Tangled Branches: Cultivated
happenings in and around my zone 6b gardens in northern Virginia and in central Virginia
Wednesday, August 06, 2008
Ugly Tomatoes
You turn your back on the garden for one minute and everything changes. We spent a good part of the weekend weeding, trimming, deadheading, and generally prettying-up the vegetable garden. I picked a semi-ripe tomato before I left for Illinois. The spouse picked a couple of almost-ripe tomatoes while I was gone, and we picked a few more last weekend. The reason I didn't blog about them was that they weren't very pretty - some cracked, some with green shoulders (some varieties are supposed to be that way, but still), some catfaced - and all delicious I might add. But this morning, I read Carol's post asking us to show off our UGLY tomatoes. Hey - I can do that!
I accidentally picked the greenish-yellow one. I was trying to snip off the yellow one, but couldn't quite see where I had the pruners and ... oops. This variety is 'Kellogg's Breakfast', and it seems especially prone to catfacing. There was a pretty one (but green) I also snipped off by accident. It turned into some very tasty fried green tomatoes - perfect meaty slices, just starting to ripen inside. 'Kellogg's Breakfast' has great flavor, very surprising for a yellow tomato (sort of an orangey-yellow), and it has a strong tendency to cling to the vine. If you don't clip off the fruit with pruners, you'll probably end up bruising it.
Some of the other varieties we've had so far are Striped Roman (slightly cracked, some blossom end rot), Piriform (cracked and green shoulders), Black Prince (green shoulders), Black Russian (cracked), and Matt's Wild Cherry (perfect, but cherry tomatoes don't count).
But if you want to see some pretty fruit, look at the peppers. I like tomatoes, but I love chile peppers. These are just a few of the 16? varieties I'm growing this year (most are hot, some not). Look for more posts about chile peppers in the next few weeks.
8 Comments:
Those are ugly tomatoes! It was nice of you to include flowers in the pictures, something to rest our eyes on after looking at those very ugly tomatoes.
Thanks for joining in the fun of posting about ugly tomatoes!
Carol, May Dreams Gardens
We had some ugly but delicious tomatoes earlier in the year, Entangled - but only Juliets can fruit now.
I've heard about English Breakfast ...is the Black Russian sort of like the Black Krim?
Presentation is important!
Annie at the Transplantable Rose
What lovely photos... what with the addition of your beautiful flowers!!! :-)
Carol, I saw some ugly tomatoes just like those at Whole Foods. I think Gail? said the same thing in a comment on your blog. Ugly tomatoes are very fashionable now ;-) German Johnson is going to be huge, BTW.
Annie, I haven't tried Black Krim (or maybe I did at the farmer's market?), but Black Russian is a medium-large tomato with a very strange color but fabulous flavor. It's one of my favorites.
Shady Gardener: I had to prove there was something pretty in the garden ;-)
I can't wait to see more of your peppers. I don't do much vegetable gardening--I have to figure out how to keep the deer away, and the Liquid Fence isn't great for vegetables--but I do have patio peppers (bull, jalapeno, and habanero). We can't get enough
Cosmo: We're pepper fanatics too! I was going to do a post yesterday on purple peppers, but didn't get it done. Maybe later today....
I know, posting is fun, but it can take up time! Have you harvested your fish peppers yet? How were they? My jalapenos are hot, hot, hot--I love them that way, but I have to be careful when I cook for my friends.
Cosmo: We've had a few of the Fish Peppers, but I wanted to leave some to see how they ripen. They're actually fairly hot, and surprised me by developing heat at an early age. Some of the other peppers, notably the Serranos, don't seem to get hot until they're more mature.
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