Top Ten Tomatoes - 2014

These breeding lines are at various stages in development, but represent those that we voted as best of 2014.  Since these plants were in four different breeding nurseries, MN, NC, PA and CA – there are at least two from each to avoid biasing by growing location.   The fact they were not side-by-side, head-to-head, and were tasted at various times from mid-July to mid-August should preclude a formal ranking – but what the heck.

#1  I planted Everett's Rusty Oxheart tomato a few years ago, and it was too late for our Minnesota season - never ripened.  I was able to use it as a pollen parent in a cross, and wow!  We've got a handful of F4 lines now that are hands down the best/tastiest tomatoes in our breeding nurseries.  I’ve posted two photos that represent the range of about eight lines we are advancing. All have phenomenal flavor and a light to dark ochre skin with some pronounced green in the flesh.  The fruit have heart shaped tendencies.  Good lookers to be sure, but the flavor will make these famous.  I have never been so optimistic about a breeding line.

#2  I love the contrast between dark red flesh and the metallic green striped epidermis in this line.  This trait combo is now fixed in the F5 – we are fine tuning now for flavor, fruit shape/size and plant health.  We think this line will be outstanding.  The two photos represent the surprise/thrill in cutting open the fruit.  Someone online said it looks like a watermelon – perhaps.

#3  Backcrossing is traditionally used to introduce a “donor trait” from a non-recurrent parent into a elite (recurrent) parent.  BCx generation represents x number of backcrosses to the recurrent parent – for example (AxB) x B = BC1.  A modified backcross means that the “recurrent” parent may vary from one generation to the next; (AxB) x C = MBC1, with A being the trait donor.  Here are fruit from three excellent F4 plants from MBC2 lines with OSU Blue as the donor parent.  Flavor in these striped indigo cherry/grapes is very good to excellent - basic trait package is fixed, fine tuning should be completed by 2016.

#4  This is perhaps the best beefsteak I have ever tasted.  Deep red with gold stripes, a F6 from Earl’s Faux x BTD.  Unfortunately the only photo shows cross sections of F5 plants sliced open for tasting in the NC breeding nursery.

#5  This F5 line has wow flavor and very interesting GWR tricolor flesh. Green w/ orange stripes saladette.  It placed first in two FLF tastings at our MN farm this year.  It is still segregating some for fruit size, but flavor and tricolor flesh have stabilized.  At our home nursery (MN), this is the one I headed to consistently this summer when picking a tomato or three for dinner.

#6  We have a half dozen F6 lines from a cross between Randy Gardner’s GOB14 (LB/EB tolerant plum, similar to Plum Regal) and SunSugar.  These lines combine the flavor of SunSugar with the plant health/fruit quality of GOB14. Shape varies from grape to elongated pear - this one was a favorite.  Several of these were also at the MN nursery this year and rivaled #5 for most often eaten with/for lunch or dinner.

#7  A great line in it’s own right, this is turning out to be a phenomenal parent. This F6 line traces to (Sungold x Pink Boar), with Brix >10, and a lot of flavor complexity.  It is a poor seed producer with only moderate fruit yield - but tends to pass on most of its flavor attributes as a parent in F1 crosses.  We call it the ugly duckling – but the taste will knock your socks off.

#8  This started out as a project to combine freckles and Aft/atv fruit.  The goal was gold freckles on an indigo background - and we are getting close.  Still a work in progress, but this year at our NC/Burton Farms nursery we found this single plant in a row of 50.  A friend suggested the name “Lucy in the Sky”.  This year we’ll see if the phenotype is stable.

#9  Best tasting GWR in 2014, this F4 has a complex pedigree with contributions from SunGold, BTD and Cherokee Purple.  A striped oblong heart with very high yield, excellent fruit quality and very good plant health.  We have high hopes for this line, though it is still segregating.

#10  We love a starburst pattern on the blossom end, and have several such lines.  This is one of the most striking, and best tasting.

Grow Trees in the Desert With These Five Tricks From Nature

Biomimicry is the process imitating the wisdom of nature to solve human problems, and it rightfully has received a great deal of attention lately. Nature's organisms have been struggling to adapt to and live in inhospitable environments for millenia, while modern human engineering attempting the same feat is only a few hundred years old. The most famous example of biomimicry is probably Velcro, which mimics the hooks of burrs to become adhesive to fabric and hair.  However, a more complete and just as useful example of biomimicry is the Groasis Waterboxx.

The Groasis Waterboxx is a brilliant device to grow trees and other plants in the desert without any continuing irrigation.  The Waterboxx uses multiple ideas from nature to accomplish this task - in fact, the Waterboxx is so effective that it allows up 88-99% of trees planted with it to survive in the Sahara desert.

