First tomato

I admit to engaging in a bit of shameless crowing. A ripe tomato in June! And another will be ready in a few days. The rest will be more on schedule but many plants have full size fruit so the wait will not be too long.

What a wonderful treat to return from a few days out of town and find that the tomato I had been watching was A) still on the vine and not carried away by some marauder and B) ripe and ready to eat.

The variety is ‘Stupice’, an heirloom noted for earliness. It was not on my tomato list for this year, but a friend had started seeds and discovered that some of the seedlings were potato leaf (the real ‘Stupice’) and some standard leaf. I suggested that she might grow out one of each for fun and she handed me two plants.

Now most gardeners might have politely declined, offering some lame excuse such as lack of room in the tomato bed. But any reader who has been bitten by the tomato bug knows that there is always room for more. So I planted the two plants and have been rewarded. The standard leaf plant is huge and loaded with oblong fruit with pointy ends. The seed was from a commercial source so I assume that the rogue plant was from a mix up in the packing rather than a cross-pollination issue. After a bit of research I have discovered that several heirloom varieties have little points at the end: Amish Gold, Wonder Light, Polish Linguisa to name a few. So I will wait and probably never be sure about the pedigree of the pretender.

But I’m very glad I accepted these plants. The tomato was absolutely delicious and gave me a chance to practice the particular style of understatement peculiar to gardeners. For those interested here are a few simple guidelines.

Never start a conversation with a fellow gardener by announcing your particular horticultural victory. Let it be almost an afterthought.

Strive for a slightly offhand manner, as if you always get ripe tomatoes in early June.

Above all, refrain from cackling with justifiable glee.

I am sorry to report that I did let slip the smallest of cackles.


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Update

Thanks to Kathy at Cold Climate Gardening for the heads-up on some serious tomato competition. I am tossing my feed cap into the ring over at Dr. Charles Examining Room tomato contest.





'Stupice' 2005