The latest post from Jackie Clay's "Backwoods Home" blog was in my e-mail this morning. She and her husband have a small garden seed business called Seed Treasures in northern Minnesota. Right now they're starting to save tomato seed and one of her comments today was:

"While he’s haying, I’m trying to pick and get the first of our hundreds of tomatoes seeded out. We’ve found that by picking those very first tomatoes and saving their seeds, we’re gradually getting earlier and earlier crops from the same varieties. In our short-season climate, that’s a huge bonus."

I thought that was interesting. Has anyone else noticed this? I might have to start keeping track. Well, actually I might can check the records on some of the tomatoes I always do as I note the transplant date and the first pick date every year.

Edited to add: Checking dates might not work for me because I use a batch of seed until I'm about out. Then I'll collect more to use the following years. UNLESS, of course, I collect more to send in to MMMM!

The blog post is here: https://www.backwoodshome.com/blogs/Jac ... 4ab269a5ee

Interesting; would be very interesting if this is proven true, but if it is true why isn't this more generally known and why aren't breeders breeding for it?

FatBeeFarm wrote: ↑Sun Aug 18, 2024 9:43 am Interesting; would be very interesting if this is proven true, but if it is true why isn't this more generally known and why aren't breeders breeding for it?

Maybe nobody has noticed? Or maybe they already have and the breeders just aren't saying anything about it. Good question.

If you are always selecting from only your earliest plants, then this should work over time. It's the same for any trait that you are trying to encourage, I should think.

Are there any early tomatoes that really taste good? I have not found any.

I didn't know that that website was still around and being updated.

Precocious tomatoes. Hmm.

Many would argue the earlier tomatoes are from the warmer climate trend.

One would need to test against seeds from plant with later fruit, to determine much of anything.

Vanman wrote: ↑Sun Aug 18, 2024 3:44 pm Are there any early tomatoes that really taste good? I have not found any.

SunGold - 84 DTM from sowing, seedlings grown outside, not indoors under lights (28 days to transplant, then 56 more days to 1st fruit on 1st truss to ripen).

Pervaya Lyubov - 86 DTM (similar details as above)

If the 1st fruit on the 1st truss does not set a tomato, there will be delay in DTM. If no tomatoes on the 1st truss set, there will be a much longer delay.

I'm still searching for an extra early and really tasty tomato, at about 75 DTM from sowing. I may have to breed my own.

I've never found any evidence in increased earliness by saving the earliest seeds.

Just suppose you have a row of ten Pervaya Lyubov every year. Each year you save seed from the first fruit to ripen. Here you are actually selecting for any earliness that might be emerging in the population. There always seems to be some variation in a group of seedlings too. I always pick the earliest seedlings to keep or to give best spots to. If you only keep the earliest seedlings, you wouldn't need to save first fruit - any fruit from that plant would do.

Another thought: If you're aiming for an early harvest, you might be starting earlier than optimal, which means there may be cold stress on the plant when those early fruit are forming. Whether the plant is stable or is a breeding line, the epigenetic changes to activate cold tolerance are passed on to the offspring - so saving first fruit that was set under early season stress, might be the best choice to ensure you get the epigenetics for an early start.

I started a month later than usual this year, didn't sow til mid April, and best DTM from sowing was 92 days, instead of 105 or more.
The year I transplanted out in mid April 8 week old plants, DTM from seed for Stupice was 120 days.

Tormato wrote: ↑Sun Aug 18, 2024 5:06 pm I've never found any evidence in increased earliness by saving the earliest seeds.

I have to agree with @Tormato on this. I have always saved seeds from the largest tomatoes which for me are the earliest. Last year I had a Vinson Watts tomato which produced a cluster of 7 tomatoes which weighed just under 7 lbs. Baseball to softball size. Started picking second week of June. My goal for many years is to have a ripe tomato in May, No luck yet, June 1 is the closest I have come.

I plant a dozen or so "sacrificial tomatoes" 3 weeks before last frost date. June 7 has been first ripe for the last several years. If this were true, you would think that me saving seeds for many years from the earliest tomatoes would allow me to have a ripe tomato in May.

Not about earliest fruit of the season, but it's also true that you can only expect to get the earliness that's already there in the genetics - barring a mutation, this is much less likely in a stable variety. I've only seen it with one tomato - Oaxacan Jewel PL - which got shockingly much earlier over a couple of years growing in my conditions. I assume the earliness was there but was not being expressed until stress changed the epigenetics. This is a good reason for saving your own seed after a growing season, and giving a plant a second chance from the seed that has gone through epigenetic changes adaptive to your particular climate and issues.

When you have a breeding line that is segregating, you have a chance of 'transgressive segregation' and actually earlier offspring than either parent. The likelihood of that happening is probably enhanced by stress on the plant as well. I have also seen this happen. The earliness though only amounted to a week or less. In the end, other traits especially taste were a lot more important to me than a few days difference in earliness. So my goal shifted from 'earliest' to 'early enough'.

I've experimented with this to one degree or another (not heavily on a given year) since close to the time I started saving tomato seeds. I've only noticed a possible weak correlation. I definitely think it could have an impact long-term, though (mostly if you grow a lot of plants of the same variety), or if you just happen to be fortunate enough to do it with the right fruit. It's not a strong enough correlation that I'm too worried about it, though.

One great thing about saving seeds from the earliest fruits, though, is that your fruits probably aren't going to be cross-pollinated by late varieties as often.

On a related note, you can also try saving the particular seeds from a particular fruit that become viable first. In theory, selecting for these seeds over generations could give you seeds that mature faster, which might give you fruit that matures faster, too (this probably doesn't relate to bloom time, though, like your thought would). To ensure you get the ones that mature first, you could harvest them from still-green fruits, before the late-timer seeds from the same fruits have time to mature. Tomato seeds will sprout from full-sized unripe fruits, if the unripe fruits are close enough to ripening. If the seeds from unripe fruits look and feel like regular seeds, there's a good chance at least some of them will sprout. I've experimented with this (growing seeds from unripe fruits), although I haven't done much selection in this regard.

The conflict I have with using the earliest fruits to mature is that the seeds in them don't know what it's like to deal with all the diseases and pests that come later in the season. So, they might not get as much acclimatization. And you won't have the opportunity to select for the fruits that do the best in those regards. Although, you can still select by plant there, by observing which plants do the best.

Yeah maybe...select for an early and a late for each type. The early from first good fruit, late type from "last plant standing". I just cannot get the tomato succession planting to work, so far. I don't like babysitting tomato plants, too unruly.

I'm loving this discussion! Lots of different thoughts about various aspects. Lots to think about.