Hey gardening gurus, I have a question about heirloom plants.?

get a hold of the book Seed to Seed by Susan Ashcraft it has all the answers you seek. Generally as long as you have 20' of space between plants there will be little to no crossing. But potato leaf tomatoes need mire isolation, around 100'. You can always bag blooms to keep them from crossing. Also if you are saving seed you need a minimum of 8 plants of the same variety and you need to save seed from a few fruits from each plant . Yes, that means you will have several thousand seeds of every variety you grow-welcome to the word of seed saving my friend. Tomatoes are self pollinators and have perfect flowers meaning that the flowers have both male and female parts in them.

BTW crosses can be a lot of fun, especially if you take the time (at least 8 years) to stabilized them into an open pollinated variety (the same as heirloom but without the history)

Hi,

No, not the seeds. There are hybrids that have been created "accidentally", by unintentional cross pollination; however, you would see the result in the garden before you would see it in the seeds, so you would know if cross pollination had occurred and could avoid using those seeds. In fact, you should only save those seeds from the fruits that have all the characteristics you love most: size, flavor, color, health, etc. Here's an article that may help you bit, but you can also Ask A Master Gardener at this site and I'm sure she'll have a more thorough answer than I'm able to provide. I've NEVER heard of that happening at all and I've grown heirlooms, alongside hybrids, alongside open-pollinated tomatoes and have never seen evidence of cross-pollination.

I use some heirloom seeds. If you are going to save seeds from your heirloom plants then you will not have true seeds to plant the following year. With cross pollination for this years planting will not have an effect on the vegetable its self. Keep the plants a distance away and even then to make sure you keep your heirloom seed true there are measures you would need to take to insure it. You would have to make a frame covered with screen door material and place over the plant. Everyday you would need to take an artist paint brush and pick up pollen from the inside of blossom and touch other blossoms. There are male and female blossoms.

This method for true seeds is similar to pollinating gourds and it is done at night and the blossoms are covered with cheese cloth. Jo Ann

Plant sex!

Well, if you want to save the seeds from your biggest, juiciest, most luscious heirloom tomato this summer, you are going to have to protect it from all the other tomato pollens wanting to make seeds with her. So, if next year, when you plant that baby seed, you will get the exact kind of tomato as the year before....just like mom. Otherwise, you have a hybrid..not a bad thing just not what you really wanted.

Deekayowe - you need to stick with only heirloom and the same variety. Cross pollination is an issue. Do some research on hybrid vs heirloom. Very interesting.

Good luck