Post by tatermater on Feb 9, 2008 13:13:09 GMT -8
I did a select copy paste of a thread about White Zebra at another forum. I hesitate to bring it here, but I am trying to bring together intelligent information to my forum. My apologies to anyone if this is not kosher. Tell me otherwise, and I will understand somewhat.
The history of the White Zebra needs to be codified and this is my attempt at showing how questions and answers can be gathered from people with generous input to solve the mysteries that abound. I am putting together the pertinent quotes to illustrate how this communication works. All of this happened within a week.
Quote:
Would like to get a little background on White Zebra if anyone has any. Also if it is a RL or PL.
Quote:
Bill Minkey lists it in the 2007 SSE YEarbook and says:
80 days, indet, RL, 4 oz white fruit with yellow tint, yellow and green stripes, shape is like Green, Red and Black Zebras, very good flavor, high yields, from Norwood Meiners,Mandeville, LA
Note: Bill's very good flavor is not that high on his list of taste adjectives.
Quote:
This sounds like the work of the bees in Brad Gates' garden! He seems to end up with every possible stripe combination out there!!!
Quote:
Thanks for the info. That's what I was wondering, who created/discovered this one. I thought it might be a BG's variety too.
Quote:
Terry, since you have a picture and you haven't yet grown it, I guess, that means it's listed somewhere COmmercially?
If so where?
And did you get it in trade or buy seeds commercially.
Just curious in case this comes up again.
The only place I have seen it commercially was Tradewindsfruit, and that was after a google search. I got mine in a trade. The pic is from the above site. It doesn't give any background info on it.
Quote:
What color are the stripes? White on white. A white zebra with white stripes. If you have good eyesight you can actually see the white stripes! When do you know when a White Zebra is ripe? Easy, when the Zebra seemingly looses its' stripe. These are the silly things that have gone through my head for years.
I believe I did pick up some white zebra types at Brad Gates place last summer. Picked up dozens of new types to segregate again for him.
When I would come up with yet another zebra type with clear epidermis and pale yellow/white flesh, it was another, "Here you go again" moment. Those tomatoes, either in a Banana Cream (Cream Sausage) type with stripes, or a cherry, or in a White Beauty background, whatever; the problem of showing them off was perplexing to folks. The stripes were so hard to see in a fully ripe form that folks would say, "Why?"
I called Bill Minkey just now, we had a fun time talking. I asked him where he sourced his seed and he said it was a fellow in Louisiana. I called Norbert's house but he was on a trip to Puerto Rico. I talked with the lady of the house about tomatoes but she said Norbert will want to talk with me when he gets back. Later on that talk when it happens.
I sent an email to the Trade Wind Fruit for more info since they don't have a listed phone. More later again. service@tradewindsfruit.com
Quote:
I love the way I know that I can count on the members here to go above and beyond the call of duty to answer a question.
Thanks to all of you for the investigation
Quote:
Tom, it seems to me that the source of White Zebra was with the fellow in Louisiana, as I posted.
And it also seems to me that tradewinds probably got it from Bill Minkey last Spring when he had newly listed it and cited his seed source.
Bill has listed several of Brad Gates varieties and always ID's his sources, as I've said before.
lastly, Green Zebra has been shown by quite a few folks to cross easily and I remeber maybe 5 years ago that someone sent me F2 seeds from a cross and there were all sorts of combos there, and even one that looked like your Xmas variety. But the taste of all of them was not good. Gene had no idea what the other parent was.
__________________
Quote:
Hey guys and gals, I've got a photo of a green and white striped tomato. Let me check my CD's real quick and I'll post the photo in a few minutes.
Quote:
As further proof to the much traveled White Zebra.
Tom,
We've received seeds from various places over the years, but the White Zebra I believe came from a home gardener in the San Francisco area. The tomatoes also seem to show up at some of the farmer's markets around there too. I think there may be some growers in the Central Valley of California that specialize in heirlooms and grow this type. Although our seed came from elsewhere, the Seed Savers organization which you're probably familiar with has offered White Zebra to their members for a few years. Thanks.
service@tradewindsfruit.com
Quote:
I have released seeds under Blonde Boar that looks just like that but I think it was several years ago and have decided to go a couple more years to clean out the yellows that it throws before releasing it agian.
Too bad if it's name has been changed. Brad
Quote:
Do you think you might be the original (California) source of the White Zebra and if there was any variation of your Blonde Boar to be deemed distinct?
I will have to look at my photos of your tomatoes again. I have shots of all of them.
I know I have not released any of mine that would look like the White Zebra.
