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Gardening in Oz

Heirloom Tomato info

17 years ago

This year I decided to try out some of the Heirloom Tomato varieties that have become readily available to see how they compare production and taste wise to my usual Gross Lisse. I planted Russian Black, Russian Purple and Black from Tulla, I can now understand why Gross Lisse has been a gardeners favourite since the late 1800s'.None of the 'heirlooms' produced as well (nor tasted as good to our extended family) as Gross Lisse. Tulla Black was voted the best tasting and made reasonable sized plants. Next came Purple Russian which makes a slightly sweeter tasting, different looking, oval fruit but the plants tended to be weak and spindly. Black Russian was also a poor spindly plant and the few fruit were better than supermarket type tasty but nothing special. I am now going to try Brandywine Yellow and Tigerella (Stripey). I would love to hear from other tomato growers particularly if they had different results from me.

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Comment (1)

gardenlen
17 years ago
g'day eddy,

for me it's beef steak and ox-heart, and others i have tried black russians they were ok nothing to rave about, prudence purple did ok as well, for me it's all bout beating the fruit fly but! did try many others that simply did poorly. got some gross-lisse in this year, seedling from local nursery, don't think they are the heirloom g/l but nothing like the g/l my dad grew when we were kids.

len

Here is a link that might be useful: len's garden page
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