I just bought my first set of seeds, and I am very excited. I have very high (perhaps too high) expectations of these seeds, and their ability to make transitioning into a changing world easier.
Nice to hear about Wild Boar Farms. I've been growing their Black and Brown Boar tomato, an early striped variety, here in my Sonoma County back yard for years, saving seed from year to year. Best tomato I've ever tasted, and my friends al agree.
Every year, like I e done for decades, save the seeds of your summer’s best tomato. Plant those seeds next spring. Repeat. You’re breeding your perfect heirloom tomato that way.
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I suspect a first timer would be at somewhat of a loss to know when these multicolored tomatoes were ripe.
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@David It's not a problem. You just squeeze them lightly. I grow some green cherry tomatoes, and it's not a problem to tell when they are ripe. This year I got Brad's Atomic Grapes, they're growing nicely.
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Hmmm, no mention of (late and early) blight, which is the main killer of 'maters around here. If blight could be conquered, growing 'love apples' would be as easy as falling off the turnip truck.
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Great article and excellent advice! My go-to source for the best heirloom seeds available anywhere is Ohio Heirloom Seeds.
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For many years I only buy and eat heirloom tomatoes. All others -- the supermarket kinds -- are pitiful imitations of what a tomato should be. In fact, homegrown "modern" tomatoes from commercial seeds aren't much better.
In October 2007 my sister and I were at a breakfast buffet at our hotel in Rome, Italy. On a platter I saw tomato wedges; they were barely pink with green ends. I turned them down. Minutes my sister said, with a big smile, "Try the tomatoes." I did, and they were some of the best I have ever eaten. And they were pale pink! not red. I've asked American growers if they were familiar with such a pink tomato and they aren't, but I would love to get my hands on some of those seeds.
Judge a tomato by the taste not the look.
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@pinksoda
Check out www.rareseeds.com. They have lots of pink varieties as well as every other color/stripe under the sun. I'm in the DEEP south and one winter, with just a little protection, I grew Sub-Artic Plenty. (I was probably the only person in the state with tomatoes in the front yard in the middle of January. The photo from rareseeds looks red, but they were more pink for me.
Hope it helps!
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I recall as a kid (late 1950's) my folks put in some rose beds and to prep them my dad went out to the local sewage treatment plant and brought home a load of the organic stuff that comes out the other end, as it were. That got buried about 6-8 inches deep in the beds. Next year cherry tomatoes appeared -- so thick they practically choked out the roses. Same thing happened in his garden where he threw the leftover from the plant. I always assumed the local stores must have had a sale on cherry tomatoes that week. Anyway they certainly "came through" just fine. Tasted great! And they kept on coming for several years after.
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@John Binkley -
I remember doing environmental remediation work at an old sewage treatment plant 30 + years ago - and still remember the tomato plants growing everywhere where the sewage had spilled over into the yard! Thanks for the memory!
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I was raised by my grand parents simply because my parents were fully occupied running our grocery store. My granny started her tomatoes from seed by planting them in beds covered by a plastic available called ising glass with horse manure to provide heat and food for the plants.
Now I have a large yard - over 1/2 acre and I have a tomato garden which I buy plants from the big box stores. I have some great neighbors and share my crop with them. My favorite tomatoes for their taste/acidity are Rutgers. My tomatoes are about 18 inches high and are covered with blossoms. I also have over 50 rose bushes which are beautiful and also several Dunstan Chestnut trees which will bear this year. Atlanta gets lots of rain and as a result we have many many trees which I love.
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Not everyone can but there is a clear benefit to learning to grow even a tiny portion of your own food. If you have a patio, use patio pots. If you have a garden, even a small parcel to grow food is a smart choice.
Learning to grow food is a life skill for adults and children. Good for the planet and good for you.
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@independent thinker - My grandmother used to grow her tomatoes in used coffee cans on her fire escape on Canal Street...
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I remember when they taught us about hybrid vigor and genetic diversity in biology when a was a child. All that seemed to get lost in this industrial Monsanto round up ready no variety farming that took over the world. I’m thankful that people like Mr. Gates and all the other tomato fans are out there pushing the envelope. Cheers to all of you.
