The joy of Winter crops

I like Winter, there are a lot of crops that are never seen in the shops so by growing them myself they are available seasonally and can only be eaten over Winter.  We have just started to harvest a few of them so I thought I should write a post about them.

Skirret - first year plants

Skirret (Sium sisarum)
Now here is one of the greatest, most under appreciated, under utilised and practically forgotten crops ever.  I wrote a post about how I was growing skirret plants from seed earlier.  I should probably write a separate post on them later.  Now it is time to harvest the and eat the skirret.

It has been a long time since I have eaten skirret, I forgot how great it is.  I grew some plants from seed, I over crowded them in a pot which I watered each day by submerging it in a bucket of water, and today I dug up, divided and harvested the skirret.  Normally first year plants have a woody core, none of mine did.  I can not imagine that I happened to chance upon an improved variety, I think this total lack of woody core was due to the huge amount of water they received.

The skirret did not grow a large crop this year, considering the growing conditions that is not unexpected.  However, I was still able to eat a few of the larger roots.  I scrubbed them, chopped them and ate them raw.  They taste a little like carrot but super super sweet.  This is sweeter than anything else I grow, so sweet that I am considering digging up the plants and nibbling on the tiny roots that I initially left on them because they were too small to be worth harvesting.  Truly magnificent.

I have some issues with sugar, I am probably on the edge of diabetes and I often find that fruit juice can tip me over the edge as it is too high in sugar.  I wonder if skirret will cause me any problems here or if the sugars are ok for me.  I guess only time will tell as I only got to eat a tiny amount of skirret today.

Someone in Australia needs to take on skirret as a breeding project and develop a variety with thicker roots.  An improved skirret with thicker roots would be an excellent plant for people to grow in home gardens.  As skirret is not particularly well suited to growing in my climate I do not think that person should be me right now.  If you grow improved skirret let me know, I would love to buy some plants from you.

Skirret offsets divided and  ready to be planted

Dahlias (possibly Dahlia pinnata but more likely to be some crazy un-nameable complex hybrid)
Dahlias were grown as a major food crop by the Aztecs, after Spanish conquest the dahlia was taken to Europe in the hopes that it could be a food crop.  For a few years it was apparently grown as a minor food crop, then the flowers caught peoples eye and they were grown and bred as a dual purpose plant for a little while.  It did not take long for this valuable food plant to be grown purely as an ornamental and lost its use as food.  These days most people do not recognise dahlias as being edible at all, it is too bad.  Some people are breeding edibility back into the dahlia, but not many unfortunately.

Over the warmer months I nibbled on the flower petals, they taste like weird celery, not all that special but not bad either.  Over winter the tubers were traditionally dug and eaten.  They look a lot like yacon, so it makes sense to eat it like yacon so I dug a tuber, skinned it, sliced it thinly and shared it with the kids.  It wasnt bad, but hundreds of years of selective breeding for the looks of the flowers has certainly detracted from its edible qualities.  It tasted like a bland celery, or a tasteless carrot with no sugars, or a yacon that got lazy and forgot to taste like anything, it was also a bit stringy.  It wasnt bad, but it also was not great.  It was also a dwarf variety that was grown in a pot so not surprisingly the tuber was a bit on the small side.  I dare say that they would go well in a stew to bulk it out and take on the taste of whatever it is in with as it did not have much of a taste by itself.

I would love to track down an edible variety and see what they taste like as I think it has a lot of potential.  Perhaps one day someone will breed some tastier dahlias and they can be grown once again as a dual purpose plant.  If you grow any tastier dahlias we should talk.

Yacon tubers ready to be eaten

Yacon (Smallanthus sonchifolius formerly Polymnia sonchifolia)
Yacon is not really suited to my climate, it grew amazingly well near Canberra but it is too hot and dry here for it to flourish greatly.  That being said, yacon is a survivor, it will grow and crop pretty much anywhere.  The crops are larger under some conditions and smaller under others.

This year we got high yields from the yacon, I grew it under a foot of straw and watered it with a green soaker hose that was under the straw.  Apparently it was rather happy growing like that and the plants grew taller than me and even started to flower before the frosts came.  Each plant seems to have produced a lot of large delicious tubers, I like digging yacon in Winter as the smell is unmistakeably like yacon.

I love yacon, I think more people should grow it.  I have yacon growing in three separate parts of the vegetable gardens and I harvested a tiny bit of the corner of one plot.  It gets sweeter if left for a week or so after harvesting before we eat it.  Today I shared one yacon tuber with the kids, they love it even more than I do.

Chinese artichoke tuber

Chinese artichokes (Stachys affinis)
These fun little guys are crunchy, mildly sweet, and look like white grubs.  Unfortunately they did not really produce any crop for me this year, I think they may not have got enough sun during the growing season.  It was also a bit dry where I grew them this year.  As I can not buy them from the shops, this means that I do not get to eat any Chinese artichokes this year...sigh.

Duck potatoes

Duck potatoes (Sagittaria sp) and Chinese Water Chestnuts (Eleocharis dulcis)
These guys both take no effort to grow, crop like crazy and are used in much the same way, I cant believe how rarely people grow them.  I grew them in buckets again this year and they were a bit too crowded so they produced numerous small corms.  I am told that 3 corms in a path tub full of soil/manure/water is the easiest way to grow them large but unfortunately I lack the space to grow them like that so am sticking to small buckets for now.

I probably wont eat many of these as they are a bit small this year, I will feed some to the animals and keep some to plant next year.  Being small this year is not an issue as they are genetically identical to the large ones, planting smaller corms will most likely result in fewer but larger corms being harvested next year.

Jerusalem artichoke flower

Jerusalem artichokes (Helianthus tuberosus)
Some people love them, some hate them, some are indifferent.  I am indifferent, they crop well so I grow them each year.  I cant really taste them and find them too bland, but Tracey finds them a bit over powering.  They are used like a potato, we have even used them as mash mixed in with potato.  They do not store well when dug so are best left in the soil until they are needed for a meal.

I think they are a great survival food as they are not bothered by diseases, are very prolific, and have many uses.  Our alpacas, sheep, poultry etc seem to enjoy eating the leaves and tubers.  The leaves are apparently very allelopathic so can be used as mulch around perennials to prevent weed germination.

Jerusalem artichoked growing in dappled shade

I am sure there are a few other things ready at the moment that I have not mentioned (such as perennial leeks).  If you are interested I do sell many of these vegetables on my for sale page.

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Yacon Water Kefir

I have had milk kefir grains for some time now, the kids love it, I like it but find it a bit too sour to drink by itself, and Tracey dislikes the taste of it.  Kefir is good for you so I wanted to try water kefir.  Perhaps that would be a way for the kids to get more of the kefir goodness into their diet.

