- Friedrich Nietzsche
Cross pollination between varieties of vegetables.
Owl
Posts: 215 ✭✭✭
I am learning to garden and I keep hearing references to tomato growers having several varieties in a season. I definitely love the idea of being able to grow my cooking tomatoes beside my slicers without worries about cross pollination but I don’t know enough to know how. Help, please!
Best Answers
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Jens
Posts: 536 ✭✭✭✭
@Lexie the beauty with tomatoes is that most tomatoes have longer stamen than pistile so they selfpolinate already during the opening of the bloom. There are only a minority of varieties that have it vice versa. With those you could have problems but in general as @Obiora E said there are no problems with cross pollination @Obiora
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tomandcara Colorado front range- Denver MetroPosts: 699 ✭✭✭✭
@Lexie You have gotten some excellent answers. I have had similar experiences as @chimboodle04. There is a seed saving course (Saving Quality Seeds) at the The Grow Network Academy
Answers
@Lexie I have never known anyone who grew multiple varieties of open-pollinated tomatoes to have an issue. I know a person who grows about 70 or more varieties and he lives in the city.
Put the seeds out, watch them grow, and consume the tomatoes that you grow.
I believe this is only a problem if you plan on saving the seeds to plant next year anyways. I will say that I did have this happen to me once (and only once) in all my years of growing. I had some beautiful Amish paste tomatoes growing with a few other varieties. I saved the seeds from one particularly nice Amish Paste plant, but what came up next year from those seeds was definitely NOT Amish Paste tomatoes. Still tomatoes and yummy, but not what I was wanting... Only happened the one time though.
This year's plants should be fine. If the plants bloom at similar times and cross-pollinate, the new variety would come from the seeds and future plants. You can still save the seeds, plant, and see what you get.