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I had a feeling Andean South America was going to come up in this conversation.
Due to a unique combination of weird geography and a relatively limited number domesticated plants, edible diversity in the Andes is unmatched in the Western Hemisphere. Tomatoes are one example. The potato is another.
"The range of potatoes in a single Andean field, exceeds the diversity of nine-tenths of the potato crop of the entire United States,” according to Smithsonian.
Basically, civilization in South America is built on an altitudinal basis. You start at sea level in the Atacama Desert and work your way up through various environmental zones until you reach the high planes of the Altiplano. Also sometimes referred to as the Bolivian plateau.
As a result, South American farmers needed to develop an immense variety of species to deal with a wide variety of different growing conditions. Ancient Bolivians for instance used raised beds surrounded by water to create a greenhouse effect protecting their crops from frost. A necessity at 12,000 feet.
Meanwhile, it hasn't rained in the Atacama for 15 million years. The irrigation systems at lower elevations are basically unsurpassed anywhere in the world. You need tomatoes that will grow in both ranges and everywhere in between. As a result, we have stunning and robust diversity.
Monoculture is dangerous. Look at the Potato Famine. European Americans never seemed to learn this lesson.
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We are very experienced senior gardeners who grow many veggies at home. Here in KY gardens have remained a cultural mainstay for many of us and our very small, local farm supply store sells lots of seeds. Many of the selected tomato and bean varieties have KY history attached.My wife's family raised several beans with human names attached, like "Aunt Mossie's bean".
I have been growing a corn field bean called "Grandpa Bishop"-yes they have strings as do many full flavored beans! Those skinny, picked too soon "bean" we see in the NYT Food page should be illegal!
We have been growing heirloom tomatoes, from seed, for a long time, along with a couple of beefsteak hybrids. Weather that remains wet has encouraged a blight problem in our tomatoes in the past 10 years or so. Our soil has late blight in it from a load of dairy farm composted manure I brought in and we've lost the crop in recent years a few times. Organic copper sprays are limited in usefulness to keep the fruits from rotting on the vine.
This article perked my interest in a possible new tomato to try in next years garden!
Many heirlooms are indeed tasty but also can be quite vulnerable to weather & disease.
Two heirloom varieties come from within 30 miles of our farm- the Vincent Watts tomato and the Granny Cantrell tomato. Both were developed via "selection", not modification. We like the taste of both but have found other varieties we prefer. "Dester" is our latest love affair in tomatoes!
Great article.
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I stopped growing tomatoes (and other vegetable) in a raised bed garden when the woodchucks ate more than we did. I then tried growing in large pots inside our fenced in pool area, but those were never successful. I now look forward to farmer's markets and u-pick days at a local organic farm - which had a tie-dye variety last year...….wonder if that's a product of this man's work. I really miss the taste of a great tomato!
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Tomatoes must be one of the most delicious edibles Mama Nature ever invented! Thank you for shepherding her original product forward. As long as you’re doing the research, maybe you can find a varietal that might like life in a bucket in a north-facing, high-rise apartment, no balcony but flooded with indirect light.
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Too hot at night to grow most tomatoes here anymore.
The plants need about 60-65°F nights to flower.
No flowers, no tomatoes beyond that first little crop.
3 years of 30 plants, without enough for canning has me out of the mood for growing. Everyone else in town has the same trouble. We need new desert varieties, but the local plant stores have not gotten the message. Rather than better cultivars, they went upscale to bigger, more expensive, more of the same, in bigger pots. That does not help when your goal is 100 quarts canned.
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Here in Land O Lakes, Florida, we can't get a tasty delicious tomato anywhere. I mean even the farmer's markets have horrible tomatoes. My local Publix has a huge row of tomatoes from everywhere. Not one has any taste except the mini sugar bombs that are grown in Kingsville, On. Being an old person from New York, I remember what a tomato should taste like. This summer I will try to grow my own in a raised bed, in spite of the heat and rain, in search of that delicious tomato I so crave.