Recently we obtained some water kefir grains.  Water kefir is different from milk kefir, it is still very good for you though.  The younger kids do not like water kefir all that much (mostly because it is a bit bubbly), Igloo loves it, I love it and Tracey thinks it is ok. 

Kefir
Both types of kefir contain live and beneficial probiotics.  Basically they consist of "good" bacteria, yeasts and other microbes. These good microbes are eaten by you and some will colonise in your digestive tract and continue to provide you with benefits long after you have finished consuming the kefir.  There are many recipes for water kefir on the internet but we have been mostly following the one that came with the grains.

Yacon
Yacon contains inulin and other sugars which are not digestible by humans.  Yacon is considered a prebiotic, this means that it contains things that feed the good bacteria etc in your digestive system which help to keep you healthy.  Yacon tubers also taste great, it is a vegetable that is eaten like a fruit and is loved by kids.  Yacon is my favourite vegetable.

Kefir & Yacon?
If water kefir contains probiotics, and yacon contains prebiotics which feed the probiotics, then it made me wonder if I could culture water kefir on yacon and leave out all of the other things.  After internet searching I found many people who claimed water kefir flourished when using yacon syrup instead of sugar.  Some people culture water kefir only on water and sugar, many of these people were the ones saying that the yacon syrup was great.

The only problem is that I do not have access to yacon syrup, I grow yacon plants and have access to the delicious yacon roots.  I do not know how to make the syrup and I do not intend to find out, I certainly have no intention of ever buying yacon syrup!  Nowhere on the internet seems to mention anything about yacon root (which I grow) being used in water kefir.  There is no one saying that they have tried this and failed or succeeded, someone needs to try this and let people know if it works or not.  That is why I am writing this post.

Yacon kefir - all the bubbles are gone because I carried the jar outside to take a picture

This is almost certainly not the best way to do this, but it is my first attempt so I will write what I did, and what I think should be done differently to make it better.  At some point in the future I may write another post and say what I changed and how it worked (or did not work).


Yacon Water Kefir

Ingredients:
1 small peeled yacon root (about the size of my thumb, perhaps a bit larger)
1 small peeled and grated yacon root (similar size to above)
1/2 cup water kefir grains
4 cups water

Method
1) add water kefir grains and water to a jar
2) squeeze the liquid out of the grated yacon root.  I put a strainer above the jar and squeezed above this so that the liquid would go in but not the solids.  Discard the squeezed and grated yacon
3) add the peeled yacon to the jar of liquid
4) wait 2 days for the kefir to do its thing.  I do not put a lid on the jar but you need some way to prevent insects and dust from entering
5) remove the yacon root, remove the kefir grains, drink the liquid.  Pretty simple


Even before the 2 days were up I noticed a few things.  Firstly, grated yacon is delicious!  I think it would go well in a salad being grated like this.  Secondly the kefir was bubbling a bit, this tends to indicate that the grains are working well.  If the jar had a lid we may have had issues with the pressure.


What does it taste like, Would I do this again

It tastes alright, but nothing to write home about.  It is similar to how water kefir tastes when it is made on sugar rather than adding any kind of fruit.  The water tastes like it is bubbling, even when it is not, other than that it does not have a strong taste.  I could barely taste the yacon, if I did not know that yacon was in there I would not have guessed it.  Kind of like soda water.

I dont think I will do this again, or if I do I will change things around and perhaps add some limes.  I love how water kefir normally turns out and found this yacon kefir to be less than exciting.  I also prefer to eat yacon normally rather than to eat it after it has been kefired.  The water kefir grains did not multiply as much as I had hoped.  They did multiply a bit, and the grains had been in the refrigerator for a week which generally means that they wont multiply a lot, but I had high hopes.  The water kefir grains have been multiplying slowly lately and I had hoped that the natural sugars in yacon would fix this, apparently we just have to wait for the weather to change.

Interestingly enough, the peeled yacon root also tasted like it was bubbling after it is removed from the completed kefir.  The kids thought that eating the yacon was fun as it did not taste much like yacon, it tasted like it was bubbling.

I also found it interesting that yacon normally discolours reasonably quickly after it has been peeled, but even after two days in the kefir the peeled yacon root looked much the same as when I put it in the jar.


What I would do differently

Yacon kefir tastes ok, but not great.  Adding some kind of fruit or berries or something may have made it much nicer.  Adding some sort of juice or something to the finished yacon kefir certainly makes it taste great.  I dont know, I may try a few different things and then write a post about them.


Where to get yacon and kefir grains

I sell yacon crowns on my for sale page over winter.  I may offer water kefir grains and milk kefir grains for sale, if I do they will be listed on the for sale page too.  Kefir grains sometimes reproduce slowly, other times quite fast, so you may need to contact me to see if they are available.  I also sell a few other organic perennial vegetables and some organic heirloom vegetable seeds.

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Yellow pear tomato

Yellow pear tomatoes are beautiful to look at and highly productive.  They are an old heirloom variety of tomato that dates back to the 1700s and it is still widely grown today.  They are reasonably common in Australia today and sometimes even appear in supermarkets.  Being so old and still being widely grown today means that this variety must have something going for it.  Each year after the season is over I kick myself for not taking photos as they are truly beautiful.

Yellow pear tomato

Yellow pear was one of the first yellow tomatoes that I ever grew back when I was a teenager, I also grew Banana legs and another one that I cant remember the name of.  Back then no one grew heirloom tomatoes and no one in my area knew that a tomato could be anything other than red.  In those days "Apollo" was new and was heralded as the best tomato variety.  Apollo did not perform well in my climate back then and in my opinion is a bland dogs breakfast of a tomato.

The year my first son was born I got some yellow pear tomato seeds.  The plants and fruit were amazing.  We have saved seed and planted them each year since then, partly out of sentiment and partly because I like this variety.

Yellow pear tomato seeds

My kids love the yellow pear tomatoes, they are sweet and delicious and the plants produce them by the bucketload.  When my second son was learning how to walk we had yellow pear tomatoes growing in a raised garden.  He used to walk around holding on to the garden edge with one hand and trying to feel for tomatoes with the other.  Now that my kids are older they gladly eat every yellow pear tomato that they can get their hands on.  If these tomatoes are put out in a bowl next to a bowl of chocolate the tomatoes are the first thing to be eaten.

