I am SO confused!
This has been a wild season, what with starting more tomato varieties from seeds than I've ever done. Having limited myself to mostly one plant per variety, I have no chance of having a statistical "norm" to guide me, and a few of them have turned out to be not just my own labeling or seedling switching error and are being grown out as NOT this and NOT that.
So far, the NOT Earl's Green Cherry produced a red instead of GWR, a large cherry instead of cherry sized fruits, and NOT Trip-L-Crop is producing small walnut sized red fruits on very tall vines (I believe all my other varieties that are SUPPOSED to have small walnut sized fruits are dwarfs or 3-4 ft tall), the NOT White Queen is producing large cherry to walnut size fruits that color break into promisingly pale ivory then goes on to blush pink and eventually ripen to clear red. I have a NOT Native Sun with saladette size fruits that become blotchy uneven orange-red and begins to spoil before ever achieving fully ripe stage. A couple other plants that were my own seedling mixups and ID'd as another variety on maturity.
But the latest development is the most curious of them all.... I am growing a plant labeled Dwarf Emerald Giant. It was somewhat late to mature, but it's first fruit was HUGE. But it didn't stay green or become amber yellow like Grub's Mystery Green or Cherokee Green. It sported a pink blush on the green blossom end and at first I thought that was OK since it is SUPPOSED to blush pink at blossom end, but on the next day when I thought I would harvest it for safe keeping, I was called away and just HAD to leave it out there another day... And next morning, when I spied it from my bedroom window, it looked light yellow and pink. You should have seen me throw on some clothes and rush outside.
Looking it over, I had to conclude that I must have mixed up the seedlings again and judging by the yellow and strong pink blossom end color, this was probably a Grandma Viney's Yellow and Pink, though my other "official" GVY&P plant which had been producing mature fruits for a while never grew one this big -- it was flattened fused fruit and weighed 1 Lb. 7 oz. ...that should have been the end of story...
Yesterday, I had to harvest another fruit from the same plant that was still green but had started to color break with a light pink blush on the blossom end because it had a bad split. It seemed like a waste because it was way early in the color break and with a deep crack, was likely to spoil before ripening, even inside. Today, I saw that my prediction came true and spoilage was going to start at the crack. Since I had been processing tomatoes, I tossed it into the parboiling water, thinking I'll just kill the mold and then knife peel the green fruit and do something with it. But to my surprise, the skin started to slip off in the boiling water... It was acting like a ripe fruit. So I went ahead and slipped off the skin, then cut it apart and tried a piece... And it was SWEET. Huh?
There is NO CHANCE that the previous giant fruit had come from any other neighboring plant. With the green color and pink blush, the fruit I ate today couldn't have been Cherokee Green or Grub's Mystery Green which are growing next to it.
I have to say the shape of the large fruit is closer to that of Casey's Pure Yellow and the coloring could be darker version of it.
Wouldn't compare it to Grandma Viney's if I wasn't growing it. Nature's Riddle and Beauty King could also have similar coloring (I'm growing those too) and I had been waiting to eat the big one to see if I could pinpoint which variety I mistook it for... Except today's GWR fruit happened....
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Well, it's not quite like Grandma Viney's Yellow and Pink, but it is bicolor with red flesh like Grandma Viney's ...only LOTS more red:
I'll post their flavor comparison in the Compare and Share thread.
They both have clear epidermis/skin (hence the "pink" in Gandma Viney's Yellow and "Pink" I believe, because the bicolor flesh is definitely RED).I'll post their flavor comparison in the Compare and Share thread.
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