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Hi! Fellow Floridian here! We grow tomatoes at home in grow bags or they’re sometimes called root pouches to avoid Florida’s nematodes. Stick to smaller varieties like cherry tomatoes. My absolute favorite is Sungold. Oh my, it tastes so good. Black Cherry and Everglades are good, too. Larger tomatoes are just too hard to grow here as they need more time on the vine and the bugs will beat you every time. Start as early as you can. Don’t wait til full on spring because it will be too late!
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Fellow frustrated Floridian here. I have given up on growing tomatoes. The only ones that seem capable of handling our humidity and heat are the Everglades cherries - but so small and not much flavor. As for the sugar bombs at the grocery store, they do indeed taste slightly better than most of the tomatoes we get here but - their packaging says don’t refrigerate ( which I would never do anyway) so I left some sitting on the counter as an experiment and after more than a week they didn’t look any different than the day I bought them. Yikes. I understand that shelf stable tomatoes are being developed but wonder what else keeps them from rotting?
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Another Floridian grower here! We can't rely on store-bought seeds/seedlings to get a good harvest. You're best off developing your own line. I can't remember which specific breeds of cherry tomatoes and romas I started with a few years ago, but I kept saving seeds from the best producers, and now I've got my own varieties that grow like crazy most of the year. Seriously, thanks to the birds dropping stolen tomatoes, I have volunteers sprouting in the chicken yard. I canned thirty-some quarts of sauce for storage last month, the family groans loudly whenever I say spaghetti or salsa, and I've got another fifty plants going now that will produce through July.
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Not only tomatoes! We need gardeners to maximize the biodiversity in their patches of land. The more native plants, the better. For better pollination and enhancing predators of plant pests on as many varieties of fruit and vegetables you grow.
We used to plant Victory Gardens. These days we need Biodiversity Gardens to survive climate changes.
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Thomas Jefferson was a plant breeder. I plant tomato varieties developed over the centuries for our local climate. Some of my favourite varieties that I grew in the American midWest have not done well here but recently the weather variations from year to year have meant even local heirlooms are unreliable.
My father always grew Quebec tomatoes and the varieties developed for northern Vermont and southern Quebec have served me well but last year's heat gave me my greatest cucumbers ever but had me guessing wrongly what tomatoes to plant.
As I wait for the risk of frost to pass to plant my seedling I wonder if I chose the right varieties after the longest Quebec winter I have ever seen.
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Changing the genetic composition by selectively pollinating? That's genetic modification! Oh my!
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@KP Through selection vs GMO which sometimes combine animals ( bacteria DNA ) with plants.
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@KP
And yet: no fish genes.
How did he do it???
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I'm growing them hydroponically in my apartment. They're healthy, and I have just enough for my salads. This a great solution for someone who doesn't need too may tomatoes. I also grow herbs and salad greens. The weather's too snarky.
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@Jane I'd be grateful for any books, forums you can recommend for NYC apartment hydroponics? Thanks
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@John L
John, for lighting and just a great guide on everything about indoor growing read 'Gardening Under Lights' by Leslie Halleck.
Check out Hydrofarm for some interesting setups that can be used indoors in small spaces as well. Gardening in a wet moisture potting soil is also good indoors. -- If you want something easy to start grab the 'tomato success planter' from gardenerssupply and a good HOT5 light and goto work.
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At least growers are finally considering flavor. For decades all denied that the reddish, mealy, cardboard-tasting things descended from actual tomatoes were as flavorful as always (the GOP mantra: deny, deny, deny). At last - flavor is a consideration.
Just wondering why tomatoes never lost flavor in Greece, Italy, France, etc., Surely their farmers also farm and make a living. What is it about US business that requires making everything so shoddy and so despising of the customer?
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@Ed Watt
The gene that has stolen much of the flavour is the one that gives the consumer what he wants a fully red tomato. The green shoulders that so often advertise outstanding taste is not what consumers look for at the supermarket.
For plant breeders taste is not nearly as important as economics and fortunately there is no shortage of heirloom seed varieties to make us happy and for those of us in colder regions the Russians have done a wonderful job developing new varieties that are what we look for.
