You saved the seeds from a Brandywine tomato and planted those seeds and got plants that are significantly more productive than the Brandywine plants from which the seeds came. That's the story, right?

Are they crosses? Well ...

Okay, was the Brandywine from which you saved the seeds a vine with potato-leaf shapes and pink fruit? If yes, do the vines grown from the saved seeds have smooth-edged leaves like the potato-leaf Brandywine parent? Or do the vines grown from the saved seeds have serrated-edged (sawtoothed) leaves like the Porterhouse vines that you grew last year?

If your last year's Brandywine vine had smooth-edged leaves that look like potato leaves and you indeed have seeds from that vine crossed with Porterhouse, then the F1 seeds should make regular-leaf (sawtooth) type vines with red fruit the color of the Porterhouse tomatoes ... because regular leaf and red fruit are both dominant traits.

That's how you will know if you have crossed seed ... from seeds saved from pink fruit off the potato-leaf Brandywine plant, you're getting red fruit off regular-leaf vines this year.

What will you get next year if you save seeds from an F1 vine with Brandywine x Porterhouse parents? Well, you should get 25% potato-leaf vines and 75% regular leaf vines. Say you plant 24 F2 seeds ... you should get 6 potato-leaf vines and 18 regular-leaf vines (ideally). Same with pink vs red fruit ... 25% pink/75% red in the F2.

Man you know your stuff....it's exactly like you said, I have regular leaf plants(last year they were potato leaf), as for color I won't know till thier ripe...at first I thought I got some seeds mixed up, thats the only plant I saved seeds from...man if they end up tasting good this might be quite a project...thanks again..

What will you get next year if you save seeds from an F1 vine with Brandywine x Porterhouse parents? Well, you should get 25% potato-leaf vines and 75% regular leaf vines...This is highly unlikely from a natural cross because, even with a cross, most of the seed generated thereform will be selfing. The assumption here is that the parents were totally cross pollinated. That is not logical to me. You must understand that while some seed in a tom fruit may be a "hybridized", most will not be unless there is intervention to make it so.

Reg