Tomato Queen!

Can I just say that I ADORE my heirloom tomatoes, and have thusly declared myself to be Tomato Queen. :) I'm totally in love with these heirlooms that I planted this year!

I'm not much of a researcher. I can barely remember what I did two hours ago, much less remember to write down little things that I notice while meandering through the greens. But I'm noticing some really cool things, and I'm going to try to relay them to my readers who might be remotely interested in learning about heirloom variety vegetables.

When I saw the Pink Accordion in the Territorial Seed catalogue this year, I knew I had to have them. It was love at first sight. So bumpely and awkward, so big, such a pretty color! It had a to be a good choice.

It was!

These vines are absolutely enormous! They are reaching astonishing heights (for tomatoes), coming close to 4 feet tall. I have a green fruit that is probably 4 inches in diameter already, and it isn't even close to being full size. I'm guessing it still has about 2 more weeks before being fully ripe. The picture to the left is almost a month old, I'm just too lazy to go out and get a newer one right now. So imagine this same tomato, double sized.

Some people don't like the smell of tomato vines, but I actually like it. But I also love the smell of marigolds, which I'm told is very weird and most people can't stand them. I have strange olfactory tolerances I guess. Anyway, the pink accordians seem to have a more pungeant odor than some of the smaller variety and the vines are almost.... juicy. The vines are slick to the touch and leave a distinctive green stain on my fingers.

Hope to get a few more pics up of these guys as they progress and more observations when I make them. I really, really believe strongly in growing heirloom veggies though. It may be a stupid doomsday cliche, but you can't eat bars of gold when the economy collapses. You can, however, continue to thrive with heirloom variety plants!!