“80 days. An old Cherokee Indian heirloom, pre-1890 variety;
beautiful, deep, dusky purple-pink color, superb sweet flavor, and
very-large-sized fruit. Try this one for real old-time tomato flavor. Our
favorite dark tomato and one of our best selling varieties.”
I found that these tomatoes did well in our climate with a
couple caveats – the biggest being that they stopped setting fruit when we got
into the worst heat of our summer. With that, I recommend watering twice a week
during the summer’s worst heat and mulching heavily. Once things cooled off
again, they made tomatoes like crazy! I had so many, I ended up just giving
them to Taylor – he likes babying his “matos.”
These tomatoes need a good head-start indoors here. Even
though they are supposed to be an 80 day tomato, they don’t enjoy our clay
soils and need a little more time to get going. Using raised beds with amended
soil or growing in pots will help a lot with this.
Even with those caveats, it’s easy to see why these tomatoes
are one of Baker Creek’s best sellers. They are prolific producers of big
fruits, and they are exceptionally tasty.
This past year I tried trellising them on twine tied to PVC.
I found that the fruits became too heavy and the twine started cutting into the
vines. This coming year I plan on staking them directly to a pole for better
stability. The vines easily climbed up 6 feet, at which point I pinched them
off so they could put more energy into the fruits.
I can’t wait to get them started inside!
Cheers,
Susan
Oooo, I hope I can grow a whole bunch of these lovelies... I'm just now deciding I could be happy with them taking all the space of my front yard box.. maybe some lettuces and other little things interplanted amongst them... I'm getting so excited! I'd better start some soon!
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