2 replies to this topic

[mutant]

I was always interested in the benefits of local varieties of vegetables, especially since the last years many people have worked to preserve some such varieties with their variety and spread them - underlining the biological, philosophical and political reasoning behind the whole thing. I knew I would eventually become involved in this for multiple reasons.

I was interested from early on in DIY, self sustaining, autonomy, independence, etc.

reading more now I see one can freely choose and breed his own preference of fruit by being selective with a particular good seed batchs with good variety. Even better.

the politics of food and agriculture seem to be against us too. preserving some good seeds of food might be one of the best ideas we could stick to. self-directed farming as revolutionary? yeah, perhaps...

The timing couldn't be better for me:

I got a working licence to do so, time, space, the seeds etc.

and there's also great demand by all kinds of people in the market for such seed and plantlets

What worries me is the following

I got about 4-5 varieties of tomato

some from northern greece some from albania, some mini-tomatos...

I am supposed to not mix them together [READ: ISOLATE THE BATCHES]

1. would the minitomatos breed with the normal ones too?

2. wouldn't mixing a certain batch of each good variety greece - albania , produce a bastard breed of a still good plant? are there any reasons it wouldn't go well, f.e. racism? lol of course the seed should be named greek-albania unity seed or something...

I am all for preserving the different varieties, but I see it is also easy to bastard the seed by mistake, and that its lots of attention and work to produce good seed.

Any thoughts?

Edited by mutant, 01 July 2012 - 06:13 AM.

[waterboy]

Tomatoes pollinate before the flowers fully open, so self pollinate. Cross breeding can occur but is uncommon even when varieties are next to each other. Some say it doesnt occur, but I have seen it on rare occasions.

To control cross breed tomatoes the flowers need to be pulled apart to access the stigma and styles for pollen transfers.
You can cross breed them if you use some "divine intervention".

However I you want to ensure genetic integrity then it is advisable to provide growing varieties during different seasons or provide a distance from others , or exclusion techniques like greenhouse etc.

Link of interest : http://www.kokopelli...m/tomatoes.html


WB

[whitewind]

I wouldn't be selling heritage seed unless I was pretty sure they hadn't cross-pollinated, unless that was your intent and the seed was clearly labelled as such. These heritage varieties are often "rare and endangered" so you would want to make sure the "pure" seed got passed on to the next person, who may not know enough about the plant to realise that they hadn't got the true strain.

Considering the amount of food that is available, it's astonishing that such a small number of existing hybrids and varieties are grown; most of them produced for size, colour and longevity rather than taste or nutritional content. Give me permaculture heritage varieties over mass-produced supermarket rubbish anyday!