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They almost all taste awful now. Give us good tomatoes like Jersey tomatoes and we'll all buy them!
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I used a drip system directed to the roots and grew delicious Early Girls from spring to fall in Sacramento where it got to 105 degrees. No real need for more hardy tomatoes and if tomatoes go the way of fruit, no one will eat them anymore.
Every time we visit Greece we lick our chops waiting to dig into those amazing tomatoes. I can't, for the life of me, understand why we don't produce decent tasting produce, vegetables or fruit, considering we have terrific speed of delivery. even if we pay a premium for specialties such as heirloom tomatoes.
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The best tomatoes I’ve ever eaten came from my garden in Queens.
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@Baboulas We do, but you need to buy them from small farmers (generally at farmers markets), not at grocery stores. That goes for tomatoes, corn, beans, berries, etc.
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Workers are being treated better because there are not enough of them, says this article. How did that happen?
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We have been growing a few of Brad's varieties of tomatoes on our small organic farm in Northern California. We met him at an annual heirloom festival. He is very free with his knowledge and gave us advice on how to select and save seed. We now have one of our own varieties that we have selected for the past two years. So glad he is getting the recognition he deserves. Bravo Brad!
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I’ve been mostly successful
growing tomatoes in my home gardens for some 40 years in diverse climates- the Texas Gulf Coast, Central Utah , S. California and Central Texas. Early maturing varieties have worked well in getting tomatoes to set fruit before nighttime temperatures get too hot -and also worked well in dealing with a short growing season in Utah. However with climate change, unpredictable weather is a growing problem . Sadly I think we may need a tomato variety that can handle both late freezes and record breaking heat.
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Great to read successful tomato harvest in the west. Had 20 plants in Houston this year all of which met an untimely death. Perhaps we've had too much rain...
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@Baboulas Tomatoes definitely don't like too much rain, and then you have to deal with Houston's gumbo clay soil. I have sandy soil here and raised beds, but we'llsee how my tomatoes are doing after this week- predictions are for 5-7 inches of rain. Not easy gardening in this unpredictable Texas weather!
Nice photos with this story!
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I've grown Pink Berkeley Tie-Dye for the past 3 years ( grown from my seed); it's a great tomato! I'll have to try Lucid Gem
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Here in southeastern Idaho we too have a longer growing season now. Just a few years back we had to cover the tomatoes at night late in August for an expected freeze. Now we're harvesting tomatoes through September.
My adult children harvest hundreds of pounds of different varieties of tomatoes, roast tomatoes and onions, puree them, and cook down a bit, then seal in bags, freeze, and we have delicious tomatoes all winter.
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I’ve been growing Brad Gate’s tomatoes for several years now. I grow them in the Pacific Northwest so these beauties are definitely adaptable. Congratulations to Brad for the article! A well eared success. Long live beautiful tomatoes!
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I can grow my own during the warmer growing season and I preserve a lot of them by canning, roasting-then-freezing, dehydrating, and making salsa's etc. During the cold season, I'm pretty much restricted to tomatoes from Mexico and hothouse products from Michigan or Canada. I'd really prefer them to be more local but with our climate, maintaining an indoor crop is challenging even on a small scale.
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I used to grow my own tomatoes but can't since a high-rise apartment was built across the street. A New York kind of problem.
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Good to know what happened to 'my' tomato guy at one of Oakland's Farmer's Markets. Better to know all this new info & I'll be trying to apply some today planting my tomato starts. He is a shining example of reality we must adapt & become more efficient. Great articles! Thanks!
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I wish they gave MacArthur grants to people like this.
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They do. Wes Jackson of the Land Institute in Kansas, who is working on getting rid of nitrogen fertilizers, got one. I was on a panel with him once and have never heard a clearer more convincing account of the unsustainability of the current system.
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@Geoffrey James
Good to know. I wish there were more awards and recognition given to often poorly funded agricultural programs. A long time ago I read a feature in the Washington Post about a researcher who was spending a lot of his own time and money saving “heritage” apple species. Had been doing it for years with no support. I thought the same thing at the time I read it.