Do you think you might be the original (California) source of the White Zebra and if there was any variation of your Blonde Boar to be deemed distinct?
Quote:
I would say that I fit the discription.
Brad.....
Quote:
Brad, before I start looking in back SSE YEarbooks for either Blonde Boar or White Zebra can you give me some timeline here on when you first started distributing Blonde Boar?
I';ve seen a lot of folks grow many of your others but haven't seen anyone mention Blonde Boar before now and it's been a while since I looked at your webpage but it looks like you may hae been distributing seeds for Blonde Boar before you had a webpage. Right?.
Is blond boar the same as blond zebra? I have grown your blond zebra in the past. Very nice
Quote:
I have a call in to Bill Minkey b'c he would know for sure if White Zebra or Blonde Boar have been listed before, and I'd really like to know what the person in Louisiana told Bill about the origin of his seeds.
I'll let you know the chat is when Bill gets home today and we can talk, or whenever, assuming Bill is not on vacation somewhere, which I doubt.
__________________
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I did talk with Bill and after about one minute started laughing b'c he said that Tom Wagner had called him over a week ago about White Zebra.
Since Tom didn't transmit the info here, I will. All Bill could tell me is that the fellow in Louisiana from whom he got the seeds said he got it off the internet. And that Bill knew of no previous SSE YEarbook listings for either White Zebra or Blonde Boar.
I have no intention of going further and calling the fellow in LA b/c I'm just not comfortable with that. No, Bill didn't have his phone number but usually that's easy to find online.
Note to Tom, with Bill's permission;
Bill said as soon as he gets the seeds you were going to send and he has your address he'll send you the White Zebra seeds.
Quote:
Here are the two pics I could find. One is R.Krafts of Blonde Boar. The other is Trade wind fruits White Zebra. I might not be an expert but they look like the same tomato to me.
__________________
Quote:
Tom, my apologies.
I was rereading thru this thread looking for something and saw that you had indeed called Bill Minkey and had also tried to reach Norbert.
I don't know about the rest of you but sometimes when I go to post I've missed one or posts and that was the case here.
So I wouldn't have bothered Bill with the White Zebra question had I seen your post, which I didn't.
Actually Bill and I had other things to discuss so it wasn't like it was a wasted phone call.
And I know Bill is eager to get the seeds you're sending him so that he can send you back the White Zebra seeds.
__________________
Quote:
I appreciate the fact that after talking with Bill Minkey, you found the previous message where I wrote about talking with Bill. Norwood will be home soon and I hope to catch up on the White Zebra connections.
I seeded about 128 kinds of seed today. Of interest to this post is my sowing of F-2 seed of White Beauty X Brandy Stripe. This Brandy Stripe is my woolly version of Vintage Wine. This past season the hybrid WB X BS was a good hybrid in itself; it had large pink fruit with a very faint stripe, and moderately woolly. The sowing will give me a one in sixteen ratio in coming up with a White Zebra type.
My goal is not to have a perfect look-alike but to have a larger fruited version with woolly foliage.
I will do another sowing of the F-2 seed in another month for the outdoor transplanting, and for that I might do a whole tray of seeds. That way I can preselect for potato leaf types, woolly types, and a few other traits that I can see in the 4 week stage.
Tom Wagner
I just talked with Norbert,(my mistake it is Norwood Meiners), I’m sorry, on the phone. He just returned from Costa Rica. We had a fun time talking about that beautiful country, as I visited the nation in 1974.
Anyway, we narrowed down some of the mystery of White Zebra. It appears that Norwood received seed from Trade Winds , see a previous message, and from Norwood the seed went to Bill Minkey. So it does appear that Brad was the source of White Zebra, and since Brad called it Blonde Boar, the name didn’t stick with it at the market place where the seed was traded to Trade Winds. How Kraft was able to get his seed would be another piece of the puzzle to complete.
After visiting with Brad, summer of ’07, and Brad’s admission that my Green Zebra was the grandpa of many of his selections, the mystery is approaching the end of the book. I told Brad that I would breed similar lines that I have bred with look-alikes of his to further the breeding work with more detailed pedigree lineage.
I told Brad that his accidental varieties resulting from a great founder tomato, Green Zebra, will be important to me. His varieties and mine will form a new coalition of genetic traits, introgressed with a high proportion of known parents.
Norwood told me that he was surprised that others get so many out crosses. He has not found that to be his case. I agreed with Norwood that I had the his same experience.
But in Brad's case, we talked about the various insects that may be responsible for the outcrossing phenomena that plagues him. That is a story into itself.
