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tantric
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surrender's indian curry - mutant, misgrown tomatoes

last year I planted surrender's indian curry, mostly because I like curry. most of the tomatoes were great - strong taste, good texture, but about 1/4 of them came out looking like two or three tomatoes were trying to grow together. fine for curry, not so good for slicing.

is this normal for heirlooms?

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applestar
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Hmmm. Never heard of that variety. But I've heard that there is a certain flavor characteristic that is desirable in tomatoes used for for indian curry. Do you have any pictures?

Fruits resulting from mega-blooms/fasciated flowers are not necessarily "normal for heirlooms". But my understanding is that this is an environmental response, and tendency to produce them can be genetically inherited. Simple double or triple mega-blooms can result in larger fruits without the pithy white interior mess that I think you might be talking about, so folks who save seeds might tend to save seeds from those.

However, I know of a few tomato breeders who are trying to select this tendency out of their lines by ONLY saving seeds from single blossom fruits.

On the other hand, giant tomato growers preferentially save from the biggest tomatoes from carefully selected hybrid, intentiinally crossed, and open pollinated lines which has resulted in tendency of these lines to always grow multiple fasciated mega/blossoms that result in convoluted ugly giant lumps of impossible numbers of fruits mashed together.

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applestar
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Look here for pictures of acceptably large tomatoes (these aren't anywhere close to what are called "giants") :arrow: Subject: BIGGEST ONE YET :)
Then scroll down to the bottom for more related threads. :wink:

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applestar
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Here's one that was hard to use unless cooked. But it had this incredible red flesh that made great looking sauce
Subject: Kamatis Tagalog
applestar wrote:This is a tomato variety from the Philippines. I got the seeds from Gixxerific who, I think, got them directly from a tomato enthusiast in Philippines who goes by screen name of Adobo at a different forum.

It's a funny looking tomato, flat and orbital with extensive fluting. The epidermis is clear and the flesh is red, resulting In gorgeous dark pink color with waxy shine when fully ripe. I started this one early, thinking tropical variety would be a late maturer, but it was one of the first to bear fruit and ripen.

Two on the left are normal fruits. Some of the megablooms try to make a semblance of spherical fruit by feat of contortion like the three fruits on the right :D
Image

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