Yellow Pear Tomatoes - I wish I took more pictures earlier in the season

One year we had a mouse plague, apparently it was the largest one since the 1980s.  During this plague I lost most of my tomato seeds and was left with a single precious yellow pear tomato seed.  I could easily buy more seeds if I wanted, but I have been caring for this strain since my kids were born so wanted to protect it.  I carefully grew it and saved a lot of seed that year.  That one plant survived right through two winters and proved its worth to me.  This year that plant died due to the frost.  This shows how hardy the yellow pear tomato plant is.  I assume in a frost free climate they can be grown as a short lived perennial.

The plants grow vigorously, we have had plants grow to well over 6 feet tall in the past.  We try to stake the plants as best we can, honestly I am a bit too relaxed with that kind of thing.  If you do not stake them the plants gladly root anywhere they touch the soil creating a giant patch of a tomato plant with tempting delicious fruit that is fairly inaccessible without stepping on the stems.

Yellow Pear Tomato flowers

Each plant will send up clusters of half a dozen or so flowers, these clusters will appear pretty much all over the plant.  As these tomatoes produce fruit and begin to ripen the plant will continue to grow and send up more flower clusters.  Like pretty much all tomatoes they are simple to grow from cuttings so you can increase your numbers easily even with a small number of seeds (or a single seed).

They taste rather sweet, but they do lack the rich taste of a nice paste tomato or something like that.  We mostly eat them raw in salads or out of hand while walking in the garden.  They can be cooked or turned into sauce but there are better varieties that have a deeper taste and darker colour if that is your plan.

Yellow pear tomatoes, slight variation in fruit shape

This one was a bit old so the colour is a little off

 Like many other things I grow I do sell seeds of the yellow pear tomatoes on my for sale page.  I plan to grow these each year so should have fresh seed each year.

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How to graft tomato to a potato

Question:  What do you call a plant that is a tomato and a potato grafted together?  A tomtato?  A potmato?
Answer:  I dont know and I dont care.


Grafting Tomato scion to Potato rootstock

Potatoes and tomatoes are both closely related, they can be grafted to each other easily enough.  With a little effort a chilli, tomatillo, potato, tomato, ground cherry, eggplant and a few other things including some agricultural weeds can graft onto one another as they are all closely related.  If you could be bothered they could all be grafted onto a strong rootstock and a multi-grafted vegetable garden shrub could be created.

Many varieties of each of these plants are perennial, so in theory if a hardy perennial root stock was chosen a grafted perennial vegetable plot in one plant could be the result.  Yields would be low for each plant and care would need to be taken to ensure one graft did not take over the others, but it would be easy enough to create.  Perhaps I should make one next year just to prove how simple it is.

About 20 years ago I grafted the top of a tomato plant to the bottom of a potato plant.  I did not have grafting tape or grafting clips but I did misappropriate some plumbing tape from school and used that.  I had never grafted anything, I had never seen anyone graft, I had no one to answer questions or guide me, I had no books to read (and as far as I knew the internet did not exist) but I had heard about grafting so decided to give it a go.  How hard could it be?

I had hopes of getting two crops for the same amount of space and water.  It kind of worked, I guess.  I certainly got a crop of tomatoes, but the non grafted one in the next row cropped better.  At the end of the season I certainly got a crop of potatoes, but the non grafted potatoes returned a far larger crop.  Both crops tasted just as they should and looked normal.  The grafted plant used quite a lot more water than I would have expected, much more than the tomato plants or the potato plants in the other rows.  I considered it to be a failure due to the extra work resulting in lower crops an higher water for the same amount of space, in hind sight it was probably a success as the plant lived and cropped and I learned from the experience.

Recently I have seen these grafted tomato/potato plants being sold.  One very arrogant man claims that he is a genius who invented this process about 5 years ago.  Too late, I did it 20 years ago when I was a teenager and I seriously doubt that I was the first to try this successfully.

A few people claim that this method of grafting increases yields from both plants, unfortunately from my experience I do not believe them.  You will get both crops, but the crops are both smaller.  Larger crops from a grafted plant such as this is illogical.  If you do not have much space and can only grow one plant then this trade off may be well worth it.  I dont see the need to make erroneous claims, people will still buy the plants if you tell them the truth.  I sell a lot of interesting vegetables, there is no need to exaggerate as people who want them will buy them.

It would be interesting to see just how poorly these grafted potato tomato plants crop.  I should run some field trials to see if growing potato and tomato in the same pot will yield differently to a grafted tomato potato.  I wish I did not have to go to work so I had more time to do interesting experiments like this.

I also have read about someone from a large plant/seed/gardening company who claims to have been the first to have ever thought of the idea 15 years ago (but never actually tried it until more recently), again I not only thought of this but successfully tried it earlier than that!  If a teenager with no experience, no resources, no education or mentor can do this it cant be that difficult and I wish people would stop trying to big note themselves with such simple things.  I honestly believe that people have been trying this and succeeding for a few hundred years but it has not gone anywhere as the yields are too low to bother.  This type of grafting is simple, it is unproductive which makes it uncommon, being uncommon means that people have not seen it before and are often taken in by these lies.  Perhaps next Spring I should run some grafting courses and teach people how to create these grafted plants at home.

Tomato flowers

Reisetomate tomato flowers

Grafting Potato scion onto Tomato rootstock

Enough of my rant (for now), I dont want to talk about grafting the top of a tomato the the bottom of a potato.  I want to talk about the opposite.

This year I grafted the top of a potato plant (called the scion) to the roots of a tomato (called the rootstock).  You may ask why the devil would anyone do that, the resultant grafted plant would produce neither tomatoes or potatoes so would be a waste of time and space.  Well it is simple, I wanted potato seed.

Modern potatoes are grown from existing potatoes, they are genetic clones of their parent, it is essentially the same plant.  Seed potatoes are just small potatoes, a stem fragment from the parent.

I wanted to grow potatoes from seeds, true seeds, each and every one of them would be unique.  Some would be dreadful, some mediocre and perhaps some would be great.  I wanted to see if I could create a new variety that is better suited to my needs and will grow better in my climate.  To do that the potato plant needs to flower, then it needs to grow fertile seeds, often a potato left to itself refuses to flower.  Grafting onto a tomato will help to make this happen.

When I was a child we had an unknown variety of potato that would set seed each year.  I used to grow these seeds and nothing great ever came from them.  Each seed grown plant was different, they grew differently, some had slightly different colours, but the parent stock was dodgy and did not have the genetic potential to grow anything truly great.  I used to think it was my fault that nothing exceptional came out of that and felt like a failure, now that I am better educated I know that I actually achieved a lot back then.

