SUESS BECKER bean

 This update on the Suess Becker bean is partly for my extended family to view.  I have kept this bean alive by growing it every few years. Occasionally, I have sent samples to family and to interested growers. 

Since it hails from 1888 in Germany and before that by many years.  The text tells a story that I wanted public for a variety of reasons.  If anyone wants a very small sample, I will send postpaid an evelope of seed for $5.00.  Just email me at thoswagner@yahoo.com

Our family used it as a string bean...yes...we had to pull the strings before preparing for green beans.  However, we also used it as a dry bean.  It is early, grows quite compact and is prettiest when the bean seed ages....as it is pictured here as a tan/brown bean but when it is freshly shelled out as a dry bean it has a greenish cast.

I hope to grow more of them out this year.  The late Dan McMurray (Grunt) grew it for a few years in Canada, and I have a friend (Emma) who is growing it in Wales.

The Grow Northwest magazine for March 2, 2012 has an article about my work with potatoes and tomatoes. Here is a link

http://www.grownorthwest.com/2012/03/something-of-a-legend-an-interview-with-tom-wagner/



I need to remind folks that I am selling true potato seed ......TPS... and tomato seed among other things on the website newworldcrops.com

This is a snapshot of my HOWIE MANDEL potato variety. It is a cross between Mandel and John Tom Kaighin, both of which have great flavor and the hybrid is no exception either.

I sent true potato seed ...TPS ....out to a number of locations around the world and I am gearing up to list it with my online website for selling seed...newworldcrops.com

Since I have an idea from customers what appears among the seedlings from this clone....I hope to continue the awe that folks have with TPS.

This is a new variety from my breeding work. I am calling it Blue Green.

It ripens up with a green flesh with the blue mediated anthocyanin colors that are only skin deep.

Hope to have enough seed of it to introduce this coming catalog season.

This is but one of my many blue tomato creations. These are fully ripe Zebra type tomatoes that also have the blue pigments showing up in the areas hit by light and the stripes are picking up the pigment anthocyanin.

This and many other tomato varieties will be posted on the website newworldcrops.com for sales.

The Austrian Seed Savers...Arche Noah sent me this picture of some of the pretty tomatoes out of the seed I dropped off to them this Spring. Each of the tomatoes are sibs of each other. These are the selected ones out of 180 plants that were in their demonstration garden. It was called..SEARCHING FOR THE BLUE ZEBRA....and though they did not find the candidate sought..nothing is wrong with those. The range of recombination shows fruits from Green Zebra to Blue P-20.....left to right.

If you want tomatoes like these contact me at 425 894-1123

Green Zebra Hybrid

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Question: Are there any F-1 Green Zebra Hybrid tomatoes?

Answer: Yes

Question: Are they available to the average gardener?

Answer: No. Should they be?

Question: How many seeds do you have of a hybrid Green Zebra?

Answer: About 50 seed. But I could make more if the market wanted them.

Question: Would you sell any of those seeds?

Answer: I have a fellow that was part of the early Micro Soft organization - something like #15, I dunno, that wants me to put together a web site that features unusual tomato seeds. I have many hundreds of F-1 hybrid seed of all kinds of tomatoes. But most of them are in quantities of 50 +/- seeds. Would you pay a premium to obtain a Hybrid Green Zebra? Would you be interested in buying one seed so that you can grow out all kinds of F-2 tomato plants? Could you conceive of creating you own Newer New Green Zebra in a selfing program? Would you pay enough to support part of a breeding program so that it can get off the ground?

Question: Maybe. Would you agree to ___ dollars per seed?

Answer: I'm sorry! How much did you say?

The above is conjecturing the inconclusive about sourcing hybrid Green Zebra tomatoes. The expository as follows covers data about the questions and answers.





New Green Zebra is an OP version of my Green Zebra tomato. I believe I sent it out to a few people at various times or the last 15 years. The seed I am extracting this year is F-12, which means it is true breeding – stable- for quite a while now. The original cross was with Green Zebra, a variety I had developed starting nearly 50 years ago and has been stable for 38 years now. The other variety is no longer extant – excepting- my own seed saving.

New Green Zebra – for want of a better name- is basically a look alike Green Zebra – has the trendy recessive genes that personifies the original Green Zebra which is classically a green flesh with green striped tomato fruit. The segregation resulting from selfing the seed was not simple….literally hundreds (maybe thousands) of sibling vines were discarded in the past fifteen years of single seed descent observations. The selection process had little to do with science; however the template of selection by me(Tom Wagner) and other folks had fine-tuned this new clone. The original population was selected from being Yellow Zebras until a single plant segregated for the phenotype of a Green Zebra.

In creating a new strain of Green Zebra; the other parental clone had attributes that undoubtedly contributed to the final product of my New Green Zebra. I compiled a list of traits of the other parent clone. Be assured that many traits of this extant variety has been inherited by the New Green Zebra and I truly think it has one or more of the traits listed 12,13, and 14. I could send in samples of New Green Zebra to a lab that specializes in identifying disease resistances, but that will wait until another day.

1.high yield
2.extremely smooth
3.large red, deep globe shaped fruit
4.firm
5.uniform fruit with excellent flavor
6.smooth blossom end and shoulders
7.concentrated ripening – medium early
8.light-green shoulder
9.fruit stems are jointed
10.compact vines
11.excellent for shipping
12.Resistance: verticillium wilt race 1
13.-fusarium wilt races 1 and 2
14.-tobacco mosaic virus
15.-gray leaf spot
16.Adaptation: California and the midwestern/southern United States
17.Ripens well as a mature green harvest and also ripens well with ethylene gas

I have a number of plants of the F-1 hybrid between the Green Zebra and New Green Zebra – in the greenhouse and in the field. I have a selected few folks trialling the hybrid as well. The hybrid seems to have more yield, few problems, a semi-determinate vine, and over-all classic Green Zebra traits.

Contingency plans

I have used the New Green Zebra in many crosses to develop germ plasm for future plans of things that could go wrong and/or right. Quite a few of those crosses are now in stable lines and hybrids of these in even further crosses are in post hybrid selfing programs.

Tom Wagner

To show you how busy I have been or otherwise,
I still have stacks of potato berries from last year
waiting to be processed for seed.

Notice how some berries are purple? This is kinda
like my purple/blue tomato breeding work.