Tomato flowers fertilize themselves, so you might not get anything different. I don't worry about cross pollinations with my tomatoes, and saved the seeds of 4 different kinds to plant this year.
I agree, they don't cross pollinate too much. But I did have a funny cross of sungolds & brandywine last year, or the year before. Golf ball sized tomatoes with catfacing.
Totally useless, none were edible really.It's interesting. Pretty much all squash will cross, including the winter varieties and most pumpkins, but you won't know how till the next season of you save seeds.
This!
Most tomato flowers are closed. To create new varieties you actually pinch the front tiny petals off of both flowers and rub them together. As Sue said, it can happen, more so with really big flowers, but not often. I had 80 varieties last year stacked on top of each other and I can see some of the volunteers are growing true to seed.
Oh, man, when it comes to canning tomatoes, I HATE catfacing! It makes it so hard to peel the 'mater, even when you scald them.Golf ball sized tomatoes with catfacing.
Interesting! I might try that some day.
It actually worked because I chimed in on it.
It's so annoying! & of course the only tomato I will eat is a brandywine & they are notorious for catfacing. I find the catfaced ones end up with little fruit flies eating them too, last year I lost quite a few because of that.
80 different varieties...?! Or do you mean 80 plants?
