Rebecca, I thought I'd just mention that if you go to the Growing Tomatoes Forum, link at the top of this first page, that's where heirloom tomato varieties are discussed about 99% of the time. it may also be that your Brandywine was last to succumb to Late Blight, and I mean P infestans specifically, b'c it's a potato leaf variety. Person Sprayless turns out not to be that tolerant of any diseases that are most common for most tomato growers and was originally from Argentina and first offered by the now defunct Gleckler's seed co way back in the 1940's So sometime in the future you might wish to do some trials and see if the potato leaf (PL) varieties do better for you than do regular leaf (RL) varieties. Carolyn

colorado, What I grew in '91 is the same that TOm Hauch got out of the SSE Yearbook and others were growing and listing it as well. I said above that I compared my 91 with Tom Hauch's current stock and they were identical. I'd said above that after Tom sent seeds to Steve Miller at the Landis Museum that it was Steve who got the background info. There are NO seeds that came forward directly from about 1865 in a direct line as far as I know. And Tom can't even remember the name of the SSE person he got the seeds from and clearly others got it from that person as well. I didn't say that as clearly as I should have. RB was listed by an SSE member in an SSE Yearbook. How that SSE member got the seeds is not known. Apparently Steve contacted that SSE lister and found that the variety was knnown to have been grown by the Amish in Chester Co PA. One might assume that the original SSE lister got it from the Amish. You know, I think a lot of these questions would be answered if those of you who still have questions, were to read the article at Victory Seeds on the history of brandywines by Craig LeHoullier. He did the family ones and I provided the info for the ones that were bred or resulted from cross pollinations. Fruit size alone can never ID a variety b'c as I think most of ou know, weather can alter fruit sizes, and so can amendments used. So without doing controlled studies I would not use fruit size as THE determining factor in IDing any variety, Carolyn

It was quite by accident that I came about the Ruumi Baanjan seeds, but I ranked it #3 out of all my tomatoes for taste last year, and my wife ranked it #1. If there is a downside to this variety, it is that there is not enough meat in it to make a good processing tomato, even though it is so thin skinned that a few turns in the blender are all that is needed to have the skins evaporate. Good juice tomato, poor sauce, great fresh eating. About 1/3 of the tomatoes were yellow-orange in a kind of sunburst, while the rest were straight yellow. And since all three plants gave that trait I am wondering if it has something to do with sun or heat. I will grow those seeds (which I separated by tomato color) in different areas of the yard to see how they do.

You didn't say, but were you growing F1 Big Zac seeds as purchased, or saved seeds from the hybrid, which would be F2 seeds that you germinated and planted out? Do you know for sure that Big Zac F1 has a pink parent? I know that one of the parents was Minnie's own family heirloom, but I don't know the color, but I don't think the other parent was ever revealed, but I could be wrong. So it depends on whether you were growing out F1 or F2 seeds as I see it. Carolyn