent is Japanese Pink Cherry or Rebel Yell. (Especially Japanese Pink Cherry)

If anyone wants to do this I would be happy to grow some out... I have no interest in breeding the plants at this point in my life. If I didn't do farmers markets maybe ... but I just don't have another "new" project space in my life. especially one that needs detail commitment...

I have not bred any yet but if anyone has, and they need help growing out with these two I would be in as well. Love Japanese Pink Cherry especially!

[QUOTE=hl2601;726343]I have not bred any yet but if anyone has, and they need help growing out with these two I would be in as well. Love Japanese Pink Cherry especially![/QUOTE]

Japanese Pink Cherry is one that I try to write about as much as possible here at Tomatoville. It was a developed hybrid and sold as such, but it quickly became a true OP. I guess it was a hybrid seller's nightmare? A top 5 tomato in my book.

It was a very tasty tomato indeed Salt, I grew it in 2017. A very rainy and cold season, and JPC was the only cherry variety I have ever seen having BER.. Still, a very fruitful tomato and it will be grown again in the future (God willing)

If anyone wants to try this, a few very brief guidelines

Know what you are aiming for - size, flavor, color - in a dwarf plant

Look through descriptions of our now more than 100 dwarfs - select a few that seem like they would be an interesting crossing partner

Understand a bit about dominant traits. Yellow skin dominates clear skin. Indeterminate growth dominates dwarf. small fruit dominate large fruit. regular leaf dominates potato leaf.

The biggest challenges are, esp if you are going for flavor, it is something you can't see- it has to be experienced, so the largest populations possible once you get to dwarf hunting.

Let's take a hypothetical - Japanese Pink Cherry - indeterminate, pink cherry fruit, regular leaf - (I am only guessing - I know nothing about the variety) - crossed with one of our already dwarf cherry varieties - say, Bendigo Blush. Or to make it more interesting, one of the white ones - Bendigo Moon - or a potato leaf yellow cherry - Galen's Yellow Cherry (all are available via Victory).

Take pollen from the Japanese cherry flower - emasculate a less than fully opened blossom on the female (the dwarf partner) - apply the pollen, repeat over several days. If a tomato forms, mark it with a twist tie - that is the F1 hybrid. Let it ripen - seeds in that tomato are F1 hybrid seeds.

Grow a few of the seeds - if the seedlings are indeterminate, the cross took (indeterminate is dominant) - you only have to grow out one hybrid and save loads of seeds. Seeds in the fruit are F2 generation.

Grow as many of the F2 seeds as possible, because 75% will be indeterminate - you will want to focus on the 25%, the dwarfs (they are easy to spot). If you use a potato leaf dwarf, 25% of the dwarfs will have potato leaf foliage. Then the fun begins - if you do cherry X cherry, all should be cherry, but colors will be as diverse as the number of different flesh and skin color genes you use.

Japanese Cherry, if pink, is clear skin, red flesh. If you cross it with Bendigo Blush - also clear skin, red flesh - you should have all pink dwarf cherries, but flavor, yield, etc will vary widely.

If you use something like Galen's Yellow (yellow skin yellow flesh), you will have tomatoes that are pink, red, pale yellow and deep yellow.

If you use a dwarf like Velvet Night - which is purple - the color range can be expanded even more.

have fun and good luck!

I am going to move this out of this folder and into the Crosstalk folder.

perfectly fine with me. I keep watching this thread and maybe ..... just maybe I might try something myself. Thanks for the tutorial and variety suggestions too.

Craig, that was so nice of you to go into such a tutorial.Thank you! I may try too. If successful, I will post.
Heide

No worries - every part of doing this is fun! Ask anything, any time.