I have a variety of potato that never flowers in my climate.  I dont know if it flowers anywhere.  Many modern potatoes no longer flower.  It is a great variety, it is easy enough to buy, but it struggles to crop well in this climate.  When I have grown this variety in other climates and without exaggeration it has cropped about 20 times higher than it crops here (I weigh things and keep pointlessly accurate records).  Planting certified virus free seed potato into new soil does not help, this variety struggles in my climate as it is not really suited to growing here.  But it tastes so good which makes me want to grow it.

If I could get some seed from this potato there is a chance I could grow a similar tasting potato that crops well here.  To do that I need it to flower and set viable seed.  This is a decent parent plant and has the genes to produce some exceptional new varieties of potato, but in the 7 or so years I have grown it I have never seen any flowers.

This year I grafted that potato scion onto tomato rootstock to induce flowering and hopefully convince it to grow fruit and set viable seeds.  As the potato will not be putting any energy into tuber formation it will be more likely to flower and more likely to have the energy to set viable seed.  I chose the most vigorous tomato I have and grafted them using tongue approach grafting or inarching as it is the simplest and most fool proof way to graft.  This is how grafting happens most often in nature, it is simple, fast to do and once done it is very low maintenance.  I could have chosen other forms of grafting but why make things harder than they have to be.

Picture thanks to http://extension.umass.edu/floriculture/fact-sheets/grafting-techniques-greenhouse-tomatoes

I grew a tomato seedling in a pot and the potato plant in the soil.  When the plants were both the right size (ie it had nothing to do with size, it was when I could find the time) I put a small cut into each stem part way through.  I then joined the two together and bound them with plumbers tape.  I still do not have grafting clips or grafting tape, but the plumbing tape works well enough for me, this time I bought the tape instead of helping myself to it.  Then I left the plants with two tops and two sets of roots so that the graft union could heal.  Perhaps my description is not that useful, the picture above shows roughly how I did it, but my plants were larger and much older than in the picture.

After the graft had taken (ie several weeks later when I found time) I cut off the top of the tomato and the bottom of the potato and was left with a grafted plant with tomato roots and potato leaves.  The potato plant went on to continue growing and eventually produced a crop (which is why it was in the soil to begin with) and the top of the tomato was used as a cutting so nothing was wasted.  I had a grafted plant in a pot which I planted into the vegetable garden.

I then had a plant with the roots of a tomato and the top of a potato.  I left the grafting tape on for another week or two then unwrapped it, the union was strong enough by this time and the tape was getting too tight.  The tape could possibly be removed earlier but this works for me so I have not experimented with other methods.

We are hoping to sell our house so I only grafted the one plant.  I did not want to put in a lot of time to graft a lot of plants only to sell and move leaving behind treasures like this that would not be appreciated.  Unfortunately we still are yet to find the right buyer, had I known this I would have planted a lot differently this year, hind sight is great.

This grafted plant flowered well, extremely well.  Considering that I have grown this potato variety for so many years and never seen a flower I think it is safe to conclude that grafting the top of a potato to the roots of a tomato actually does help the plant to flower.

There are a lot of different pollinators around my garden, I never saw them on the potato flowers but they may have been there when I was not looking.  I tried to pollinate the flowers in the same way that one pollinates tomato flowers, I think it worked.

Potato Flowers - the grafting worked

The plant started to produce fruit.  This is exactly what I had hoped would happen.  Then the ducks got in to the vegetable garden, they stomped around the garden a bit, broke a lot of plants, ate some leaves off things, messed around stealing vegetables and ate some fruit off the trees.

The grafted potato/tomato plant was still alive but all the fruit was missing, I dont know if the ducks ate the fruit or if they rolled away somewhere.  If they rolled away there is a chance they may grow next year but I doubt I will find them or even know that they are not just the normal potatoes.  The grafted plant continued flowering for a while but those flowers all aborted and did not produce any fruit, probably due to the heat.

If I try this again the next time I will try to graft a few more plants to help provide a little insurance against this kind of thing.  Nothing much can be done now apart from wait.

Since writing this post I have wondered if I should dig up the grafted plant and try to overwinter it.  I know the tomato rootstock can survive if I protect it from frost but I am not sure about the potato part.  I wondered if it was worth my time even trying, perhaps it would flower and set seed better, perhaps it would simply die, I dont know anyone who has tried to keep a plant like this alive for several years.  Come to think of it, I dont know anyone who has created a grafted plant like this one.

Once again the ducks got into the vegetable garden, they kind of made up my mind for me.  The top of the plant is now dead/missing, the roots are possibly still alive, if they sprout leaves I will let the frost kill it when it is time.  This type of grafting is worth another try if I have any land next year as it seemed to help the potato to flower, once I get this potato variety to produce viable seed then the fun part begins.  Perhaps I should get a different type of potato that flowers and fruits readily and cross them.  For now I am happy that grafting helps flowering and fruit set.

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Snow White heirloom tomatoes

This year I am growing a bunch of different varieties of mostly heirloom tomatoes, some are incredibly difficult to find while others are far more common.  I will try to write a post comparing them all later in the season once they have all ripened or decided not to ever ripen.  For now I want to tell you about one of the best tasting cherry tomatoes I am growing which is called Snow White.

Cherry tomatoes are good, but many lack any real taste, they are often good for kids who like sweet things.  White tomatoes are good, but many tend to be a little insipid, that being said there are some amazing white tomatoes around.

I had heard that Snow White was one of the best tasting tomatoes ever bred and one of the best cherry tomatoes around, this had me intrigued.  I have also heard from others that it is nothing special and I would be better off growing other varieties.  A very generous grower sent me some seeds last year, how could I resist growing this and seeing for myself.

Snow White cherry tomatoes

The plant grew well in my garden while a few other varieties did not even survive, it flowered early and was one of the first tomatoes to ripen in my garden.  It seems to have a lot of flowers and unripe fruit on the plants at all times, being an indeterminate variety it should continue to fruit right up until frosts. 

The plants themselves are nothing remarkable, they grow about 6 feet tall here like many other varieties but I assume that they could grow a lot larger.  They have regular leaf and everything looks normal enough.  It would be nice if they were a dwarf plant or if they had potato leaf or something, but in the end none of that really matters.  The plants grow well under adverse conditions, provide large yields, but it is the taste that truly matters.

The first tomatoes I picked may not have been properly ripe, the seeds in them were not properly formed so it may not have been pollinated properly, or perhaps they get better as the season progresses, all I know for sure is that the first few were not indicative of this variety.  When I tasted them they were ok, nothing special, it is probably fair to say that the taste was a bit confused.  Considering that they were bred by Joe Bratka who is an excellent tomato breeder that has been described by those who know him as confused or eccentric I was not overly surprised.  The flesh was sweet and tasted a bit fruity, almost like a bland peach.  The seed part tasted like a regular cherry tomato, good but not great.  Overall it was good but nothing special, if the rest of the tomatoes tasted like this I may not want to grow this variety again.  The tomatoes ripen to a very pale yellow if they are in the sun or white if they do not get any sun on the fruit. 

