Sunday, January 23, 2011

Heirloom Tomatoes

I am waiting impatiently for some tomatoes to ripen. I have up to 10 different varieties of heirloom tomatoes in the garden - all from Diggers' - and it's quite interesting to see the different plants shapes as they grow.
Amish Paste is a voluminous and blowzy kind of plant which needs 3 stakes to keep the different branches upright. It has been much slower to set fruit than any of the others, despite being at least twice the size of any of them, hence I have not bothered to take any pictures.
Tigerella is a medium sized plant and a little lanky. The tomatoes are striped and so pretty, they will ripen to orange.


Peach Dreams is another lanky plant, quite small although perhaps it just feels neglected. The fruits seem small, and are furry like their namesake. They'll ripen to yellow or a pinky-red.


My Black Russian tomato is a lean plant. The fruits are a gorgeous dark and glossy green, and will ripen to a burgundy ('black'). I'm really looking forward to trying these.


My favourite tomato so far is the tiny Wild Sweetie. The bush is lovely and leafy, pyramid shaped. The fruit is only pea-sized. I admit, I chose this one for it's name which I loved, but it's definitely the prettiest tomato plant out there.


The other heirloom tomatoes I have have been grown from a seed mix of Burnley Sure Crop (red), Black Prince (black), Banana Legs (yellow), Aunt Ruby's German (green) and more orange Tigerella. Some of them are flowering, but none yet have fruit large enough to see what each plant is; a tasty lucky dip!

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