Tag Archives: indeterminate

Indigo Rose, a purple tomato

 

Saladette tomatoes, the smaller tomatoes, but bigger than cherries.

Saladette tomatoes, the smaller tomatoes, but bigger than cherries.

Linnaeus Day
Garden writer and photographer Christopher Tidrick, who lives and gardens in Champaign IL USA, has started a cool new blog, From The Soil.

Chris has started a Linnaeus Day series, where he and his blogging friends write about the history of a plant growing in our own garden. It’s on the 23rd of every month.

The series will honor Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus, the father of modern botanical taxonomy. Born May 23, 1707. This is some of his work:  the photo is from Wikipedia 

 

This plant doesn’t have much of a history because it is a new tomato.

Grow your own superfood in the back yard. Indigo Rose Tomato is the first high anthocyanin tomato.

saladette tomato

Anthocyanin rich, organic tomato is now available to home gardeners. Photo: Helen Hilman

Jim Myers, dept of horticulture at Oregon State University has been working on this classically one for ten years. He’s still working on Indigo Rose, and you can expect some more traits.

Indigo Rose Tomato

  • 75 days from transplant to harvest.
  • 2 ounces each
  • indeterminate
  • organic

What are Anthocyanins?

Anthocyanin pigments are responsible for the red, purple, and blue colors of many fruits and vegetables. Anthocyanins offer protection against certain cancers, cardiovascular disease and age-related degenerative diseases. There is evidence that anthocyanins also have anti-inflammatory activity, promote visual acuity and hinder obesity and diabetes. Food scientists and horticulturists are interested in these compounds because of their importance to the color quality of fresh and processed fruits and vegetables.

The purple coloring occurs on the portion of the fruit that is exposed to light, while the shaded portion start out green and turn deep red when mature. Inside, the flesh reveals the same red tone.

In business for more than 60 years, Nichols Garden Nursery has seed for the New Indigo Rose Organic Tomato. Nichols is an original signer of the Safe Seed Pledge, and offers no GMO/Genetically engineered seeds or plants. All their seed are untreated.

I’ve been buying herb plants and vegetable seeds from Nichols for more than 20 years. I call Rose Marie Nichols McGee when I have herb questions. One of my favorite food garden blogs is her Garden Pantry.

Buy seed here:

Nichols Garden Nursery is an independent family business serving home gardeners for more than 60 years. Phone – 800-422-3985.

Johnny’s Selected Seeds helping families, friends, and communities to feed one another by providing superior seeds, tools, information, and service. Phone – 877-Johnnys (877-564-6697).

Territorial Seed Company wants customers to be 100% satisfied with both the seed and supplies that you buy from them. Phone Orders: 800-626-0866.

Black Krim

Black Krim

Black Krim with a slightly salty tomato flavor

So you thought I was done talking about tomatoes for the year.

But no. There are more heirloom tomato surprises from zone 6 in Southeast Missouri.

Called black tomatoes, Black Krim produces a medium size (10 to 12 ozs.), dark browish-red tomatoes. This heirloom is growing in popularity and being discovered by black tomato converts every year. It has just a hint of saltiness, and rich, comomplex flavor.

Black Krim gets darker in hot weather, which may shed some light to neighbor Bill’s very colorful cooler season Black Krim Tomatoes.

Here is a bit of a surprise. (I pulled up all the tomatoes in my garden 3 weeks ago.)

Patsybell,

This tomato plant you gave me this spring has just now sprung into action. All summer it produced a few tomatoes that would ripen and rot at the bottom of the fruit
while the top was still green.

When October got here – lots of fruit, ripening evenly and the very best tasting tomato of the year. Should I save some seed from them?

Hope you can see these pictures.

Thank you,
Neighbor Bill

Black Krims are a generous sandwich sized slices.

Black Krim plants were sent to me for trial from Hort Couture®,

Hort Couture® is only available through independent garden centers and retailers- you won’t see these plants in the mass markets. While the plants arrived healthy, I shared one plant with my neighbor, Bill, The head tomato grower in our neighborhood. These tomatoes have a very tasty smoky/rich flavor that was a regular and consistant indeterminate that only sucummed to late blight as did all the tomatoes in my garden.

Grown in the heat of summer, my Black Krim had brownish shoulders and red purplish skin and flesh.  The color was not as distinct this summer. I used the black heirloom tomatoes in fresh salsa the summer. The Black Krim just seems to add another level of flavor to salsa.

two late season Black Krims

Two late season Black Krims

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