Bird Droppings
Birds are like humans in that they can see in color (some can actually see into the ultraviolet spectrum) - likely to be able to pick out brightly colored flowers and berries from surrounding green leaves.  Plants have evolved bright colors for their fruits in order to have their seeds eaten by birds, have the outer coating of the seed digested, and then having the seed deposited far from the parent plant in a bird dropping.  Bird droppings cover the seed planted on the soil, allowing the seed to be in contact with the existing capillary channels of the soil, thus allowing capillary water to reach the seed, ensuring is survives after germination.  The droppings themselves cover the seed, preventing drying out from sun and wind.  The Waterboxx copies this ability of bird droppings to plant trees and other plants - allowing capillary channels in the soil to remain intact while preventing soil moisture from evaporating into the air - similar to how a stepping stone will always have a wet underside as that soil moisture can't evaporate either.  You can see an overview of the Waterboxx mechanism, including the bird dropping inspiration, in the video below.

Skin Dew Drinking Lizards
Lizards in different parts of the world have developed an amazing ability to literally drink dew off of their skin.  The Australian Thorny Devil and the Texan Horned Lizards both collect small amounts of rain water and much more frequent dew on their skin, which is then channeled into crevices between their "horns" or skin spikes.   This water is then conveyed over to the lizards' mouth to be drank, sustaining the lizards in very harsh and dry environments.  Because there is dew most days even in the desert, the lizards are able to survive.  Similarly, the Groasis Waterboxx collects dew and rain water along its lid, and is channeled into a 4 gallon reservoir where the water is protected from evaporation.  This water is then slowly released into the soil beneath to nourish a growing plant's roots.  The lid is even corrugated, mimicking the horns of the toad, which increases surface area on which water can collect.

Australian Thorny Devil - From Wikipedia, By Bäras (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], via Wikimedia Commons

The Lotus Effect
Lotus leaves have an incredible ability to repel water, called superhydrophobicity by scientists and those fond of large words.  Lotus leaves have developed this ability in order to slick off dirt, bacteria and fungus which may damage the leaves of the plant.  This ability, called the Lotus Effect, is due to microscopic pyramids on the surface of the leaves which prevent small water droplets from attaching tightly to the surface with hydrogen bonds. The lid of the Groasis Waterboxx also has tiny pyramids which allows water to slide off the lid and down channels into the reservoir below for later use by the plant.

Graphic by William Thielicke showing pyramidal structure of the surface of the Lotus leaf.  This surface guarantees that water won't stick to the surface of the lotus leaf, or the Groasis Waterboxx lid that has similar microscopic pyramids on its surface.  

The Lake (Water) Effect
Water has incredible power to resist changes in temperature, referred to scientifically as high specific heat capacity.  This is very important in helping our planet (the surface of which is two thirds water) resist the massive changes in temperature of other planets like Mercury and the moon.  On a smaller scale, vessels of water can have a warm surface while still having a cool lower level of water.  This is familiar to almost anyone who has went swimming in a calm lake in the summer - the top most level of the water is warm, only to get much cooler farther down near a swimmer's feet.  This property of water can help a great deal in insulating plants against rapid changes in air temperature. Small plants still near the ground and the roots of larger plants are insulated from the heat of the sun in desert climates by the water residing in the Groasis Waterboxx.  In the photos below, you can see the how cool the Waterboxx keeps the soil below.

Yellow is hot, blue is cooler - the Waterboxx keeps the soil and roots of the plant cool even on hot days - from Groasis.com

Tree Trunk Effect
Trees are able to get water to their upper most leaves, even if several hundred feet high.  How do they do this - the don't have an electric pump at their base and running water.  They use capillary action, or the ability of water to pull itself up the sides of narrow tubes.  The Groasis Waterboxx takes advantage of this property in two ways.  First the Waterboxx slowly releases water from the reservoir to the soil beneath via a braided wick, similar to how torches slowly move oil for burning.  This allows a consistent supply of 10 teaspoons (50 mL) of water to be distributed to the roots every day.  Secondly, the Waterboxx planted tree takes advantage of capillary action to pull capillary water up from deep in the soil, preventing the death of the plant during times of drought.  You can see capillary action below in water rising up a paper towel.

The Groasis Waterboxx is a wonder of biomimicry - using many insights garnered from nature to increase nature - to plant trees and other plants on dry, fallow ground.  You can buy the Groasis Waterboxx from Dew Harvest  in the United States, with discounts on large orders.

You can see all our blog posts about planting trees with the Waterboxx here. We would love to hear your comments below - to leave one, please click on "Comments".