Originally Posted by JRinPA
Last tomato sauce of the season for me, tonight or tomorrow. I picked the rest of the tomatoes I have in the backyard, two 10x20s loaded with these little red beauties. I got the seed from the swap a few years back, marked stupice, and they look real similar, but they are all RL, and have been stable. So I dubbed them fauxpice and have been growing them every year.
Maybe I should have called them victorio specials. They fit perfectly down the hopper without cutting, they are all basically perfect with no waste, no cracks, no splits, they stay red ripe for a LONG time on the vine, and don't weaken at the stem and fall on the ground while still edible. If I wait too long they collapse completely and just leave the skin hanging. This was the third picking and smallest picking this year from my five cages. Previous years I let them run wild, but this year I culled to three leaders and they formed nice symmetrical trusses like a cherry tomato, usually 8 or so. I love them because they zip right through victorio without having to worry about bad spots or cutting to fit in, and they taste fine. I want to try these as my early tomato as well but I never remember to plant an early tomato!
I also have the third picking from my big beef row, but they are more or less halfway to red with the normal late season cracks and splits. There is a big difference in the quality. I picked them to take down the row before bow season opens, and I think they'll probably go to waste if I leave them on much longer. We just had another 2.5" of rain the last couple days and many split while still pale. The big beefs by this time are smaller than they started out, and show some blight on the actual tomato, while the fauxpice are more like a cherry tomato in that they stay a consistent size the entire season.
I took some pics earlier this summer when I made sauce with them. Call that early August. When doing sauce I keep some fauxpice reserved in case the mill backs up on different tomatoes, such as OR117, because a few of these "fopeechee" seemingly clean it out. The later pics are today, Sept 10. Fourth to last pic has a fauxpice ready to collapse, and the next pic is one collapsed. Very clean litmus test. The vast majority are just perfect though, and hold for a long time. The last pic with the okra, you can see some of the big beefs are speckled by blight and close to being worthless without ever turning full red. The big beef vines were about the same condition as those fauxpice cages.
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