Thread: Mountain Merit?
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Old October 2, 2013   #19
moon1234
Tomatovillian™
 
Join Date: Oct 2011
Location: Wisconsin
Posts: 54
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Quote:
Originally Posted by carolyn137 View Post
I agree with your comments about Mountain Magic andIdon'teven have to keepit at 50 F tohave itlastaslongas it does. It was bred by Dr.Randy Gardner , formerly with NCSU at Fletcher,NC,now retired, but still breeding tomato varieties.

A few years ago Randy, whom I've known for a long time, sent me a huge number of seeds of Mt Magic, Plum Regal and Smarty, all hybrids, and I included all of them in my annual seed offer here for several years.

As for a grape tomato you might want to look at Smarty, which he also bred as I mentioned above.

Carolyn
I had thought about Smarty, but I have had three good years with Tami-G now and most people like the taste. It has an awesome sheen to the fruit that makes it really stand out in pulp/clamshell containers. What is the taste and appearance like with Smarty? The seed catalogs always overexpose the images so it is not a true representation. How is uniformity and yield?

The only knock I have for Tami-G is that is not very uniform. Some of the first fruit are a little large and the last fruit are on the smallish size. It is not terribly bad, but it is annoying to pick small fruit. I had thought about five star as a trial next year to see how it performed as the university trials seem to like it and Hepworth farms had a positive comment on it. I really, really like solid gold for a yellow grape. It has almost the same glossy appearance as Tami-G (Agriset something) and the two just look so appealing in clamshells.

You are in Wisconsin as well. What do you have good luck with on the larger slicers. I can't seem to find a reliable field tomato that doesn't crack, cat face or require a huge fungicide schedule to get reliable unblemished fruit. I want Mountain Magic at about two to three times the size. I just wish I could sell more Mountain Magic. I never thought a 2oz tomato would be so hard to sell. It seems to either be too big or too small for most of my markets.
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