Started mortgage lifter RL saved seeds today.
About 90% of plants sold locally are PL.
So finding the RL version is rare.

Those PL local plants are not Mortgage Lifter.

I've handled seeds from about 10 of the 16 Mortgage Lifters listed at Tatiana's TOMATObase. All are said to be RL, with the exception of one variety with no information available. I've never trialed any of them, as none of the Mortgage Lifters have made it to near the top when there are relatively large polls about all-time favorite tomatoes.

Mortgage Lifter will always be planted here, but for the benefit of the great unwashed, what are RL & PL?

The Gotch

Cornelius_Gotchberg wrote: ↑Sun Apr 10, 2022 3:16 pm Mortgage Lifter will always be planted here, but for the benefit of the great unwashed, what are RL & PL?

The Gotch

Regular leaf and potato leaf.
The potato leaves don't have the serrated leaves like regular leaves do.

@worth1; "Regular leaf and potato leaf. The potato leaves don't have the serrated leaves like regular leaves do."

TenQ! And every Mortgage Lifter plant I've ever had the pleasure to tend has been...er...RL.

Anyhow, on the subject of potatoes...spuds...Sweet Spuds to be exact...I have a coupla ~ 2 pound/.91 kg Sweet Spuds that are in the roasting On Deck Circle and will be, per your recommendation, swathed with Soy Sauce.

The Gotch

Tormato wrote: ↑Sun Apr 10, 2022 1:28 pm Those PL local plants are not Mortgage Lifter.

I've handled seeds from about 10 of the 16 Mortgage Lifters listed at Tatiana's TOMATObase. All are said to be RL, with the exception of one variety with no information available. I've never trialed any of them, as none of the Mortgage Lifters have made it to near the top when there are relatively large polls about all-time favorite tomatoes.

it is funny that the same plant vendor will have RL and PL plants side by side labelled mortgage lifter.
I was buying other PL type plants of another variety and one guy that passed by didn't know they were even tomato plants.
His son had to tell him.
Brandywine hybrids are all RL so saved seeds from those I can weed out all the PL seedlings that pop up once they get bigger.
I once saw red brandywine that were Pl and I said no thank you.
I was going top grow 5 or so different brandywine hybrids this year but ran out of room at the inn.
A $10 grafted mortgage lifter plant I bought years ago did no better than regular plants.

slugworth wrote: ↑Mon Apr 11, 2022 12:32 am

Tormato wrote: ↑Sun Apr 10, 2022 1:28 pm Those PL local plants are not Mortgage Lifter.

I've handled seeds from about 10 of the 16 Mortgage Lifters listed at Tatiana's TOMATObase. All are said to be RL, with the exception of one variety with no information available. I've never trialed any of them, as none of the Mortgage Lifters have made it to near the top when there are relatively large polls about all-time favorite tomatoes.

it is funny that the same plant vendor will have RL and PL plants side by side labelled mortgage lifter.
I was buying other PL type plants of another variety and one guy that passed by didn't know they were even tomato plants.
His son had to tell him.
Brandywine hybrids are all RL so saved seeds from those I can weed out all the PL seedlings that pop up once they get bigger.
I once saw red brandywine that were Pl and I said no thank you.
I was going top grow 5 or so different brandywine hybrids this year but ran out of room at the inn.
A $10 grafted mortgage lifter plant I bought years ago did no better than regular plants.

You have me lost at "Brandywine hybrids". Could you explain what you mean?

hybrid is a cross between pink brandywine and other varieties.
i.e. genuwine,which is a cross between brandywine and costoluto genovese.
result is a red tomato that reaches the mouth faster than the pink brandywine.
Another is jersey boy,a cross between brandywine and rutgers.
there are more that I can't think of right now.

since the parent plants had 2 different types of leaves,it is easier to use the saved seeds since I know the goal is plants with RL
if both parents were RL it would be impossible to tell if the seeds were true to what you want for a good result.

Brandywine hybrids are sometimes labeled "heirloom marriage" ,a cross between 2 old heirloom types.

brandy man,brandy boy.brandy big are 3 more brandywine hybrids.
all are RL
5 total I have seen

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.

Mortgage Lifter seems to have so many strains that I wonder if the name actually means anything anymore? I grow it because my wife especially likes it, but who knows what strain the feedstore sells. They could just call it “generic pink OP tomato” but that name isn’t as catchy. I grow some tomatoes from my seeds I get, but the normally widely available varieties I just pick up a plant of those types from the feedstore.

slugworth wrote: ↑Mon Apr 11, 2022 12:22 pm brandy man,brandy boy.brandy big are 3 more brandywine hybrids.
all are RL
5 total I have seen

My Brandy Boys have all been PL. Sorry to drag your Mortgage Lifter thread even further off topic

seeds are starting to pop after 3 days on heat 77 F soil temp
I was fooled using recycled potting soil it was some weed that popped up.

I bought three six packs of plants and 2 plants were mutants.
One is still stuck at the cotyledon stage that are fat and no sign of real leaves,one has real wispy leaves that reminds me of some russian varieties.
None of the other plants they had for sale had wispy leaves,so that should be interesting.

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.

OK, a question. Is Estler's Mortgage Lifter supposed to be RL or PL or does it matter?

Torquill wrote: ↑Sat May 07, 2022 1:11 am 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.

bizarre that no other plants for sale in that group had wispy leaves.
So far all the for sale plants have been RL
So that isn't an issue anymore here.
Silvery fir was fun,that was the 1st determinate that I ever cloned.
I gave the clone away and the recipient was delighted.
Good to get extra mileage from determinate- season extender.

Estler's is a strain of Mortgage Lifter, meaning it has all the major traits (leaf type, fruit size and color). It's slightly improved in its growth habits and flavor, but many people would be hard-pressed to tell the difference.

bizarre that no other plants for sale in that group had wispy leaves.

Not really. The seed house which pulled together seeds from various sources and put them in packets was obviously doing them in alphabetical order, and one or two seeds of the previous variety hung around to get put into Mortgage Lifter packets. It's uncommon, but it does happen -- and evidently you and our MGs had the same seed supplier, lol.

Now, there was that time when they used saved seed from their own demonstration garden, and one variety came out half RL and half PL... I caught that just before the sale, and they gave the seedlings away free rather than selling them as the variety. It turned out rather attractive 6oz round red tomatoes with a distinct red-on-red striping... I ran the genetics and it turned out a RL/PL F1 had crossed out a second time with a PL, and this was the result. I never got a chance to stabilize it, that could have been fun.

I blame the greenhouse that put the seeds in the soil.
One year a local greenhouse had a worker do an oops and forgot what was what.
I went to buy plants and quite a few were just labeled "tomato"
Same price of course.
So hard to get good help these days.