Quote:
Originally Posted by Fusion_power
there is a gene for Precocious Flowering that induces the first flower cluster to form at the 5th leaf node on a plant. This is significantly earlier than most tomato varieties which don't form flower buds until the 8th to 11th leaf node. Surprisingly enough, there are lots of early varieties that don't have precocious flowering.
|
That's very interesting, although I wouldn't want to burden a tiny plant with a huge tomato. I can see it being useful for small tomatoes though. Is there a list of which early varieties do and don't have this gene? Catalog descriptions just say "early" with no explanation of which kind of earliness it is.
I can see trying to stack as many earliness genes as possible into one variety, to see how freakishly early a tomato can be. The result probably wouldn't taste very good, though. Maybe I'd rather move a few, carefully selected earliness genes into some flavorful old favorites.