Sorry for all the quotes, but I wanted a quick read without each individual necessarily named in the messages. It was done to focus on the train of thought. The unrelated messages were omitted in this editing as I had a personal agenda regarding the original topic and no intended insults are directed otherwise.
Tom Wagner
The history of the White Zebra needs to be codified and this is my attempt at showing how questions and answers can be gathered from people with generous input to solve the mysteries that abound. I am putting together the pertinent quotes to illustrate how this communication works. All of this happened within a week.
Quote:
Would like to get a little background on White Zebra if anyone has any. Also if it is a RL or PL.
Quote:
Bill Minkey lists it in the 2007 SSE YEarbook and says:
80 days, indet, RL, 4 oz white fruit with yellow tint, yellow and green stripes, shape is like Green, Red and Black Zebras, very good flavor, high yields, from Norwood Meiners,Mandeville, LA
Note: Bill's very good flavor is not that high on his list of taste adjectives.
Quote:
This sounds like the work of the bees in Brad Gates' garden! He seems to end up with every possible stripe combination out there!!!
Quote:
Thanks for the info. That's what I was wondering, who created/discovered this one. I thought it might be a BG's variety too.
Quote:
Terry, since you have a picture and you haven't yet grown it, I guess, that means it's listed somewhere COmmercially?
If so where?
And did you get it in trade or buy seeds commercially.
Just curious in case this comes up again.
The only place I have seen it commercially was Tradewindsfruit, and that was after a google search. I got mine in a trade. The pic is from the above site. It doesn't give any background info on it.
Quote:
What color are the stripes? White on white. A white zebra with white stripes. If you have good eyesight you can actually see the white stripes! When do you know when a White Zebra is ripe? Easy, when the Zebra seemingly looses its' stripe. These are the silly things that have gone through my head for years.
I believe I did pick up some white zebra types at Brad Gates place last summer. Picked up dozens of new types to segregate again for him.
When I would come up with yet another zebra type with clear epidermis and pale yellow/white flesh, it was another, "Here you go again" moment. Those tomatoes, either in a Banana Cream (Cream Sausage) type with stripes, or a cherry, or in a White Beauty background, whatever; the problem of showing them off was perplexing to folks. The stripes were so hard to see in a fully ripe form that folks would say, "Why?"
I called Bill Minkey just now, we had a fun time talking. I asked him where he sourced his seed and he said it was a fellow in Louisiana. I called Norbert's house but he was on a trip to Puerto Rico. I talked with the lady of the house about tomatoes but she said Norbert will want to talk with me when he gets back. Later on that talk when it happens.
I sent an email to the Trade Wind Fruit for more info since they don't have a listed phone. More later again. service@tradewindsfruit.com
Quote:
I love the way I know that I can count on the members here to go above and beyond the call of duty to answer a question.
Thanks to all of you for the investigation
Quote:
Tom, it seems to me that the source of White Zebra was with the fellow in Louisiana, as I posted.
And it also seems to me that tradewinds probably got it from Bill Minkey last Spring when he had newly listed it and cited his seed source.
Bill has listed several of Brad Gates varieties and always ID's his sources, as I've said before.
lastly, Green Zebra has been shown by quite a few folks to cross easily and I remeber maybe 5 years ago that someone sent me F2 seeds from a cross and there were all sorts of combos there, and even one that looked like your Xmas variety. But the taste of all of them was not good. Gene had no idea what the other parent was.
__________________
Quote:
Hey guys and gals, I've got a photo of a green and white striped tomato. Let me check my CD's real quick and I'll post the photo in a few minutes.
Quote:
As further proof to the much traveled White Zebra.
Tom,
We've received seeds from various places over the years, but the White Zebra I believe came from a home gardener in the San Francisco area. The tomatoes also seem to show up at some of the farmer's markets around there too. I think there may be some growers in the Central Valley of California that specialize in heirlooms and grow this type. Although our seed came from elsewhere, the Seed Savers organization which you're probably familiar with has offered White Zebra to their members for a few years. Thanks.
service@tradewindsfruit.com
Quote:
I have released seeds under Blonde Boar that looks just like that but I think it was several years ago and have decided to go a couple more years to clean out the yellows that it throws before releasing it agian.
Too bad if it's name has been changed. Brad
Quote:
Do you think you might be the original (California) source of the White Zebra and if there was any variation of your Blonde Boar to be deemed distinct?
I will have to look at my photos of your tomatoes again. I have shots of all of them.
I know I have not released any of mine that would look like the White Zebra.
Do you think you might be the original (California) source of the White Zebra and if there was any variation of your Blonde Boar to be deemed distinct?
Quote:
I would say that I fit the discription.
Brad.....
