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~ OUR BULGARIAN TOMATO TRIALS ~In 2007 Frederick Denny sent us a whole collection of tomatoes he had found in the small village he had moved to in Bulgaria. The seeds arrived carefully wrapped in small sachets made from old newspaper:
and we grew them out in 2008 and 2009 as a preliminary trial. If you like them do save your own seed as we're not sure when we'll be able to offer them again. All the tomatoes on this page are tall vines, not bushes.
'Ruby' Frederick Denny sent us a whole set of heirloom Bulgarian tomatoes he had found - local varieties that people were saving at home. 'Ruby' was one of the jewels in that seed collection - early, productive, & with a good flavour. The vines don't grow too tall for us (so good at the shorter edge of a greenhouse) but make a good crop of really nice rounded red tomatoes for a long season. Beautiful red tomato from Bulgaria. Seed produced for us by our grower Ian Hearn, who runs an organic box scheme near Cardigan..
The picture was taken with our old camera and it hasn't really shown the colour correctly - the tomatoes are really noticeably pink. The original seed of this one were given to us by a Bulgarian legal student at a party. We dont remember much more about them, as it was quite a good party.
BabaThis tall vine makes really large red beefsteaks in quantity. Not especially early, but well worth the wait. Baba means 'grandmother' and this is a traditional family heirloom given to Frederick by an old lady in his village. These are nice cooking tomatoes & make particularly good rich sauces as well as being good in salads.
Saving Tomato Seed:
Here you can seed the seed and juice squeezed into a jar & let ferment for 3 days (no more, no less!) Good seeds sink and bad ones float. (And, yes, it is supposed to be mouldy & smelly) Water is added and poured off several times to clean them, the seed is rinsed in a sieve and put on a plate to dry. Detailed seed-saving instructions are included with your seeds, so you can do this yourself. And of course this is only possible because these are all real, non-hybrid varieties. |
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