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We live in the dry Northwest and use soaker hoses to irrigate, since the spring that is our source of water is a finite resource. Mostly we grow flowers, but there are always tomatoes and peppers too.
My husband prepares the tomato beds by hauling bagged leaves, usually maple, from yards in town and heaping them on the soil in the fall. He tills them into half the garden, leaving the other half fallow and heaped with leaves for the next year. We use sturdy square tomato cages, held in place with long 1X2 stakes to avoid tipping.
Hollyhocks and sunflowers grow among them.
From five or so plants we grow all we can eat, and more, when they finally start producing. We always have Early Girl and a small pear (small tomatoes on huge plants) and experiment with others. A current favorite is Black Krim.
We used to have a 3-month growing season, but now it's much longer. Instead of the tomatoes freezing out in early September, we are still picking in mid October, and often now uproot the plants before they freeze.
One tactic that works well for us, especially with leggy seedlings, which you often get when you buy the plants or grow your own too early, is to remove the leaves from the lower stem and bury it along the ground. It will grow roots there and provide a better root system to the plant that way.
Happy gardening! In the off season we like the mixed small tomatoes from Costco, which seem to have the best flavor.
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For the past few years I have been growing tomatoes in my front yard using the “straw bale method” that involves no tilling, digging or weeding.
There are several websites and a book or two that describe the simple process of mulching the bales with dry fertilizer and water over a 10 day interval.
I have my grandchildren help me plant my tomatoes, which takes all of 15 minutes. At this point, we use ‘tomato fertilizer” to prevent ‘root end rot.’
We harvest all summer until about September. Later, we use what mulch is left to put around perineals.
We have had great results with Yellow Boy, heritage varieties and yellow pear tomatoes (that the grandkids and I eat as we pick them).
PS - Straw bale gardens can be situated on driveways and patios. Placement in the yard just makes it easier to stake/support the plants; they can grow 6ft high.
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Thanks for this article - will be looking to pick up some orange and purple varieties when I head out to local nursery this afternoon.....once I stop crying after I pay my credit card bill for an 8 day holiday in iceland. Interesting fact is Icelanders currently GROW 80% of the tomatoes they consume in green houses all year round due to a combination of hydroponics and cheap heat from geothermic water.
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@Andy Morrissey
Try the tiny yellow pear shaped tomatoes: awesome.
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@sjs
We live in the northeast. The yellow pear tomatoes contracted disease and died early two years in a row for us. We are not planting it this year. They do taste amazing, any tips? The other heirloom varieties that we grow had no problem.
@Friendly perhaps try grafting your tomato seedlings to one that is less prone to wilt/blight? I recently learned about this method in a propagation course but have not tried it yet myself. It is said to be a sure way to grow tender heirloom tomatoes.
Growing my first tomatoes this year! Just had to haul them inside from my (sunny) balcony to avoid a late April snowfall. Looking forward to homegrown fruit, with the added satisfaction of a reduced carbon impact (no transportation necessary, save the steps it takes to pick and carry them inside).
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I started growing tomatoes in my backyard about eight years ago. I use clean five-gallon buckets. I drill drain holes in the bottom, fill a quarter of the bucket with clean aggregate and fill the rest with organic potting soil. I normally plant seedlings using the Rutgers 250, Ramapo, Moreton and Celebrity varieties, the first three are New Jersey specific so I try to keep it local. Last year was a tough one. Record precipitation and extreme heat. Every season is different. You learn to appreciate what farmers have had to deal with for centuries but on a smaller stage.
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@ Jay Amberg Neptune, N.J.
To each one one's tastes (and in Latin, something close to De gustibus non est disputandum).
I like only not too ripe cherry tomatoes for hors d'oeuvres that can be crushed by the pressure of the tongue against the palate, and tomato juice with black pepper in Bloody Mary.
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@Tuvw Xyz We like cherries too. We use them in salsa with the chilies we grow. Unfortunate, but last year was a bad one for our cherries, we usually grown "Super-100" variety. Sweet and high yield, bright red in color about the size of large grapes.
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