Tuesday, July 27, 2010

The Great Tomato Mix Up of 2010

Last year I made a ton of online trades through garden websites, as well as with neighbors and friends. After all my collecting I ended up with a beautiful pile of heirloom variety tomatoes I wanted to try. I had some germination issues and had to retry a few types I absolutely had to have.

My big choices for the year were:
Roomi
Italian Market Wonder
White Wonder
Chocolate Cherry
Ester's Yellow Cherry
Purple Cherokee
Green Sausage

I ended up with 14 beautiful strong plants (1 died of a fungal disease after the first harvest, but I managed to save all my others).

Somewhere along the line, I either mislabeled my plants, or was given bad information on what the kinds I had were. I even saved some seeds and planted from last year and I'm not so sure they are winners.

In fact, my White wonder are a very dark red with green on top even when ripe, and an ox heart shape. Not as dark at the Purple Cherokee are supposed to be. Then the supposed Purple Cherokee are only the size of a quarter right now, with maybe 5 on 2 plants. The roomi have no tomatoes to be seen, and the Italian Market look more orange/yellow then photos I've seen of them. The only plant that is labeled properly is the chocolate cherry!

I will get photos later with my concerns, but I've decided next year I will order my tomatoes from a trusted source and try again. I want to make sure I know what I have before I start saving seeds for myself, and to trade.

Where did I go wrong!? :/

1 comment:

  1. Oh how frustrating! I'm actually running into the same problem, except that its all my fault. I didn't label any of them. So now I'm having surprise tomatoes. Next year, I'm labeling.

    ReplyDelete