Quote:
Brad, before I start looking in back SSE YEarbooks for either Blonde Boar or White Zebra can you give me some timeline here on when you first started distributing Blonde Boar?
I';ve seen a lot of folks grow many of your others but haven't seen anyone mention Blonde Boar before now and it's been a while since I looked at your webpage but it looks like you may hae been distributing seeds for Blonde Boar before you had a webpage. Right?.
Is blond boar the same as blond zebra? I have grown your blond zebra in the past. Very nice
Quote:
I have a call in to Bill Minkey b'c he would know for sure if White Zebra or Blonde Boar have been listed before, and I'd really like to know what the person in Louisiana told Bill about the origin of his seeds.
I'll let you know the chat is when Bill gets home today and we can talk, or whenever, assuming Bill is not on vacation somewhere, which I doubt.
__________________
Quote:
I did talk with Bill and after about one minute started laughing b'c he said that Tom Wagner had called him over a week ago about White Zebra.
Since Tom didn't transmit the info here, I will. All Bill could tell me is that the fellow in Louisiana from whom he got the seeds said he got it off the internet. And that Bill knew of no previous SSE YEarbook listings for either White Zebra or Blonde Boar.
I have no intention of going further and calling the fellow in LA b/c I'm just not comfortable with that. No, Bill didn't have his phone number but usually that's easy to find online.
Note to Tom, with Bill's permission;
Bill said as soon as he gets the seeds you were going to send and he has your address he'll send you the White Zebra seeds.
Quote:
Here are the two pics I could find. One is R.Krafts of Blonde Boar. The other is Trade wind fruits White Zebra. I might not be an expert but they look like the same tomato to me.
__________________
Quote:
Tom, my apologies.
I was rereading thru this thread looking for something and saw that you had indeed called Bill Minkey and had also tried to reach Norbert.
I don't know about the rest of you but sometimes when I go to post I've missed one or posts and that was the case here.
So I wouldn't have bothered Bill with the White Zebra question had I seen your post, which I didn't.
Actually Bill and I had other things to discuss so it wasn't like it was a wasted phone call.
And I know Bill is eager to get the seeds you're sending him so that he can send you back the White Zebra seeds.
__________________
Quote:
I appreciate the fact that after talking with Bill Minkey, you found the previous message where I wrote about talking with Bill. Norwood will be home soon and I hope to catch up on the White Zebra connections.
I seeded about 128 kinds of seed today. Of interest to this post is my sowing of F-2 seed of White Beauty X Brandy Stripe. This Brandy Stripe is my woolly version of Vintage Wine. This past season the hybrid WB X BS was a good hybrid in itself; it had large pink fruit with a very faint stripe, and moderately woolly. The sowing will give me a one in sixteen ratio in coming up with a White Zebra type.
My goal is not to have a perfect look-alike but to have a larger fruited version with woolly foliage.
I will do another sowing of the F-2 seed in another month for the outdoor transplanting, and for that I might do a whole tray of seeds. That way I can preselect for potato leaf types, woolly types, and a few other traits that I can see in the 4 week stage.
Tom Wagner
I just talked with Norbert,(my mistake it is Norwood Meiners), I’m sorry, on the phone. He just returned from Costa Rica. We had a fun time talking about that beautiful country, as I visited the nation in 1974.
Anyway, we narrowed down some of the mystery of White Zebra. It appears that Norwood received seed from Trade Winds , see a previous message, and from Norwood the seed went to Bill Minkey. So it does appear that Brad was the source of White Zebra, and since Brad called it Blonde Boar, the name didn’t stick with it at the market place where the seed was traded to Trade Winds. How Kraft was able to get his seed would be another piece of the puzzle to complete.
After visiting with Brad, summer of ’07, and Brad’s admission that my Green Zebra was the grandpa of many of his selections, the mystery is approaching the end of the book. I told Brad that I would breed similar lines that I have bred with look-alikes of his to further the breeding work with more detailed pedigree lineage.
I told Brad that his accidental varieties resulting from a great founder tomato, Green Zebra, will be important to me. His varieties and mine will form a new coalition of genetic traits, introgressed with a high proportion of known parents.
Norwood told me that he was surprised that others get so many out crosses. He has not found that to be his case. I agreed with Norwood that I had the his same experience.
But in Brad's case, we talked about the various insects that may be responsible for the outcrossing phenomena that plagues him. That is a story into itself.
Sorry for all the quotes, but I wanted a quick read without each individual necessarily named in the messages. It was done to focus on the train of thought. The unrelated messages were omitted in this editing as I had a personal agenda regarding the original topic and no intended insults are directed otherwise.
Tom Wagner
