Growing heirloom tomatoes in limited space.

Hello. I am a new gardener and I want to try out a variety of heirloom tomatoes so I can sample and see which variety I will like best. I don't have lots of space in my garden so it would be hard to keep them far apart. I've been reading about issues with cross pollination and there are mixed opinions on how to approach it.

I guess my goal would be to identify the variety that I like most and keep growing them and hopefully as a long term goal, train them to thrive well where I live. (And I know it is challenging to grow tomatoes in Florida.) However, since I know I can't avoid cross pollinating completely with the limited garden space, I'm thinking maybe it won't be necessary to save seeds and just propagate them with suckers cuttings instead.

My question about this is if I keep replanting the same heirloom over many seasons, would a new tomato plant from a seed be more adapted, healthier and even better tasting maybe (?) compared to propagated cuttings from suckers?

I'm just thinking it's easier work to replant the suckers than to save seeds and have to worry about getting hybrids, even despite the small chances of it happening. I don't seem to like the idea of having to bag up the flowers to isolate the pollen, I prefer to invite bees to my garden anyway.

Thanks.

This message was edited Dec 15, 2014 10:52 AM

you can definitely plant the suckers for sure, and they would be the same plant. a word of caution though, not to do that from a diseased plant, as ive found out that the disease is hiding there in the sucker waiting for the right time to run its course. Also be sure to find new places to put them each year, as putting the same things in the same spots every year greatly increases chances of said diseases, among other things, showing up to have a field day on your plants. One other thing to consider is growing them in large pots (about 5 gallon sized)

Grow them, then put a bag over the flowers. Not all the flowers, just a few on each plant.
Hand pollinate those flowers so you KNOW they have not crossed with the others.
Then make sure you use those fruits as the seed source for next year's plants.

Get together with some friends, and each grow a different variety, then swap fruits so everyone gets to taste each type, and decide who wants to grow which.

Tomatoes, like peppers,eggplants,and beans are self pollinating. Meaning the flowers have male and female parts and are generally pollinated by movement of the blossoms ie wind. They can be pollinated by insects but they don't need to be. Like Diana said bag a few flowers (before they are opened) and shake the flowers daily. You can also use organza bags, I think that's what they're called. They are made out a kind of netting.

Thanks for the responses. It look like I can pick up some organza bags fairly cheaply from Amazon.

This was the best source for organza bags I found. The prices will be several years out of date.

Best Organza: from Patti1957 order sizes around 30 or 10.
http://www.yourorganzabag.com/organzabag.htm

3"x 4" Flat Organza Bags 30 bags / $2.70
4"x 6" Flat Organza Bags 30 bags / $3.90
6-1/2"x 15" Organza Wine Bags 10 bags / $3.90

Bagging is only necessary if you are trying to preserve a rare heirloom "for the ages", or trading seeds with people like the SSE, who aren't just growing for today's table, but do want to preserve heirlooms indefinitely with minimal genetic drift.

Here's a good technical article about tomato isolation strategies:
http://www.southernexposure.com/isolation-distance-requirements-for-tomatoes-ezp-35.html

Since you aren't aiming to be a preservationist or archive of guaranteed 100% pure seed lines, you could probably do just fine with 5% or even 20% cross-pollination per year. Start a few more plants than you need, and, if a few turn out to be rogues, yank 'em.

Every 5-10 years, if the number of rogues is increasing, go buy one more packet of pure seeds.

In fact, if you buy new seeds every 3-5 years, you can just split the pkt when it arrives. Store it DRY and cool, and they'll stay viable enough to use for 3-5 years without saving anything.

P.S.
If you're trading seeds, and want bragging right about their purity, .save a lot of seeds in Year One. Plant lots in Year Two, and count the number of rogues. Then trade the Year One Seeds after the Year two harvest, and you can say that cross-pollination, as measured by fruit and leaf color, shape, size and days to maturity is less than x%.

You would need 20 plants to say "less than 5%".
You would need 100 plants to say "less than 1%".

I would start buy picking a determinate tomatoe that likes the heat. try looking in tomatoegrowers.com they have alot of good varites. Heres a link to check out: jubilee produce

Now that I get more into growing tomatoes, I'm not particularly concerned anymore. If there is a variety I like enough I will make sure to separate the flowers. I had great success with my first time growing tomatoes. It's about three month from transplant and most of my tomato plants are at least between 7 to 8ft, one cherry tomato is reaching 10ft. Lots of green fruits, but no harvest yet, but I guess they take a little longer growing through the winter months.

What I learned is I must space them better next time. The crowdiness makes it harder to manage the plants in the middle of the bed and I guess the shading make the fruits ripe slower too.

I have had great success with re-rooting suckers. I ended up having to giving away some on craigslist, used a few in a mini-hydroponic setup for fun, and now blending up the rest to put into my compost tea.

I prefer indetermine type so I can keep harvesting. My only concern is to keep the plants from disease and the soil rich. Fortunately I didn't get any disease this time, but I know it is inevitable. So I'm just trying to keep my soil healthy and add compost whenever I can to build it up. Maybe I will just have to grit my teeth and cut plants down to one main stem to give them more airflow.

This message was edited Feb 16, 2015 10:58 PM