Troublesome Cherokee Purple ;-)

[kilroyscarnival]

Got some photos of the chocs yesterday. Not great pics, but hope you can see, they seem like twin stems and not a sucker off the main.

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[FreyaFL]

That's really cool! Great pictures.

[kilroyscarnival]

Oh, thanks! Here's the unscientific truth: I think those are photos of the two different plants doing that, but I'm not 100% sure. I took a few bad shots one-handed while attempting to hold them against the almost-white stucco wall. By the leaves of the top-view one being a little droopy compared to the other two, and the marker writing on the straws appearing to be different depths, I assume they are different. By the way, this was just before they all got their drinkie; thus the leaf droop, I hope.

I attempted to photograph the one other abnormality I have: one of my four Super Italian Pastes appears to be a (ahem) gelding, in that it does not have a stem at all. It is one small seedling sharing a pot with a healthy, thriving, single-stem one. I couldn't bring myself to jettison it, so I'm giving it some time. Maybe it's just waiting for the right moment. I don't see any sign that it was damaged. This first-timer is fascinated with the individual temperaments of these plants: both different varieties, and different seeds of the same planted together.

Have decided I will let the twins just be twins. Chang and Eng.

[FreyaFL]

So here's the latest on my Purple Cherokee. Two weeks later, all four of the splits have split again into two stems. Here's a picture of one of them. I wonder if I should make certain to save seeds from this or definitely NOT save seeds. LOL

[kilroyscarnival]

Wow! That is intriguing. I'd wait to see how the fruit comes out (size, quantity, flavor) and maybe this is a strong-as-ox plant with wonderful fruit, worth saving, or perhaps not.

[nickbolk]

any update on how the fruit turned out?

[FreyaFL]

Remember, this is the first time I've grown a Purple Cherokee tomato plant, so I've no past experience to compare it to. But, here's what is and what I think.

What is... It didn't get huge. It stayed at about 4 feet tall and about as wide (except I've constantly tied and retied it up so it's only about 2-3 feet wide atm. I really, really need to figure out a good way to do this!) So far, I've I've picked (because I was keeping track) 15 tomatoes that average between 10-11 ozs and total to 9.5 lbs of tomatoes. There are currently another 6 large tomatoes nearly ripe. (So that'll be 21 for a total of 13-14 lbs.) I've no idea if this is normal, but there were three near freezes here and about the time the third one hit, the plant started putting out more flowers. So, there are LOTS of little greenies on it now, 10-20 range. (The plant is looking a little bedraggled, but I trimmed about a medium tomato plant's worth of old leaves off it yesterday and it's looking much healthier today.) Like I said, I've nothing to compare this to, but this seems like a lot of tomatoes to me!

As for what I "think", this is, absolutely, my family's favorite tomato. If the other blacks I'm growing are anywhere near as luscious as these, I may only grow blacks from now on. (Well, except for the Hssiao His Hung Shih. My daughter and I love snacking on these.) Anyway, I'm going to have to figure out how to save seeds with these. There are very few per tomato.

Anyway, thank you for asking!

[Father'sDaughter]

Originally Posted by FreyaFL

So far, I've I've picked (because I was keeping track) 15 tomatoes that average between 10-11 ozs and total to 9.5 lbs of tomatoes. There are currently another 6 large tomatoes nearly ripe. (So that'll be 21 for a total of 13-14 lbs.)

Sounds like it's a happy plant! I'm growing it this year for the first time and if it does any where near as well for me up here, I'll be very happy!

[kilroyscarnival]

I think I am going to add it to my wish list for next year. It seems to have deserved a popularity with many here. Thanks for the update!

All my plants (except lettuce) seem to have slowed their growth and/or had some setbacks with the few days of cold weather we had just before and after Christmas. In the past two weeks with the realy warm weather, everything seems to have jumped in height. Hopefully your Cherokee will just keep going.

[ginger2778]

[matereater]

"I think I am going to add it to my wish list for next year. It seems to have deserved a popularity with many here."

Kilroy, Why not just save the seeds then you won't have to put it on a 'wish list' ?

[FreyaFL]

Now I've a question! My purple cherokee set a lot of fruit and then all seemed to start ripening. Now, all the original ones are picked. These seemed to take quite some time from flowering to ripening. They all got pretty big, imo. Now, the second set of fruit from the very recent flowering (within the last month) are already beginning to start ripening. This seems like a very short amount of time, comparatively. They're also about half the size of the original ones. Is this common? I've another tomato plant (Tropic) that has been growing and flowering and fruiting and ripening pretty steadily for almost 2 months. Some tomatoes are quite large, some much smaller. Until it started flowering again, I was thinking that the purple cherokee was a determinate, considering it's smallish, contained size and one flush fruiting. Do I just have an odd PC?

[kilroyscarnival]

Originally Posted by matereater

"I think I am going to add it to my wish list for next year. It seems to have deserved a popularity with many here."

Kilroy, Why not just save the seeds then you won't have to put it on a 'wish list' ?

Because I'm not the one growing it now, Mater. I am growing a chocolate cherry, which I showed above has some of the "twinning" tendencies that Freya's Cherokee displayed. Our posts probably got jumbled up as talking about the same variety in one reading.