![]() It may be in his blood his ancestors on the Isle of Man survived the Potato Famine by selecting blight resistant potatoes instead of growing clones of the “Lumper” variety that failed all across Ireland. There’s a story behind every name, from “Helsing Junction Blues” to “Dancing with Smurfs.” He has fun with plant names, occasionally mixing in Manx words, family names or wordplays that recall a train of thought or a particular memory for him. Of course, he doesn’t just breed for looks, but also for flavor, nutritional value, and blight resistance, with some varieties remaining viable even after frost, improving in flavor the longer they wait. ![]() They also come in various colors, including bright blue, like “Blue Streak,” or black with pink and green stripes, like “Russian Cossack.” Another variety, called “Into the Blue” has traditional red fruits but blue foliage, making the tomatoes visually pop. While refining the stripes, he discovered that a darker green stripe with a regular pattern accompanied a more interesting tangy flavor, which now defines the “Green Zebra.” The tomato is now offered by many different seed companies.Īs you might guess from “Green Zebra,” Wagner loves stripes, and many of his tomatoes have them. ![]() The stripes were added later from a plant he found while visiting an experimental garden in Ames, Iowa. After hundreds of crosses, about a quarter of the resulting fruits were crack resistant, and he was getting a few yellow and green tomatoes in the mix. He got, as it turned out, a red tomato that cracked. He collected seed from a red tomato that never cracked and crossed them. The tomato he started with was green even when ripe, but after waiting all summer for the fruit, nearly all of it would crack and spoil. Although frequently labeled an “heirloom,” it was bred by Wagner in the 1950s, when he decided to try creating a green tomato with no cracking issues. One of his first and most famous creations was the “Green Zebra” tomato, now a familiar sight at farmers markets with its unusual stripes and bright, tart flavor. I can’t ride a tractor for hours without getting distracted by a variegated lamb’s quarters.” “I’m a gadfly sort, my mind doesn’t shut down. Agriculture was always in his blood, but Wagner never considered himself suited to regular farming. While working various jobs for greenhouses, seed companies and farms, he continued his research. Wagner went on to get three degrees at the University of Kansas, in botany, geography and anthropology, and became certified for substitute teaching. Seeds were my toys – I went from marbles to potatoes,” he said. “It was a poor boy’s way of creating varieties himself. So he added fresh genetic material to the strain, and was able to breed a tomato that ripened well but did not crack. “We needed to bring in a new bull,” he said. For instance, the best tomato for the Kansas heat was a variety that cracked badly. He collected seeds of all kinds to build up genetic diversity. “I could have been happy just growing typical varieties,” Wagner said, “but I wanted to prove wrong the phrase ‘there’s nothing new under the sun’.” He bred the heifers to be wild and long-legged. He bred the chickens, keeping a whole coop of roosters so he could introduce different traits into each mating. He bred Indian corn in various color patterns, and peas with all different colors in one pod. Wagner, who grew up on a Kansas wheat farm, began to experiment at an early age with breeding his family’s vegetables and animals. A resident of Everett, Wagner is one of a very few independent plant breeders in the United States and something of a legend in potato and tomato growing circles. You might not have heard of Tom Wagner, but there’s a good chance you have eaten or grown some of his work.
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