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You Say Tomatoes and I Say Toe Mat Oes©

By: Arlene Wright Correll

A garden without tomatoes is never really a garden. It is the main staple of a garden. When one gets out of the business of having a garden there is always the patio tomato plant or the container of tomatoes.

In the fall of 2003 I decided I would have an eclectic tomato garden so I ordered a bunch of heirloom tomato seeds that I set to doing their thing February of 2004 out in the greenhouse along with some of the old standby red tomatoes.

After the last frost I set out the seedlings remembering to set them deep and to remove any leaves that would be below soil level since most of my plants were pretty leggy.

We enjoy fried green tomatoes here so I decided to try Green Zebra tomatoes which are beautiful chartreuse with deep lime green stripes and rich tasting bright green flesh. The yield was very good and they tasted good any way we fixed them. But they did not make a better fried green tomato than the unripe tomatoes we usually use.

I also tried a tomato called Green Pineapple that has a distinctive pineapple aroma growing to a medium size with olive-lime colored skin and sweet green flesh. They perked up our salads.

One I liked because of its name and the fact that it is sort of a hollow tomato which made it great for stuffing was one called Pink Accordion. The tomatoes were truly ruffled like an accordion. Its flavor was sweet and mild.

Of course I had to send for a package of purple tomato seeds and since there were a great variety of them I ordered one called Black Krim which ended up having a rich sweet flavor and grew to be a dark red-purple tomato. Most of them grew to be large fruit and apparently was an heirloom tomato from Russia. I recommend these highly.

Principe Borghese ripened within 70 days or so and is an Italian tomato that is famous for sun drying. I liked the fact that they grew in abundance in clusters of small grape shaped fruit and made a great tomato for making sauce.

Another tomato I grew that year was some sort of yellow pear shaped tomato. I can no longer remember the name but the flavor was mild and sweet with the tomatoes being less than 2 inches long. They added color to our salads.

I also grew a white tomato that year. The fruit was really fruity and I think it was called the Great White. It sort of reminded me of an albino beef steak tomato!

I had also ordered some Italian tomato seeds from a company that specialized in organic heirloom seeds directly from Italy and needless to say none of them did well at all.

We enjoyed all the varieties that season and neglected to save any seeds and dry them out which we very well could have done because

Author Resource:-> For more gardening or cooking information click http://www.learn-america.com/
To see Arlene’s Gardens and to read her gardening diaries or click on Arlene’s Books where you can download or buy her gardening & cook books. Remember to check out her artwork, especially of her fruits and vegetables. Arlene says, "All my royalties from the sale of my books go to the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and I thank you for visiting my site."

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