Snow White tomatoes - yellow in the sunlight

Visually they looked good enough, they produced a lot of tomatoes, but due to the fact that there are thousands of varieties of tomato available in Australia I do not want to waste time or space if the taste does not blow me away.  I would rather keep trying to find something amazing. 

Then there was a week with no new ripe tomatoes, I was ok with that as they were not that great and the weather was odd.

Then the plant started to ripen again so I ate another tomato.  WOW.  They really blew me away.

Perhaps the first fruit were not great but since then they have been fantastic.  The tomatoes look much the same as the first ones, perhaps slightly larger, but the taste is amazing.  The flesh part tasted like delicious fruit, perhaps a peach or sweet ground cherry or something similar to that.  If I was to remove the seeds and blind test people I doubt that they would even recognise this as a tomato.  The seed part tasted like a good cherry tomato, a little acid but not too much.  The two parts together compliment each other well.  I love this tomato, I want more of them, I walk past the plant a few times each day in the hope that another one has ripened. 

Snow White hidden in the back of this part of the garden

The kids love this tomato, in my mind this is one of the best sweet tomatoes that I have eaten.  They are low acid so good for people who normally can not eat tomato.  I probably wouldnt use it to make paste or sauce or for cooking (although many people claim they are great for this) but happily eat them fresh or in salads.  They are remarkable.

I would almost go as far as to say that they are unique, but they are not.  Apparently the man who bred these also bred a few others which were much the same or exactly the same or just renamed this variety.  It doesnt matter too much, what does matter is that these are amazing and I plan to grow them again and hopefully grow a few more plants so I get more of them. 

Why are these tomatoes rare?

I have often wondered why this kind of thing is not more common, if they are so great (and these tomatoes do taste great) why are they not available at the supermarkets.  People often talk about home tomatoes being better because they are picked perfectly ripe instead of mostly green, or that they are fresh, or that they are too soft to be transported, and a few other things like this.

I am sure this is part of the answer, but I think one of the biggest problems is marketing.  People think of tomatoes as red, they are wary of any other colour.  Bright yellow tomatoes have started to become better known and appreciated in salads for their attractive colour.  Some of the brown/black ones have started to come in, but they have backing from a multinational company who holds a lot of power.

These are white tomatoes, they mostly ripen a pale yellow.  Many people think pale colour means tasteless or not fully ripe.  The difference between white tomatoes and yellow tomatoes is that the white ones have translucent skin.

Some people have asked me if yellow tomatoes taste the same as normal tomatoes.  I dont know how to answer them.  Where do I even begin?

Unfortunately this means that the average person will never try these amazing little tomatoes unless they grow them at home as they will not be seen in supermarkets anytime soon.  Some of the best tasting varieties of tomatoes ripen green, many people will not even try them, that is their loss.

Where to get Snow White tomatoes

Seeds of snow white tomatoes are reasonably simple to find in Australia.  Snow white tomato seed seems to be carried by a few different sellers as well as ebay.  I have saved seed from my plants and will most likely sell some on my for sale page with other heirloom vegetables and perennial vegetables.

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Seed Sellers

I have recently moved in to town and have no access to any form of garden, I am also in the middle of moving again so my potted vegetables are struggling.  As such I can not sell vegetable plants or seeds at the moment.  When I get set up again I will list everything on my For Sale page, hopefully we sort everything out soon as I miss growing and selling vegetable plants and seeds.

I have had a few people ask me where to buy seeds or they have asked my opinion of different companies so I thought I would write a post about some of them.  Some of these companies have bought seeds from me in the past, some I have bought seeds from, others I have heard about from other people.  I have probably forgotten to include some, if I remember them I will try to add them later.

Please note that I am not affiliated with any of these companies and that the views expressed are based on my personal experiences.  I am in no way liable if they do not live up to expectations.  This is based on past experiences and they may or may not treat you better or worse than they have done to me in the past.

Useful seeds  http://usefulseeds.com/

Range:  Limited (for now, but increasing) but what he does have are rather rare and/or amazing

Based:  VIC Australia

Prices:  Reasonably high, but you can not buy many of these varieties anywhere else and the quality is excellent so the high prices are more than justified

Seed numbers:  Good

Service: no idea as I have never bought from him but I know him and he is a good guy.  He has given me seeds in the past and they were of very high quality.  I assume he would provide excellent service as he loves what he does

The Seed Collection  www.theseedcollection.com.au/

Range: good, nothing particularly rare

Based:  VIC Australia

Prices:  Low to very low prices

Seed Numbers:  Great, always contains more seeds than stated in each packet

Service:  Great, they are willing to answer questions and even include extra packets of seed in each order


The Dwarf Tomato Project  http://dwarftomatoproject.net/Releases-SH.php  

Range: small range of newly bred, various colours, dwarf tomatoes
Based: Australia
Prices: Low prices, they are simply trying to recover costs instead of make a profit.  They have given their seeds to some seed companies who sell them for almost tripple the price of the Dwarf Tomato Project
Seed Numbers: Good, about 20 seeds per pack
Service: Excellent, Patrina bred many of these varieties and wants them to be more popular.  She is willing to answer questions and offer advice.

Rangeview Seeds  http://rangeviewseeds.com.au/

Range:  Good, some rare things

Based:  VIC Australia

Prices:  Good/variable

Seed Numbers:  Good

Service:  Good

Eden Seeds  http://edenseeds.com.au/

Range:  Great

Based:  QLD Australia

Prices:  Good

Seed Number:  Good

Service:  Good

Green Harvest http://greenharvest.com.au/

Range:  Great, they sell seeds, plants and other garden products

Based:  QLD Australia

Prices:  Good but postage is high

Seed Number:  Good

Service:  Great

Phoenix Seeds  www.phoenixseeds.net.au/

Range:  Great, some very interesting and rare varieties

Based:  Tasmania

Prices:  Good but postage is high

Seed Number:  Varies

Service:  I dont know as I have not bought from them yet

Diggers club

Range:  Great but sometimes they rename things or make erroneous claims of exclusivity to appear better than they are.  Descriptions of varieties are often embellished

Based:  VIC Australia

Prices:  High to extremely high, postage cost is unreasonable for smaller orders

Seed Number:  Extremely low, but it does vary

Service:  Dreadful.  They have sold me out of date seeds as well as bulbs covered in mould and then tried to blame me when they failed to sprout!  They have also sent the wrong seeds and getting replacements or refund from them was a nightmare.  Hopefully this changes as they are one of the best known heirloom seed sellers in Australia

Pepper Lover http://pepperlover.com/

Range:  Only sell chilli and capsicums, they have a great range of these.  Some they have bred themselves

Based:  America - only some species are allowable imports into Australia so please check AQIS BICON database prior to ordering

Prices:  Good with free postage to Australia!

