So it Begins

Today we create the BLOG of our tomato projects, years of sharing to social media with no real structure while fun misses the documentation I wanted. This blog will capture all the process of cross pollination and selections from many crosses we have done in house.

2024 I purchased some purple tomato seeds from Norfolk and grew them out, then decided the flavor was slightly unappealing. Since the purple was sort of a novelty to us we then decided to take our favorite micro tomato and cross it with purple genes, we also did the same with Honey Delight F1 from burpee. These crosses were made indoors and the F1 generations of HDOD and Purple Gremlin projects took off.

Fall of 2025 the F2 seeds were saved and grown indoors through winter with steep selection for micro tomatoes only. The genetics of micro were 3 separate genes and thus we had a 1/64 chance to see full micro from these selections. By January of 2026 we had found several micros on the Purple Gremlin lines, one saved the purple genes and produced a purple fruit. we also saved one micro from the HDOD line and one of each color for dwarf genetics. Dwarf tomato plants only need 2 of the 3 sizing genetics to create the smaller stature from our observations and this fits with our results as well. We started with 4 total 72 cell trays on Purple Gremlin, 2 trays of the HDOD line. At the end of selections we were down to a handful of plants, flavor ended up great with higher brix than the originals.

Shortly we will be starting seeds for the F3 generations on these two lines. While these were fruiting in the indoor grow room we also crosses several other tomato varieties that will be quite exciting to see the results. These will all be F1 and will get their own tomato project tabs as well.

In these projects and blogs I intend to share all of our experiences and observations to help others grow and breed tomatoes in their own gardens.