The Most Interesting Tomato Plant of the Month! JULY 2024 Edition!

The Most Interesting Man in the World

Grow Tomatoes My Friends! So says the Most Interesting Man in the world. The world just hasn't been the same nor as interesting when he left that position behind to live the treasured life of a retired actor. I do miss Jonathan Goldsmith. I do miss his quips. I do miss his commercials. I miss his style. Even though I no longer drink Dos Equis beer, I still find time to grow tomatoes!

The Most Interesting Tomato Plant of the Month, for the Month of July 2024 that is, may never be known. Oh, I have pictures of it! It exists. The first picture located below left is proof of this plant's existence! The problem is, I cannot even begin to tell you what this plant is. I didn't even know what it was named when I planted it last May, which is why I stuck it in the corner of the garden that I rarely visit.

Most Interesting Tomato Plant of the Month

Well, let me rephrase that. It's a corner that I tend to visit a lot more now. The reason why is self-evident. LOOK AT THAT TOMATO PLANT! It is positively LOADED with bright pink tomatoes. What kind of tomatoes are they? I cannot tell you. The one thing I can tell you is this: These tomatoes are really good. They are sweet. They slice well. They taste great. They do not show a HINT of disease or any other problem. There have been no LOSERS on this plant. Not a single one. This one plant is responsible for many salads, soups, gifts to neighbors AND a good portion of the early crop went into my first canned tomato sauce project.

That's the sign of a very good tomato plant. It's not over yet either. A big portion of the early crop continues to ripen. Those tomatoes formed up early in May and grew like gangbusters. Now that the harvest period has arrived, the upper portion of this tomato plant is setting and developing a rather eye-popping and large late crop. What kind of tomato plant does this? The Tomato Plant for the Month of July does.

Pink Tomatoes

This tomato plant arrived at my home in early April without a number on it. Check that, the one gallon pot had three numbers on it. Every one of those numbers had been scribbled out. There was a fourth number there. I think. But it was so badly degraded that I could not tell what it was. Therefore, it became the "mystery plant" that I tried to give away. But there were no takers for it. Which is how and why it wound up in a corner. Nobody was interested in taking my plant without a name. Therefore, it became the tomato plant that everyone rejected. Hah! Joke's on them! Everyone passed on the tomato plant of the month!

There are a couple of things that I can tell you about this mystery plant. The Most Interesting Tomato Plant of the Month for July 2024 is a Potato Leaf variety. It is a Potato Leaf variety that yields bright pink, tasty tomatoes. This does not tell me what the variety is. But it does make it interesting. If I were to guess? This is a Pink Brandywine. I supposed it could also be another popular variety known as a Wins All. That is another Potato Leaf variety of plant that also yields pink tomatoes. But, there's just one small problem. I already have a Wins All plant in a nearby section of the garden. While the tomatoes coming off this plant are also pink, the comparison ends there. These are two different tomatoes entirely.

New Crop Forming

That is what led me to my second guess of Pink Brandywine. There's just one small problem with this conclusion. The tomato-growing friend that provides me with all of my starter plants did not grow a Pink Brandywine variety. He has in the past. But not this season. Is it possible that a Pink Brandywine seed could have slipped into his seed starting efforts this past spring? Anything is possible, I suppose. But it's also highly unlikely.

Plant scientists are beginning to pay more attention to the potato leaf variety of plant. A recent report from the The Old Farmer's Almanac Garden Planner seems to suggest that potato leaf varieties were developed in Eastern Europe. In other words, these types of varieties were not widely known in America until the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of communist rule in Russia in 1989.

Livingston Seed Catalog

However, there's a problem with this theory as well. That problem is Alexander Livingston. He is, or was, an American. He is also known as the Father of the Modern Tomato. It was Livingston who did the groundbreaking work to develop the modern garden tomato we all know and love in North American gardens today. Potato leaf varieties could not have originated in Eastern Europe. Because Livingston developed one at his groundbreaking farm in Reynoldsburg, Ohio. He developed it a very long time ago. No, he was not trading seeds with anyone in Eastern Europe at the time.

That 1887 introduction was given the name of Potato Leaf in one of Livingston's original seed catalogs. According to historical records, however, it's a variety that did not catch on in popularity like other Livingston original tomatoes did. In fact, by 1915, the Potato Leaf was no longer listed in any Livingston catalogs. Perhaps Americans were not ready for the potato leaf yet. Not with a groundbreaking variety like the Paragon.

If there is one thing that modern science can tell us, it's this: The potato leaf variety of tomato plant produces tomatoes that are sweeter and more flavorful than your common, everyday type of tomato plant. That groundbreaking information comes to us from a group of Plant Scientists at the University of California, at Davis (UCD). The study was first published in 2019. The conclusions in the scientific analysis resulted from two years of research and plant testing on the UCD campus.

