Dehybridising Ferlines

[womble]

Anyone ever grown out Ferline to a F2 or F3?

I've been talking about it for years, but never done it. But I have saved some seeds this year, but I'm a bit undecided tbh. I don't want to waste alot of space in the greenhouse on what could be a load of rubbish, so they would be outside, which I suppose would show up quickly if any were still blight resistant.
I've talked myself into it.

[Flummery]

The way to save space when unhybridising a tomato is to use flower buckets and put 4 plants in the bucket, around the edges, and stop them at one or two trusses. This gives you enough set fruit to evaluate but only takes the same amount of space as a single plant. Less, in fact, as it's shorter - you could put them on staging. Generally speaking, you get a reasonable variety showing at the F2 stage, so choose next year which ones you are going to continue with. I would do the same at F3 - at this point if you've picked 2 lines to continue with you're going to need a few more buckets, but if there's an outright Best in Show at F2, just carry on with a few buckets of 4 plants from that. You'll still get some variation thrown up for several years (I'm at F4 with my Sungold unhybrids but as I'm selecting each year, the ones I have left are getting better. I have a real favourite this year which is the only one I shall go with in 2011.)

Good luck with it. I would think the only way you can tell if the blight resistance is passed on into your next generation is to subject them to blight. Haven't seen any here this year.

[womble]

Thanks Flum, yes the difficult bit is the blight resistance, which is why I haven't done anything, even after thinking about it for a few years.
In that respect I want to grow them far enough apart to look at the blight resistance in them, so buckets for me is out, as it's not going to be clear enough to make me happy.

How may did you grow in your first year? And going on that first years info, how many would you now do?

And out of interest, when you did your first years de hybridising, what percentages of the fruit you got, was nice and eatable..... and did you get any uneatable?

[Flummery]

Everything was eatable, some much nicer than others but all palatable. I did a dozen each year. The first year a couple were notable better than the rest so I grew a doxen from each - still only 6 tubs. This year I grew out individual big plants from the best of the previous year. The couple of really good ones (one is the unhybrid and one is a cross) are going to continue next year but you do have to be ruthless with ones that are ok but not special.

As to the blight resistance, could you get a dozen of the old supermarket flower buckets and dot the plants around, one per tub? Then at least they can be in places like patios and paths where they aren't interfering with other rows of plants.