Last year I was gifted with 3 seeds , half of the six remaining of a tomato collected in Afghanistan in 1937 and held by GRIN, which had been given to a grower to increase, but there had been a total failure of the plants. Those six seeds made it to a friend of mine, Michelle Grannes, who is also a professional grower, but being the last known seeds of their kind made her a bit nervous. We both got our three plants going and in the ground, but a windstorm broke Michelle’s off. Being in the city, and not the middle of prairie like Michelle, wind is not as much of an issue for me. My plants thrived and I was introduced to this wonderful tomato the Afghans called Rumi Banjan.
For me, taste-wise, I rank it #3 all time. My wife gives it a #1. The thin skinned yellow to orange tomatoes are juicy enough that when you take a bite it runs down your chin. The tomatoes themselves max out just over a quarter pound, and are just a beautiful sight to behold. For a thin skinned tomato they actually store well and we kept a few on our counter for 2 months before they suddenly collapsed. The meat walls are fairly thin and are best used as a fresh eating tomato. We sent back several thousand seeds and they are now available to growers through GRIN again, and maybe we will be offering seeds ourselves this fall.
GRINs listing: http://www.ars-grin.gov/cgi-bin/npgs/acc/display.pl?1132801
Tom, I am so glad to know that GRIN now has seeds again. What a gift to give all invloved. Yes, those tasty little mater’s are on my top 3 list as well. Again, Thank you for sharing such a wonderful gift to growers. Lets hope they make it back to the Mid East again real soon.
I can imagine the blushing yellow tomato now and I have dreams of fresh eating in 5 to 6 months from now.
Your cat is a fat-ass by the way.
Patti here. It’s not our fault that the cat is a fat-ass. He was trapped by a “trap-neuter-release” organization. So he has gained a bit since becoming “re-domesticated.”
and can you think of any more useless waste of time, energy and resources than cutting the balls off of a gay cat?
LOL !
about as useless as tits on a bull !
Oh no, what a shame. I hope nothing hnppeas to the plants my dad is growing. I’m trying to convert him to heirloom seeds, so I gave him a packet of mixed tomato heirloom seeds and we now have about 8 of the plants in his garden. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for lovely delicious tomatos that will convince him to stick with heirlooms. We’ve already had one batch of corn wilt and die from the other seeds I got him from Diggers. I don’t want him to get to the point where he thinks they are all too hard to grown and go back to buying all his punnets from places like Big W and have a heap of plants which you can’t save seeds from etc. While we are renting I’m trying to live my dreams thru him, hehe.