Seed Number:  Good, extra seeds in each pack

Service:  Great, they even include extra seed packets in each order

Ebay

Range:  Varies from time to time

Based:  All over the place

Prices:  Varies a lot

Seed Number:  Varies a lot

Service:  Varies.  Beware that many seeds sold on Ebay are for things that do not even exist (such as multi coloured blue roses) and they are stealing from you.  You will get seeds, but by the time you grow them and work out what has happened it will be too late to get back your money.  I have also bought some great seeds from excellent sellers through Ebay.  Please do your research prior to ordering anything from Ebay

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Overwintering vegetable plants

We have some perennial vegetables which I decided to overwinter.  We moved in Spring so I have not had time to make a post about them until now.  We had the coldest winter since we have lived here and lost a lot of frost tender plants that I normally can overwinter with no effort.  I took a few pictures of some of the survivors.  Most of these plants are far larger now.

Kangkong (Ipomoea aquatica)

This is a heat loving tropical perennial leaf vegetable which is often grown as an annual in cooler climates.  It grows well from seed, but I wanted to see if overwintered plants were larger than seed grown and it appears that they are.  It has many common names and is related to sweet potatoes.  I am not overly fond of leaf vegetables, but I like kang kong.  Unlike many other leaf vegetables it never goes bitter, it can be eaten raw or cooked.  I have only eaten it raw and it tastes nice, apparently cooked it tastes a lot like spinach.

I grew it in too small a pot so it did not reach anywhere near its potential last summer.  I tried to grow it in a fish talk as a floating water plant but there was not enough sunlight and it appears to prefer at least some soil for its roots.  It tried to flower but then winter came and the cold cut it down to a stump.  I do not want to save and plant seed each year if there is an easier way and this plant grows easily from cuttings.  I am glad that this can be overwintered as it is simple and the plants are larger than seed grown.

Once the warmer weather came along it started to grow fast again.  I wish I knew about this plant years ago as it is great.  It dislikes the cold weather and dies back badly even without frosts but survives and grows very fast once the days are warm.

Kangkong resprouting in late winter, it dislikes the cold air even when protected from frosts

The same plant in Spring after being cut back a few times

Chilli - Trinidad Scorpion Butch T
Most varieties of chilli available to home gardeners can be overwintered easily enough.  Super hot chilli are a lot more finicky than regular chilli and capsicums from what I have heard.  Being the first time I have grown the super hot chilli I decided to try and overwinter it rather than start from seed again.  Strangely it went very well and was very easy.  I tried to keep it out of the frost at night and put it in the sun during the day when I remembered.  I accidentally let it get a bit of frost a few times and forgot to put in in the sun more often than I remembered and all three survived nicely.

Trinidad Scorpion Butch T in tiny pot

Super hot chilli in late winter - not many leaves

Strangely healthy chilli in winter

The same plants after the weather got warmer

Trinidad Scorpion Butch T

Tomatoes
Indeterminate tomatoes
Most indeterminate tomatoes are simple to overwinter if the frost can be kept off them.  This year was colder than most and I lost most of the tomatoes I had planned to overwinter as I did not look after them all that well.  I grew one seedling far too late  in the season last year so decided to try and overwinter it.  Mid winter, with no heat, just moving it inside at night to avoid frosts the plant started to flower.  The flowers all fell off as it was too cold for pollination to occur but the plant was mature.  This meant that it is easy to plant them out when the weather warms and have them set fruit almost right away.

Tomato plant mid winter

Micro Tom tomatoes
Micro tom is a great little tomato variety that needs more people to grow it and save its seed.  I grew one on the kitchen window over winter to see how it would go.  Apparently they grow just fine over winter if kept inside and this one started to flower when the nights were still frosty outside.  They have such a short lifespan that this particular plant flowered, set fruit and died before Spring came.  What a great plant, while it may not be the tastiest tomato variety it was a lot better than any cherry tomato I could buy from the supermarket at that time if year.  They are not terribly productive but being so small means that it can grow in a tiny pot and not need much space to provide a crop.  Being able to bring them indoors at night means that it is possible to get them to set fruit in Winter, I never would have thought that getting fruit in Winter was possible for a tomato that is not parthenocarpic.

I also planted some Micro Tom seeds mid winter to see if they would germinate in the cold and they did.  Being such tiny plants the kids adore them.  They are even more happy to eat the tomatoes and they tend to carry the tiny plants around talking to them and treating them like pets rather than plants.  The more I grow Micro Tom the more I discover about them that shows me how good they are.

Micro Tom tomato flowering in mid winter

Vietnamese Coriander (Persicaria odorata)
This perennial herb has many, many common names.  It smells a lot like coriander and is far simpler to grow.  It does not bolt to seed like real coriander and does not even flower often outside of the tropics.  It appears to love water and I grow it as a bog plant or an emergent water plant.  It does not like frost, mine got frosted a few times but they all came back in the warmer weather.  Over winter they look terrible, as soon as the warmer weather returned they sprang back to life.  Cuttings strike very easily in water so once it warmed up I cut one plant into many pieces, the original plant grew back and each cutting grew roots within a few days.

Vietnamese coriander leaves turn a bit red in cool weather

Water Celery (Oenanthe javanica)

This is another emergent water vegetable, it is grown for leaves and stems that taste of celery or parsley.  Like many of the vegetables I grow this is a perennial vegetable that rarely flowers or sets seed.  I have the variegated form of this vegetable, while it is prettier than the regular green one it is also not as aggressive in its growth.  I would like to track down the regular green version one day and see just how strong it will grow.  I would prefer a productive vegetable to a pretty vegetable.

My plant grew with no winter protection, the top of the water was covered in ice many times.  It certainly did not love being covered in ice and died back somewhat, the smaller plants that were grown with protection from frost looked a lot healthier at the end of winter.  As soon as the heat returned it was very fast to recover.

Water Celery surviving winter with no protection.

Where to get perennial Vegetables
I have been selling perennial vegetable plants and some seeds for years.  Unfortunately we recently moved to town and do not have any land so will not be selling anything for a while.  We do plan on moving again very soon, when we have settled I hope to sell perennial vegetables and vegetable seeds again, they will be listed on my For Sale page when the time comes.

