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Japenese Trifele Tomatoes

Japenese Trifele Tomatoes

These are Japanese Trifele Black, Yellow and Red tomatoes.  In spite of the name, these tomatoes come from Russia.  Apparently a scientist involved in the development of these tomatoes was Japanese.  At their largest, the red ones are about 5cm wide and the others 2-3cm.

The black version is available from a number of seed companies now, and have become a popular tomato to grow.  Just out of curiosity, I tracked down the red and yellow versions from a seed saver in Sweden and planted them too.  I also got an orange version from a seed saver in Belarus, but it came too late for planting this year.  Perhaps next year I’ll give it a try.

Green spots and uneven ripening seems to be a common trait of these tomatoes.  At first I thought it was intentional, but now I realize it’s more of a problem than a feature.  This isn’t as much of a problem with the black version.

The flavor of the black version is really excellent.  It has a very complex taste that’s a little on the sweet side, but there’s plenty of acidic taste too.  Rumor has it this is Raymond Blanc’s favorite tomato.  For those reading this from outside of the UK, Raymond Blanc is a French born TV celebrity chef who owns a chain of restaurants in the UK.

At best I would say the yellow one is uninteresting.  The plant is the earliest of the bunch, and probably the most prolific.  The plant is also a nice compact size.

The red one is not nice.  The flesh was very mealy and tasteless.  Perhaps this is due in part to the uneven ripening, so perhaps after I’ve had a chance to let some others get riper I will have a more positive impression.

I’ll certainly grow the black one again!

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Taxi Tomato

If there was ever a controversial heirloom tomato, this must be it.  It’s probably the first heirloom tomato I ever grew, and I really like it.  If you look around on the Internet, you will see all range of comments on this tomato with most of them taking a very ambivalent stand.  As well as being called Taxi, it’s sometimes called Yellow Taxi.  It has quite a striking yellow color.  It’s an early determinate variety.

Yellow Taxi Tomato

I got the seeds for this tomato from Seeds Trust about 5 years ago.  Since then I’ve saved several generations of my own seeds.  At the time Seeds Trust were the only source for this tomato on the Internet.  Bill McDorman, the person who started Seeds Trust, is a reader of this blog and occasionally leaves comments.

Yellow Taxi Tomato

I have my own personal story that goes along with this tomato.  In the late ’90s we were in Chicago, and decided to have dinner at Charlie Trotter’s restaurant.  At the time it was considered to be one of the best restaurants in the US, and on top of that had a menu suitable for vegetarians which is very rare in this class of restaurant.  It was so popular at the time we had to make reservations six months in advance, and men had to show up in a suit and tie.  This isn’t our usual class of restaurant, so we were quite excited.

The theme of our vegetarian dinner was heirloom tomatoes!

We had never heard of heirloom tomatoes before, and at the time they were quite a novelty.  Dinner took nearly 3 hours, where they brought us course after course of plates with tiny servings of dishes that all had heirloom tomatoes in them.  I think it was about 15 courses, concluding with heirloom tomato ice cream for desert.  It was really a wonderful experience, and the presentation of the meal was also excellent.

The tomato held out as the most special and most prominently featured on the menu was Yellow Taxi.  It was really delicious.

Even now from time to time I see Taxi featured in seed collections of well known seed savers or heirloom plant collectors, but it doesn’t really seem to be a mainstream heirloom tomato because few seed companies seem to carry it.

I can’t honestly say it’s my absolute favorite, because there are quite a few other really excellent tomatoes around, but it remains one of my favorites nonetheless.  It’s certainly the tomato that inspired me to start growing my own heirloom tomatoes.

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Black Sea Man Tomato

What do you do when you can’t think of anything else to post about?  Make a post about an heirloom tomato!

This is my first full sized tomato to get ripe.  This is a really nice Russian tomato.  It’s mahogany red/brown with green shoulders on top:

Black Sea Man Tomato

Towards the bottom the color changes to a lighter pink/brown:

Black Sea Man Tomato

In the middle brown, red and green:

Black Sea Man Tomato

The taste is really nice and fresh.  It’s a little on the sweet side.

This is a determinate type tomato, meaning it gives it’s entire harvest within a short period of time.  I have planted several of these in the middle of my other greenhouse tomatoes, with the intention of shortly pulling them out and giving the other plants more space.

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Beans and Tomatoes

Beans and Tomatoes

Here are my first few tomatoes and beans of the season.

The three brown tomatoes are brown berry.  The yellow one is Blondkopfchen.  The tiny red one is Matt’s Wild Cherry.  All were grown in my greenhouse except Matt’s Wild Cherry, which is from my roof.

The beans are Dog bean.  It’s a bush variety, which are usually a little earlier than pole beans.  The Dog bean is a multi-purpose bean, good green as well as dried.   This post has a picture of what the beans look like dry, and they are similar to kidney beans.  Several other bloggers grew this bean before, or are growing it now:  Rebsie, Ian and Gintoino.  I’ve given the seeds to some other people too, so maybe they will post about it when they grow it too.  The Dog bean is probably from Croatia, from the Dalmatian coast.  This bean was selectively bread, then renamed, from a bean originally called the Dalmation bean and there was probably a misunderstanding over what the name really meant.

Update 7 July:

We had the dog beans for dinner last night, and they were really good!  In part I’m sure because they were very fresh.  The flavor was a very intense and delicious.  The texture was also really nice, crispy and chewy.  I don’t think we’ve tasted the green beans of this variety before.

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Bolting Lettuce

Bolting Lettuce

I think bolting lettuce looks funny.  This is a romaine (or cos) variety, and you can see the flower stalk alone is about twice the size of the head of lettuce itself.  I’m growing this on my roof this year to save seeds.

While I’ve grown lettuce off and on for several years, last year was the first I tried to save seeds from it.  I failed, and the reason was I didn’t expect the plants to get so large and I used a container that was too small.  When you see this nice head of lettuce that you can hold in your hands, you don’t expect the flower stalk to get nearly as tall as you are!

The speed in which the flower stalk appeared was also a bit surprising.  This one took about 2 days to develop, whereas the rest of the head of lettuce was months in the coming.

I’m also letting some lettuce go to seed in the garden, but this one I’m growing on my roof so I can watch it more carefully and also because the seeds have dandelion like parachutes, and I want to be prepared to get them in time in case this is an issue.

Lettuce in the home garden has been getting a lot more attention lately.  My friend Lieven has been breeding lettuce for the last few years, and the Seed Savers Exchange is also offering an ever increasing variety.  Its really pretty easy to grow, and if you are prepared for the size not difficult to save seeds from either.