Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Wisconsin 55 Gold

Wisconsin 55 Gold 80 Days RL
Wisconsin 55 Yellow/Gold is a yellow mutant of Wisconsin 55 (This splendid cultivar represents some of the last focused open pollinated tomato breeding done at the University of Wisconsin in the early 1950's. by J.C. Walker, who was actually a plant pathologist. Shortly after that time, breeding efforts shifted to F1 hybrids and this was among the varieties that were nearly forgotten.) that Dr. Robert Raabe, professor emeritus UC Berkeley, found growing in a field of the original Wisconsin 55 growouts in 1953/54 when he was a student tending fields and picking fruit for processing. Raabe saved some seeds as a curiosity. He's grown them for them 50 years since because he likes them but never thought there would be widespread interest in such a thing until Alison Stewart got excited about it and asked him for seeds. Raabe gave Alison some seedlings from which she got a supply of seeds some of which she sent to Martin Longseth, a champion of Wisconsin 55. This tomato grows hardy plants under harsh conditions in shallow soil and makes thick walled, dense tomatoes suitable for canning and slicing. WI-55 Gold seems tolerant to disease, heat, heavy rain, and survives bug infestations while producing relatively blemish free fruit without cracks that ripen to a very pretty yellow/gold color that is not orange. (Variety info from IN JE B2)

4 comments:

Chuck Bartok said...

Thank you for the info. Will try next year. Thanks again

Tomatoaddict said...

You're welcome Chuck.. Let me know if you need seeds.
Terry

Cherokee Tiger said...

Do you ever attribute the writing you use in these blogs to the original writer or do you simply plagarize at will?

IN JE B2

Tomatoaddict said...

Ahhhhhhh.. Travis. Finally found your comment from 2 years ago. I see how nicely you worded it. Thanks for that. I credited your SSE ID with the info although for the record, I have never transcribed from the hard copy yearbook onto the pc. I had to have gotten it from somewhere else on the web. Still, here ya go. Maybe in the future you can use my email address from the blog ask me nice questions.