Quote:
Originally Posted by Fred Hempel
I usually stay away from harvesting both early and late fruits.
Early "multiflora" flowers are more likely to be cross pollinated. Additionally, I find that early in the season flowers are more often visited by bumblebees, likely because there aren't as many other options available at that time.
Late in the season fruits may have fewer viable seeds. But this is all dependent on environment and weather conditions.
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It's different here - early in the season we only have queen bumblebees around, and they will not bother with tomatoes because they need nectar as well as pollen (tomato flowers have no nectar to offer). Once the first worker brood is out, they're all over the tomatoes to feed the next crew. So the early tomato is my best bet, and very late would be second best, when the bee action is mostly over.
Purity aside, what a great bonus I got when bees made a cross between sibling F3's, and I ended up with lots of determinate plants to select from. Two generations later they're still segregating like an F3 though.