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True potato onion seeds and other perennial alliums

True Potato Onion Seed

In 2013 some of my potato onions flowered.  It is the first time I have ever seen a potato onion flower so I was very excited, I wrote a little about it on a blog post called Potato onion seeds.  I planted about half of those seeds in Autumn and nothing germinated, I was more than a little disappointed but there was nothing I could do.

I planted the rest of the seeds in Spring and some of them have just begun to germinate.  I dont know how many will grow but at this stage it looks like only a small number.  I could not be more excited about this.  To make things even better, some of my original potato onions have begun to flower again this year!  This should hopefully give me some more seed to try and grow next year.  Hopefully they will flower more often so I can have seed grown potato onions to begin selecting for traits I want to see in them.

Tiny Potato Onion seedlings germinating

Once these seedlings grow a bit I will separate them and see what they turn into.  Apparently potato onions that are grown from seed exhibit a lot of variation.  I had many types of onion flower at the same time as these potato onions (potato onions, spring onions, everlasting onion, tree onions, several types of bulb onions) so whatever these seeds grow into each of them should be different from each other.  Fingers crossed something truly remarkable comes out of this lot.

Potato onion seedlings growing larger

Potato Onions flowering again

Potato onion seedlings - only the strong survived

Everlasting Onion Seed and Bulbils

Another perennial onion I grow are the amazing Everlasting onions.  They flower each year but never produce seeds.  They have been grown by many different people in many different climates for well over 30 years and have not set seed and do not produce top sets.  They rapidly split in half many times throughout the year so are simple to multiply without the need for seeds.

Everlasting onions flowering happily as usual

Last year one everlasting flower produced a bulbil, I planted this in a small 10cm pot and kind of forgot about it.  That one bulbil has split into 7 small plants over the year and they are now flowering.  That is pretty remarkable considering how little space is in that small pot.  Time will tell if this will be more inclined to produce topsets or if it was just a once off.  Topsets are fun so I would like this to happen more often.  If not the tree onions are flowering at the moment and they produce a lot of topsets.

Everlasting onions grown from one bulbil - starting to flower

Last year from several hundred flower heads my everlasting onions actually produced some viable seeds.  I planted most of the seeds and ended up with 7 seedlings.  So far I can not see a lot of variation between the seedlings which I find rather odd.  Some are slightly larger than others, some are slightly brown whereas others are slightly red, but this happens throughout the year with regular everlasting onions so is nothing different.  They are still very small so perhaps I will notice differences as they grow, or perhaps they will be very similar to the parent, only time will tell.  As mentioned above a lot of alliums were flowering at the same time so I would have expected them to cross a little and result in some unique perennial onions.

Everlasting onion seedlings, I have since planted them into separate pots

Babingtons Leek (Allium ampeloprasum var. babingtonii)

One of the perennial leeks I grow is Babingtons leek, I should write a blog post about them but probably wont for a while.  I am not aware of anyhere in Australia that currently sells Babingtons leek so if I ever have enough I plan to sell them so that more people can grow and experience these amazing plants.  They are a kind of wild leek that has been semi-domesticated, when it flowers it grows tiny bulbils on the flower head instead of flowers, kind of like the leek version of tree onions.

I heard of Babingtons leek years ago and tried to track down some to grow.  One place had them for sale for more than I was willing to pay, but I contacted them anyway and they had sold out.  That place stopped selling plants altogether shortly after.  I emailed them and asked if I could get in touch with their supplier and was told no.  They believed that this variety of leek had died out in Australia completely and they wished me luck in finding any.

Babingtons leek

As luck would have it some kind person traded some of my things for a few tiny Babingtons leek plants.  I planted them in 3 different places to help protect against disaster.  They grew slowly for me, then died down over the heat of summer.  I hoped they had died down to bulbs but was not overly confident that they were coming back as they were posted at an inconvenient time for them.

When the weather cooled and the plants began to grow I had increased my stock from 5 tiny plants to 6 plants which ranged in size from tiny to reasonably large.  I had hoped that more would have grown from the roots, but that was not to be this year.  I am told that they will divide a bit each time they die down and many people increase their numbers in this way.  I am assuming that mine did not increase in number much as they were posted late in their season so they put their energy into establishing rather than dividing.

This year one of the plants is beginning to send up a flower stalk.  I have told the kids not to go near this plant and am concerned that they may remove it or damage it and I will have to wait another year to see what happens next.  Regardless, I have at least one plant of flowering size and it should flower each year from here on.  I am guessing that if all goes well the other plants will be flowering size next year as each of them is now larger than the ones I started with.

Not a great picture of Babingtons leek starting to flower

I do not know how many bulbils to expect from one flower stalk.  I know of no one here who has grown these and have to rely on the internet for information.  Some internet sites say three of four large bulbils will be produced, others say a few dozen, while others say several hundred tiny bulbils.  I have no option but to wait and see.  I find all of this to be very exciting.  Judging by the size of the flower I am guessing not many bulbils will be produced this year, next year the plant may be larger and produce more.


Chives (Allium schoenoprasum)

I dont have a lot to say about these little guys.  They are nothing special, they are not even a special type of chives, but I like them.  They die down to tiny bulbs each winter and grow again when the weather warms up a little.  Apparently they are the smallest species of edible onions.  I would like more of them so am letting some of them flower in the hope of either collecting the seeds or just letting the seeds fall and grow by themselves.

Chives starting to flower

Spring onions (Allium fistulosum)

Spring onions are, in my opinion, the poor cousin of the everlasting onion.  They are edible, useful, hardy and perennial so are not without their charm.  I had some plants at our previous house that were 3 or so years old.  Prior to moving here I saved their seed to bring with us.  I planted them during the first few weeks after we moved in and they have been growing ever since.  I do not have the heart to kill them as they are perennial and require very little looking after, so they have stayed where they are not doing too much.  They produce viable seed each year, I used to collect the seed but recently have not bothered as everlasting onions are far superior.

Spring onions are perennial onions, we used to eat their leaves and white shanks.  The problem is that their leaves get too thick and coarse after their first year and I do not know how to fix that other than planting new seed each year and killing the parent stock.  I have cut some to the ground, when they sprout they are think again.

Everlasting onions have far thinner foliage and it is never course.  Spring onions do not have the ability to produce bulbs whereas everlasting onions die to bulbs each year if I want them to and will keep growing if I water them a lot over summer.

Tree onions are an interspecific hybrid between spring onions and bulb onions that was made accidentally hundreds of years ago.  I have often thought of trying to recreate tree onions with better parents but I doubt I will ever try to do that as I have a lot of other, more deserving things going on in the vegetable garden.

