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Old September 1, 2017   #6
crmauch
Tomatovillian™
 
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Join Date: May 2013
Location: Honey Brook, PA Zone 6b
Posts: 399
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Quote:
Originally Posted by dfollett View Post
You are obviously ahead of me in your knowledge of plant breeding. Thanks for the comments.
You have done far more crossing than me of tomatoes and look to be successful.

My knowledge is mostly from books. I've read most of the amateur books and
have attempted some of the professional ones, but sometimes get lost in jargon
in those.

I have tried breeding a number of things, and none have resulted in anything.

Peas: wanted to breed a purple snap pea:
Got to the F2 and was growing them out when a deer decided to enjoy them.
There are now both yellow and purple snap peas available in catalogs.
Learned: Save back a number of seeds in case you have a disaster

Passionflower: wanted to breed a hardy edible passionflower:
Maypops (the hardy passiflora are 'edible', but don't taste very good
(IMHO) and there are edible, good tasting passifloras, but they're not nearly
as hardy. Could not find enough variation In the fruit of the hardy species
to attempt anything useful & my 1 successful cross between a hybrid and the
hardy species had an 9 seeds that I could not get to sprout (passiflora seeds
can be difficult to sprout and 'hybrid' seed can be worse) and have a weird
flower thing going (some flowers are male/female, some are male (female
parts withered) and others are effectively male [all on the same plant].
The plants also spread underground by roots.
Learned: Hybrid species add tremendous levels of complication. Starting
from a 'wild' species can be very difficult.

Roses: wanted to breed low-spray, but multi-petalloid flowers:
Did a lot of crosses, never got anything particularly interesting. Most of my
'breeding' stock got wiped out by Rose Rosette Disease (RRD). The former
rose bed is now a miniature forest.
Learned: Disease can wipe you out.
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