by Robert Spuhler
The unusual beauty of the “Lucid Tiger” tomato hybrid created at Castle Hot Springs was, well, an accident. Though it can be distinguished by its striking purple and orange speckled skin, its unique hues had nothing to do with why resort Farm Director Ian Beger originally crossbred the two-tone Lucid Gem and the striped Tigerella.
“I didn’t breed the tomatoes expecting anything like that,” he says. “It was a tasty tomato that caught our eye. And it yielded pretty well. It’s kind of interesting the way that you almost don’t know what you’re looking for until you find it.”
In a world that seems to crave consistency over flights of fancy, it seems like creating a new variety of tomato would be a frustrating goose chase. But a process that requires patience, attention and a constant pursuit of perfection is tailormade for Castle Hot Springs — and the Lucid Tiger, the resort’s current tomato hybrid project, could one day yield a literal prized heirloom.
A New Tomato Variety
Creating a new variety of tomato isn’t a lab project, or something designed via computer. It’s a physical, technical practice, one fraught with chances to go astray. It starts with handcrafted cross-pollination, taking the pollen of one plant and placing it on the stamen of another. The first “generation” of tomatoes after that are hybrids, and consistent in terms of features, but the seeds of that next tomato can result in huge changes.
“Every single plant will come out differently,” he says. “Different fruit characteristics, different shades, different growth, everything.”
Those changes will continue, as the seeds of each generation of tomato continue to hone in on a stable, reliable set of characteristics. Think of a pendulum, going back and forth, missing the center by less each time, until hanging plumb.
The process eventually creates a hybrid that is called “true to seed,” meaning that future generations of the fusion will produce similar fruit. This usually takes around seven generations – that’s seven growing seasons. But if one generation doesn’t yield any type of tomato worth duplicating, the entire cycle may have to be restarted.
“If none of those [other generation plants] are not special or really worth it,” Beger says, “then it’s like, ‘well, next year, we’re just going to have to try the same thing and see if we get some better luck.’”
If the seeds of that tomato are passed down for 40 generations of plants, it’s earned the status of “heirloom.” But the attention to detail required to create a “new” heirloom is only matched by the level of dedication that Beger uses to keep his tomato plants alive and producing fruit in a limited space at Castle Hot Springs. High-wire growing allows Beger to use a smaller footprint in the greenhouse, with individual plants growing vertically rather than across the ground; it is more labor-intensive and requires constant pruning, but it often yields a larger crop.
The Perfect Growing Environment
Meanwhile, the controlled environment of a greenhouse allows Beger to directly fight pests and mites by introducing the irritant’s natural predator into the habit, starting what he calls an “insect war.”
“You’re flipping over leaves, you’re looking to see if there’s any eggs of any pests,” he says, “and we’ve grown them long enough now where we know what russet mite damage looks like, we know what whiteflies look like, we know what a lot of the stuff is. … For almost every pest out there, there is some sort of predator that that will attack it. That’s how nature works.”
The close eye on warding off pests, the patience of waiting for generation after generation of tomato plants, the evolution of the fruits themselves – in a way, the life cycle of a tomato hybrid stresses the same qualities that exemplify the resort at which they’re grown.
“We live in such a fast-paced lifestyle, and I get caught up in that sometimes, too,” Beger says. “But with plants, it’s totally different. … There’s this Chinese proverb: ‘The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, but the second-best time to plant a tree is today.’ You’ve just got to get started.”