Spring Onions flowering - these are almost 4 years old now

Giant Russian Garlic (Allium ampeloprasum var. ampeloprasum)

This is great stuff.  Botanically it is a type of perennial leek, but for everyone else it is a massive garlic that is mild in taste.  Apparently this can grow in more tropical places where regular garlic can not.

Many people say that they can not produce seed but this is not true, each year mine produce a tiny amount of seed which grows into new plants.  The seed seems to grow true to type even when there are other types of leek flowering at the same time.

Russian Garlic almost ready to flower and die down

At the moment my plants are looking shabby as they are almost ready to flower, after they have done so they will die down to bulbs.  This normally happens around Christmas/New Year.  I will dig them up after this and have them for sale again, digging them up now does not go so well for them.

Some people complain that Giant Russian garlic is too mild.  I have found that if I plant them early and they grow through some frost the taste is a lot more intense.  Apparently putting them in the fridge a few weeks prior to planting can have the same result if they are grown in frost free areas.

I have successfully (and accidentally) stored the bulbs for over 18 months before we moved here.  I stored the cloves somewhere and forgot about them, by the time I noticed them it was too late to plant and I had no more garden space so I waited for the following year.  From those, 100% grew and the plants were indistinguishable from the fresh ones.  While this is far from ideal, it shows how easy these things are to grow.

One single giant Russian garlic clove, they do get a lot larger than this in good years

Perennial vegetables for sale in Australia

If you are interested in growing some of these I do sell everlasting onions, tree onions, perennial leeks, giant Russian garlic, garlic chives, two types of potato onions and a bunch of other perennial vegetables (and some heirloom vegetable seed) on my for sale page.  When I have enough I plan to also offer Babingtons leeks but that will have to wait for at least a few months to see what happens with this flower.  If the potato onion seedlings or the everlasting onion seedlings end up as anything remarkable I will sell them too, but I dare say that is a while off as I would like to grow them out for a few seasons to see how they perform and evaluate if they are worth keeping.

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OSU Blue tomato

I have grown a lot of interesting tomatoes over the past few years, one of the more interesting tomatoes I grew last year was the OSU Blue tomato.  I have had a lot of questions over it so thought I would write a blog post.

OSU Blue tomato

OSU Blue was one of the first high anthocyanin tomatoes, it was bred using conventional methods (ie NOT GM).  In case you were wondering "OSU" is an acronym for Oregon State University.

From what I have read this tomato was developed by Jim Myers, OSUs Baggett Frazier professor of vegetable breeding and graduate students Carl Jones and Peter Mes.  The genes involved in producing the OSU Blue tomato are Aubergine (Abg), Anthocyanin fruit tomato (Aft) and atroviolaceae (atv), these genes came from the wild species Solanum lycopersicoides, S chilense, S cheesemanii, respectively.

This means that, just like every other domestic tomato, the OSU Blue is a complex yet stable hybrid.  I am happy to say that this is a very stable hybrid just like many other types of tomato and seeds are simple to save and they grow true to type.  Being derived from the wild tomato species I had hoped it would be resistant to a bunch of diseases, at this stage I dont know if it is or not.

On a side note I rather like S cheesemanii but they are as rare as hens teeth in Australia, if you happen to be growing any please talk to me as I would love to get some seeds from you.

The anthocyanin is the same colour that is in eggplants and it is a rich antioxidant.  The fruit ripens to a dark blue/purple/black colour wherever sunlight hits it, anywhere the light does not hit ripens red.  If a leaf or calyx or whatever is on the fruit it gets a shadow of red.  If you were to put a sticker on the unripe fruit it remains red underneath allowing for all sorts of sillyness such as spelling out the names of your kids one letter per tomato.

OSU Blue Tomato, not overly large

 The plants grow and look much like any other tomato plant.  They are indeterminate and grow a regular leaf, the flowers are yellow and much the same as any other tomato.  The leaves and stems may take on a little purple colour if the temperatures are low and the light intensity is high.  When the days get too hot the plant does not colour up as much.  The fruit takes on more colour with low temperatures and high intensity light.  People who grow these to sell seeds on Ebay and such use grow lights to get the fruit to take on more dark colour.  The colour seems to be variable even on the same plant, my plants grew a range of dark to super dark fruits.

The fruit are small, but not too small, about 4cm across.  The dark colour is mainly concentrated in the skin and a little in the flesh just under the skin.  The flesh remains red and the seeds look much like any other tomato seeds.

OSU Blue

OSU Blue with some skin removed

One question I get about the OSU Blue tomato is about the taste.  If you read about any of the high anthocyanin tomatoes on the Oregon State University web page they sound like they taste absolutely terrible.  In reality they taste ok,  certainly not the greatest tasting nor the worst tasting.  If I had to choose one word to describe the taste it would be "underwhelming".

They tasted slightly better than an average store bought tomato.  Tomatoes from the shops are pretty dreadful at the best of times so this is not a glowing review.  If you are expecting a great tasting tomato because it is home grown then you will be disappointed, other than that they are ok.  It does taste better than other tomatoes I have grown such as apollo (or possibly roma) so are not all that bad.

They lacked any real depth of flavour, they were not very sweet and were not very sour.  They were not overly insipid which was a positive, but they really didnt make a memorable impression on my taste wise.  I have certainly eaten a lot worse tasting tomatoes.

Unripe OSU Blue tomatoes

The blue colour starts long before the fruit is ripe, the unripe tomatoes look very nice while you wait for them to ripen and become edible.  The plant itself is nothing spectacular, it does not crop all that heavily and is not overly robust.  That being said it was not a weak plant and did return a reasonable yield in far less than ideal conditions.

I saved a reasonable amount of seed from my plants and do plan on growing this variety again.  I have a few breeding plans and would love to incorporate the colour into a better tasting, higher yielding variety.  I have seen some people use this to breed a great tasting tomato that has the black/blue skin but is yellow on the inside, I have also read about someone who grew tomatoes that were red and had dark stripes like a tiger.  Lots of fun.  There are many options and I only have so much space/time to pursue them.  We will be moving to town  shortly so I may not be allowed to grow many vegetables for a while.

I have also been asked how they got into Australia.  I have no idea how this variety found its way to Australia, it was bred after they closed the doors on the importation of tomato seeds.  Perhaps a university or the CSIRO imported them legally and they leaked out from there, perhaps some private grower or a sneaky large seed company imported them on the sly and was able to evade quarantine (please do not try this).  Perhaps someone or some company payed a small fortune to get the right tests done in order to legally import them.  The person who I got the seeds from initially received them unsolicited from another grower and asked no questions.

I guess I will never know how they got into the country, I also dont particularly care.  Now that they are here I can grow them, distribute them and use them in all kinds of tomato breeding projects.

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