On Tue, 23 Dec 2003 04:48:26 GMT, Steve wrote:

That puts my mind at ease. For starters I will have to buy the seed
so I will probably start 1/2 of the seed in each pack. The ones I
ordered from Seed Savers Exchange had 30 seed each.
45 tomatoe plants should be about right for eating fresh and canning.
I still have half in case a late frost comes through and wipes me out.

Tomatoes are very strong self pollinators. You could probably grow them
right next to each other and never see a cross.
I assume you will grow several plants of each kind. Save seed from a
couple of the best plants each year. It's easy to save way more seed
than you need. It's easy to keep seed for several years. Plant the fresh
seed every year but keep the older seed on file for a few years. If you
ever get unlucky and get a cross, you can go back to the older seed
(next year) and not loose the variety.

Good Idea I will try that.

Of course you could just buy new seed if that happened but what fun is
that? Besides, by taking seed from only your best plants, you might fine
tune the variety to your conditions and end up with something slightly
better over time.

I was thinking that also I read about plants adapting to certain areas
in The Heirloom Gardener magazine

As an alternate plan, if you do get some off type plants, simply don't
save the seeds from those plants. Unless you grow only a very few of
each variety, I can't imagine you would not always get some pure type
plants. As I said, you'll probably never have trouble with them crossing
in the first place.

Steve



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