Kitchen Garden Forum

I think I may have cracked it and this time next year I will be a millionaire! Perhaps

One arctic day in January I trecked through the snow to the greenhouse, levered open the frozen door and inspected the frosty interior festooned with icicles. I noticed a mouldy sungold tomato in a corner, all shrivelled and sad - and I balanced it on top of a half filled pot of earth (not even proper compost!). It has stayed there and gradually the seeds dried up and fell out into the pot. A couple of weeks ago I sprinkled some more dirt (from the garden and from the bottom of my wellies) onto the seeds. Today I have about 40 little baby toms growing and looking fit and healthy. No heat...no watering, no cossetting...in fact.no care at all. Have I grown the world's first hardy toms I wonder?

Diane wrote:....and from the bottom of my wellies) onto the seeds.

love that!

It'll be interesting to see what comes from your seeds - excellent experiment!

It's a miracle, but it will be interesting to see what follows.

Hi Diane,
Not quite a miracle but almost impossible! You know the saying.
I have had the same sort of thing on the house compost bin but with your temperatures in Dorset and mine in NW Herefordshire being pretty different it is unlikely here.
Hope it progresses well and you keep us informed especially the fruits.
Cold temperatures can actually change the character of the plant and make a difference in the quality of the fruit and the plant growing formation.
It would be more than interesting if you note anything untoward.
At any rate hope I that if there is any change lets hope it's for the better.
Lets face it literally thousands of seeds germinate in the open on sewage farms every year. As a boy, during WW2, I cottoned on to this and sold hundreds at 3d in newspaper pots. Considering my pocket money was 6d a week, if I had behaved myself that was, so not much income derived from pocket money!
JB.

This is going to seem pretty churlish after such an achievement but are Sungold usually sold as F1 plants or seeds?

You might still get a tasty result through (Sungold are one of my favourite)

It will be fascinating to see how your seedlings turn out. I've had the odd tomato drop & rot in my outdoor border at the end of season when I've pulled up my tomato plants, and throw up subsequent seedlings in a very mild autumn, but for these to have survived & germinated is quite a miracle. No surprises then, for asking which variety of tomato you'll be eating this year. Is Sungold an F1 variety? I saved some seeds from my Sungold grown last year & have just sown them, so just wondered whether my plants might end up being slightly different.

Primrose wrote: Is Sungold an F1 variety?

I believe they are, yes.

Sungold don't come true, but some of the seedlings should produce nice sweet little tomatoes, sometimes red sometimes more orange.

I've also noticed a few seedlings germinating from February where I've missed a stray dropped fruit from last year, but I've weeded them out this year. Sometimes I pot them up and see what comes.

They do germinate much earlier than you would expect in a cold greenhouse border.

Sungold being an F1 variety would perhaps explain something I noticed on the tomatoes grown from my saved Sungold seed last year. A few of them developed light black streaks on the skin when they were ripe, almost as if somebody had written black pencil streaks across them. The quality of the tomatoes was unchanged, as was the flavour. I don't recall seeing any such markings on the ripe tomatoes from the original nursery plant I bought so perhaps this is one of the odd genetics of reproducing F1 seeds?

A friend has given me some seed from her last year's Hundreds and Thousands tumbling plug plants which she bought. I've not seen seed advertised for this variety and believe they too might be F1, I'm wondering what kind of plant I will get. I'm just going to grow one of these to experiment to see if they're any better than the Red & Yellow Tumbling Toms I'm also growing.