mortgage lifter

[slugworth]

I brought the wispy one indoors under lights.
I have more control over light and heat.

[Torquill]

When I was growing a bunch of tomatoes, both from transplant and from seed, almost every year there was one which turned out to be a red saladette. Yellow Brandywine? Nope, red saladette. Cherokee Purple? Red saladette. Costoluto Genovese? Red saladette. I started to wonder whether I should take bets with myself on which variety would be my red saladette that year.

[slugworth]

Oooh! One of my favorite finds was a "Mortgage Lifter" that I pulled from the flats for the Master Gardener sale because it was wispy. I took it home, and it turned into a bushy monster with 4oz red fruit. Very tasty. With a little research I figured out it was probably a stray seed of Morkovnyi, a carrot-leaf determinate similar to Silvery Fir Tree and possibly a close relative of Carrot-Like. I hope that's what you got, it's a lovely variety, and pretty early to boot.

The wispy is starting to get buds.
I will put it outside at the proper time so bees get at it.

[Shule]

I always thought Hillbilly was a potato leaf and then last year most of what the feed store had listed as Hillbilly was RL. They had three or four out of 80 plants that were PL. I took two of the PL ones. They seemed true to form to the previous year’s all PL ones the feedstore offered. This year, they had zero of either.
. . .

Hillbilly is supposed to be regular leaf. Hillbilly Potato Leaf (AKA Hillbilly PL) is the PL one (and probably the more popular of the two). For some reason people call them both Hillbilly, a lot, but they really shouldn't, since they're not the same variety (notwithstanding they're similar; it's similar to the difference between Kellogg's Breakfast and KBX).

* http://tatianastomatobase.com/wiki/Hillbilly
* http://tatianastomatobase.com/wiki/Hill ... otato_Leaf

However, it's hard to say if the seller's varieties are the true ones, if they don't distinguish between them.

[slugworth]

I wonder if the wispy is just a growing defect in the original mortgage lifter.
As the original plants get larger I found another specimen in the original batch of bought plants I still have in a tray.
I don't see how it escaped my notice unless it was originally a small RL plant and went all wispy on me for some reason.
I put that one indoors under lights with it's partner.

[slugworth]

The original wispy may be sterile.
It will have a bud the size of a BB that just turns brown and drops off.
It never opens.The second wispy plant has a legit blossom and I am waiting to it to form a tomato.

[slugworth]

Wispy # 2 with the blossom is outdoors.

[slugworth]

wispy has 2 green tomatoes heart shape,if that rings a bell with anybody.
Outdoor exposure took it's toll,possible white fly problem.
I hope the tomatoes get ripe before the plant expires.
Indoors under lights now.

[MissS]

wispy has 2 green tomatoes heart shape,if that rings a bell with anybody.
Outdoor exposure took it's toll,possible white fly problem.
I hope the tomatoes get ripe before the plant expires.
Indoors under lights now.

When you mentioned the wispy foliage I was wondering if you had mixed seed or an off-type. Hearts are known for their wispy foliage. There just are not many beefsteaks with wispy foliage and ML is not one of them. What you have there is not a ML.

[slugworth]

Store bought plants and 2 examples of wispy foliage.
No other store bought plants in any place selling locally had wispy foliage.
One wispy outdoors was getting too hot so I brought that indoors.
One plant ML that was stuck at the cotyledon stage is still alive and has mini leaves.

[slugworth]

stuck at cotyledon stage one started to get some sort of stem rot and I planted it deeper.
Talk about first aid and not giving up hope.

[Sue_CT]

You cannot rely on store bought ML plants being of any particular variety or lineage. There was a long explantion from Carolyn at one time but apparently many people used to or maybe still do name any tomato that "pays the mortgage" as ML. There can be entirely unrelated lines of tomatoes with that name on it.

[slugworth]

I don't think the parents had any wispy in the list- radiator charlie story anyway.

[Danny]

There are about 6 named ML's that all claim to be the "real" ML, all with different stories. The closest I have found is Estler's Mortgage Lifter, but time takes a toll on many histories and after all, some people are great liars, such as one well known seed saver with the initials of WWW. That one is like a politician, you can figure he is lying if his lips are moving, LOL!!!

[slugworth]

At the time i babied the wispy plant indoors until it had a blossom,then made the mistake of putting it outdoors for the bees to do their thing.
The one blossom formed a tiny tomato but then the plant got diseased and croaked.
I kept the green tomato warm until it turned pink? then stuck it in the fridge for months.
When it was almost turning in to a tomato raisin I dug abut 24 seeds out and stuck them on a paper plate.
The past couple of weeks I have been spritzing the plate with a water/fert combo every few days.
I planted in sifted potting soil 3/6 on a warming tray and most have started to pop.
People brag about starting old tomato seeds,mine was the opposite effect.
From a green tomato that the plant croaked way before the tomato got red.

[slugworth]

out of 25 seeds I got 20 seedlings and 4 were wispy foliage.
I have those plants on a porch in a window with an extra LED clamp type grow light .
The plants are big enough to clone so I took cuttings yesterday to clone.
I have them in a soggy seed starting mix on a food warming tray with a homemade voltage controller and digital thermometer
to keep them from getting sauteed.
If they root,I will plant those outside and keep the original plants indoors.
The other 16 seedlings I had outdoors but they got hit with a freeze the middle of May.
3 are still alive outdoors and their foliage is a combo of RL and wispy.

[slugworth]

The PL mortgage lifter I have- turned out to be determinate.
It had x amount of blossoms and the plant is starting to peter out with green tomatoes still on it
Tomatoes are in the 8 or 9oz range.

[svalli]

Even I have been growing heirloom tomatoes quite many years now, this year is the first time I am growing Mortgage Lifter, after @Cornelius_Gotchberg sent me seeds marked as Radiator Charlie Mortgage Lifter. It is indeterminate RL plant with pink oblate tomatoes. We just had the first ripe one in the first Caprese salad of the season.

Mortgage Lifter.jpg

[Cornelius_Gotchberg]

@svalli; Beautimous! And that there plant is the epitome of Tomato Health.

The Gotch

[JRinPA]

I thought ML were red? Red and RL? Maybe they were just a redder pink than some, but I never thought of them as pink.

I grew ML about 8-10 years back, boy I thought they were red, but then the seed seemingly got crossed because the seedlings coming from my ML saved bag were coming out PL seedlings, confusing the heck out of me in March and April a couple years running, and I never grew them out again.

I'm growing estler's this year and just read it is supposed to be /going to be pink. I'll have to try to reset my expectations on this variety.

As long as it is not Wispy. I have been tending the row but there are 8 or 9 varieties and had some losses from the late frost, so I really have been waiting (and waiting) for ripe fruit to break out the planting map to evaluate.

I have to wonder what the source was on my original grow outs. It could well have been seed saved from a purchased plant. I seem to remember a tag for Mortgage Lifter.