Tomato Attack!

Burbank Slicer Tomatoes
F3 Generation 

Sorry that the picture is not more clear - you are looking at some three tomato plants ripped from the ground with only some of their roots left.  More than a dozen of my little Burbank Slicer Tomatoes were yanked from their homes sometime in the evening or night. It was a bird, and I'll bet the culprit was a crow because this is typical of crow damage.  

When I discovered the crime, seeing that most of the pulled-up seedlings still had roots, I made a hole in some of the empties and stuck the tomatoes back in. You and I both know that tomatoes really are just weeds and there was no reason that they couldn't take a little uprooting episode and still survive.  I hard started with about 50 plants and now I'm down to about 35 at this point (a large number of the seedlings were nowhere to be found and I had already given a few plants away).  

I will make some of these available to SLOLA members tomorrow if they promise to bring back the seeds of the largest tomato of each plant.  These are not large plants, nor are they extremely large tomatoes, but they are some of the best tasting tomatoes I've ever grown in the Learning Garden, which is a difficult place for tomatoes because of it's colder location (near the ocean and one of the lower elevations around here where cold air drains to).  And they are productive of many firm tomatoes that can be used for slicing or for juice.  A very talented plant for a small garden.

Luther Burbank introduced this tomato in the early 1900's.  I and a few friends have been on a program to select only the largest tomatoes from each plant to come up with a consistently larger tomato from this variety.  If you choose to take a plant, all we ask is that you return only seeds from the largest tomatoes.  That's how we're working it and I invite you to be a part of this project.  

david