Grow Tomatoes, My Friends

To quote a small part of the final analysis: "This study revealed the importance of leaf shape to fruit quality in tomatoes, with rounder leaves having significantly improved fruit quality."

I will never know the true name behind this variety. But it does not matter. Because it grows and grows well in the 2024 vegetable garden. It is producing a giant crop and will continue to produce late into the fall season. That is all that matters. That, and the fact that this one reject is the Most Interesting Tomato Plant of the Month for July 2024.

Grow Tomatoes, My Friends.

The Most Interesting Tomato Plant of The Month! JUNE 2024 Edition!

The Most Interesting Man in the World

Grow Tomatoes My Friends! Fine words of advice indeed from a treasured actor like Jonathan Goldsmith. He used his persona as The Most Interesting Man in the World to convince you to drink Dos Equis beer. Which isn't a bad idea. But I'm using his character for a much different and healthier reason.

I don't think he will mind very much.

I do know that I'm a tad late with this blog post. After all, it does come about seven days into the month of July. But I have been dealing with a bit of a difficult heat wave in Northern California at the moment. While it seems like it's been two straight weeks of temperatures at or near 1001 degrees, that's a tad facetious. However, I can tell you that it's tough to do anything in the garden over a long period of time when the mercury hits 110. Which it has. Far too often for my liking to be brutally honest.

Don't get me wrong here. Summer vegetable gardens LOVE heat. Those summer producers love everything about bright sunshine and sizzling hot afternoons. As long as they get enough water, everything in the vegetable garden world is as good as it gets. Peppers, for example, LOVE heat. Hot peppers and sweet bells love it equally. Given them enough water in a heat wave like this one, and they will respond with record growth and happiness.

Pink Vernissage Tomatoes

The same is true with just about everything in the summer garden. This includes The Most Interesting Tomato Plant of the Month. This is a large cherry variety. It's about the size of a golf ball. It is one of six cherry varieties that call the garden home this year. But this one is a tad unique. It's not native to California. It's not native to the USA. It comes to my garden by way of a Eastern European country that's been in the news for the last few years. That country is Ukraine.

There's a Russian tomato grower there who is attempting to do all sorts of increidble stuff with my favorite summer fruit. He is the Ukrainian copy or counterpart of California's own Brad Gates, the founder of the Wild Boar Farms collection of unique tomato varieties. The cross-breeding done at the farm of Ruslan Dukhov has resulted in my Tomato Plant of the Month: Pink Vernissage. Dukhov runs his experimental tomato breeding farm in an area called Mushirin Rog. That is in the Dnepropetrovsk region (Oblast) of Ukraine. Please don't ask me to type that out again, let alone try to pronounce it.

The Pink Vernissage, according to Dukhov, is a cross between the Stupice (Stoo-Pick) tomato variety and another that is local to Dukhov's region. it's called the Kitaiskiy Barkhatnyi. Please don't ask me to pronounce that either. I could barely type it. I've grown Stupice a number of times. It hails from Czechoslovakia, near the town called Stupice. It is a time-honored favorite in Eastern Europe, and was one of the first varieties introduced to American growers after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Stupice is one of those varieties that seems to grow extremely well no matter where it is planted. This includes a crack in a sidewalk.

Pink Vernissage Clusters

The Pink Vernissage, or Vernissage Pink as some seed websites call it, is as unique as the striped varieties that have been developed by Gates at Wild Boar Farms. Loosely translated, the term Vernissage means art. It certainly is that. This unique tomato variety is both spotted and streaked with colors of pink, brown and orange. Like every tomato that is vine-ripened in extreme heat and sunshine, every bite is a delight to the tastebuds. My Pink Vernissage plant produced the first ripe tomatoes of the summer season and continues to set clusters of four or six tomatoes on a plant that is now reaching six feet in height. It's open-pollinated, which means it will continue to deliver fruit until the frost of winter shuts it down.

Pink Vernissage isn't Dukhov's only contribution to the world of unique tomato varieties. He's responsible for dozens more. This includes other contributions in the Vernissage variety that carry colors of green, black and yellow. If there is one difference between the work of Dukhov and Gates, it's this: Gates isn't doing his experimental work smack dab in the middle of a war zone. Dukhov, unfortunately, is. His farm is uncomfortably close to the front lines of the conflict between Russian and Ukrainian forces. While it seems that soldiers would not at all be interested in raiding a tomato farm, that hasn't stopped errant shells from falling. One of those misfires reportedly damaged a greenhouse.

Pink Vernissage

That hasn't stopped Dukhov from doing his wonderful work with tomato plants at his small farm. He has a website, which is in Russian and tough to follow. He also posts videos on YouTube, which are also in Russian. Which means it can also be a little tough to follow. Unless you know Russian. Which I do not. Despite the language difference, there is an infectious excitement in his voice when it comes to discussing his favorite subject.

Every tomato tells a story it seems. The Most Interesting Tomato Plant of the month certainly does that and more.