[Tom Wagner]

I could write volumes on earliness in tomatoes from my breeding and selection work during the 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's, 00's, and now 10's. A case in particular was when I sent special hybrid tomato seeds to Ontario, Canada back thirty years ago for earliness trials. One of my hybrids was at the top of the cultivar list for first ripe and yield. The clone I used for making that hybrid is also coursing through many of my early tomato varieties of varying degrees of selfing.

BETIMES MACBETH is but one of these examples.


In my cold climate I need tomatoes to yield early...concentrated as possible and cover the ground with the bloody things. The Betimes MacBeth is now F-7 and it bears small salad tomatoes with a brilliant bloody color...very thick walls, very few tiny seeds, good flavor but not excellent, and is perfect for a cold resistant vine to set fruit and ripen within five weeks of blooming. This clone has a California processing background with frost resistance from a pimpinellifolium line coupled with ancestry from North Dakota, Michigan, Rhode Island, New York, and Ontario. It is a remarkable plant that takes the heat...takes the dryness that happens so often, and yet produces tomatoes despite cold nights.

Betimes is old old Middle English word seldom used today...it means various things but early, at once, etc., and MacBeth is known for his bloody tragedies.

Earliness coupled with cold nights is an ongoing restraint that bedevils breeding and selection work.
Some of you are probably asking how cold does it get in mid August where I live? ...47F.



Earliness and small size fruits works in tandem for me....prostrate/compact vines with concentrated set is another factor to use for success. I ended up with over 300 fruit from one vine...taking up no more room than what a bushel basket could cover. After extracting seed, the pulp went into tomato sauce and frozen. BTW, the seed will be offered soon on my website.


Below is a picture of BETIMES MACBETH



Tom Wagner