Friday, November 11, 2011
Another Purple Tomato Line
I harvested a bunch of green tomatoes before the frosts and found these two. Now that they've ripened, I see that they have a beautiful lilac-purple upper half over a pale yellowish background color. They're from a line I've been calling "lotion" because of the odd lotion/floral scent the tiny, cream-colored fruits give off. These were another selection that I've saved from among the advanced generations of that old cross of 'Brandywine' X Lycopersion hirsutum (Solanum habrochaites). Last year, I grew some of "lotion" and tried pollinating them with 'Mortgage Lifter' to bump up the size. "Lotion" fruits are only about the size of an average blueberry. Well, these two are larger than their siblings, but I'm doubting if 'Mortgage Lifter' was really their daddy. The siblings mostly had some shade of red-orange background fruit color and were still pretty small. Most of them were lacking in the purple pigment too. These are cherry-tomato sized and have a very pale background fruit color. They also strongly express purple. So I'm puzzled... who really was this one's daddy? Luckily, they still have the odd scent which was something I thought might be fun to play around with.
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Still can't put my finger on what exactly these smell like... it's almost skunky/foxy like a labrusca type grape, but that's not it. I asked the resident more sensitive nose what it smelled like and got plastic or bacon as a response. I can sort of smell those two kind of.
ReplyDeleteWhatever it is, it sure is strange!
Oh the flavor is pretty sweet, without much of the typical sour tomato acidity, but it has some of the usual hirsutum flavor that is almost as peculiar as the scent.