How do you tell the sex of each tomato plant?

Question

In Totally Tomatoes they are offering a hybrid between two different strains of Abraham Lincoln(heirloom tomato), using a female line crossed with a male line.  I can understand crossing too strains of the same variety, however how can you determine a female tomato plant from a male tomato plant.  Tomatoes for the most part are self pollinating.  Can anyone explain to me what they are saying, to my understanding.

Fish · Accepted Answer

Sounds like B.S. to me, or a sales gimmick.  Tomato flowers have both male and female parts.  That's why they are self fruitful, and can grow tomatoes while only having one plant.  

The only thing that they may be referring to is that they took pollen from the stamens (male part of the flower) of one parent plant, and pollinated the pistil (female part of the flower) of the other parent plant to generate the fruit that made the seeds for the new plant.  But...that's how all hybrid plants are made.  It's called cross pollination.  Nothing out of the ordinary

Some plants DO have separate male and female plants (Holly and persimmon come to mind right away), but to my knowledge, no tomato strains have separate sex plants.

For more information on growing tomatoes, go to my website:
http://www.food-skills-for-self-sufficiency.com/growing-tomatoes.html

Fish

Aaron the Great · Answer

Look under the leaf to see what equipment the plant has. Sounds like they have an ordinary mater and tiring to make themselves sound fancy.

Charles C · Answer

Fish is correct. They are just telling you that they have chosen one strain to provide the pollen and the other to develop the fruit.

Trending News

How do you tell the sex of each tomato plant?

3 Answers