Terhune Tomato, Regular Leaf

In an odd year of poor weather, there was an odd-ball that has piqued my interest.

Since I started growing Terhune tomatoes some years ago, from every large flat of starter plants, there has been the occasional regular leaf plant, as opposed to the potato leaf that typifies the Terhune.

I always had discarded the plant, simply because it was off-type.

Carolyn Male, author of 100 Tomatoes For The American Garden, encouraged me to let one of them live, so I took the sole regular leaf one and plopped it into a pot I had grown eggplant in last year, without adding any new potting soil or amendments.  All it got for the summer was water.

It actually produced quite a few tomatoes.  Very sweet and thin skinned, like the ordinary Terhune, with less of a meaty consistency,  and instead of huge tomatoes, there were clusters of 4 to 6 tomatoes that were only about 3 ounces each.  Now, I have to admit, whenever I do this to a tomato plant, putting it into a smaller pot of worn soil, the tomato production tends to be limited and the fruits a bit stunted.  I really only do it to isolate and create seed so I can do a larger planting the next year.  Even if it does only give me tomatoes of this size though, as long as it is true to the parent, it should be a prodigious producer of what were very tasty tomatoes.

Of course there is the chance that it will be some oddball F2 hybrid created by the limited growing spaces of my yard and the children of this plant will be nothing like the parent plant, but we will have to wait and see.  The season is drawing to a close.  Half of my gardens have frozen out and only the Minnetonka garden and here on the island do I have any tomato plants still alive.  Few plants are going strong any more due to neglect and weather stresses, and of the 400 or so original plans in the ground, only perhaps 60 are still alive.  This one though, this one I am looking forward to seeing what it does next year.

This entry was posted in Food, Gardening, Harvest, Seeds, Tomatoes. Bookmark the permalink.

18 Responses to Terhune Tomato, Regular Leaf

  1. Kasey Molnar says:

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    • David says:

      wow wrong again. Too expensive, not big egounh for indeterminant tomatoes. How about a $3 metal stake post? Lasts forever and it is tall egounh and doesnt take more than a foot. so you can actually use them in a SFG.

    • Blanca says:

      Tomato plants used to be cheap, but now they are not. I am hraiestvng suckers to grow as plants to save on money.I like to bring plants, or cuttings, indoors just before winter and keep them alive for spring planting. I was not able to do that this past winter, but I plan to do that again this year.It is difficult to keep a very small plant alive, but much easier with a larger plant or cutting.Some cuttings will do fine in plain water without any soil at all.

  3. seo says:

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    • Jensen says:

      These Texas Tomato Cages look very nice! Consider the amount of money spent on toameots at my grocery store and I’d still save money buying these. If I have the money in the coming weeks, I’m for sure going to order some of these! Thanks for sharing your knowledge once again!! Love your videos!

    • Aiana says:

      Totally agree about the cherry or smellar tomatoes. My annalise and yellow pear tomatoes are producing a ton of fruit, while the larger tomatoes require so much more work for such a small amount of fruit. I think I just might stick with salad tomatoes next year. Thanks for the tips on the suckers. I’m going to try not to by seed for the hybrids next year and over winter using this propagation method instead.

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    • Enal says:

      These are popping up all over yobtuue. They are good but we all know the plant grows through the gaps on the sides with these stationary cages. The best thing is a brand new invention this year 2011 called The Tomato T Stake I believe these will be the next big thing for tomato growing. Do a search on Youtube for them. THE TOMATO T STAKE. Nothing like it out there anywhere.

    • Eddy says:

      I get a lot of volunteers with my plntas as well. This year I must have had 20 or so volunteer tomato plntas. I knew they were either romas or chocolate cherry tomatoes but didn’t know which might be which. I transplanted them into some small containers than I brought them to my office at work and put them with a note telling people they could take a couple home. Before the end of the day, they were all taken home. Makes me feel good to share that way. ~Amanda

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    • Sirgio says:

      Thanks for sharing! Last year I had psharcued a heavy duty triangle cage and even it had to be reinforced by tying the tomato plant to my fence. both of these look like good options, one being easy to store and the other being inexpensive.

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