Vacation Home Tomatoes

We are extremely blessed and very much spoiled living in an area of Ontario where tomatoes rein supreme!  We are very much accustomed to enjoying some of the very best tomatoes you can ever taste.  They are rich, full of flavour and have a depth of colour not readily available in other parts of the country.  We came down to our vacation home right in the midst of the heavy tomato season last year.  Silly me, I thought tomatoes there would be pretty much the same.  My gosh was I wrong!

Pictured are two tomatoes I bought while there.  Both were very good size with the largest one being almost 5 inches at its widest.  The first thing I noticed is compared to my home grown or locally grown tomatoes, these tomatoes were downright anemic looking!  I had been canning tomatoes and my garden was overflowing with beautiful tomatoes when we left on vacation.  I took one look at these tomato-wanta-bes and immediately wanted to go home!

Notice the tags on the tomatoes?  I hate those stupid little stick on tags on every piece of produce bought in a grocery store!  What I found very interesting though was on the larger tomato if you look close you can see the words uglyripe and heirloom.  Why anyone would call a tomato ugly ripe is beyond me but that is indeed its name.  The ugly ripe tomato developed by Joe Procacci is named for the deep wrinkles in its shoulder and misshapen shape.  The ugly ripe does have a lovely tomato flavour despite its appearance.  It is an heirloom tomato which means you can collect the seeds from this tomato to grow in your garden the following year.  What is interesting is Florida Agriculture will not let this tomato be sold outside of Florida because it is too ugly!  Being a home gardener, I diligently fermented then collected seeds from the ugly ripe tomato and brought them home.  I won't know how well this tomato will perform until next growing season but here's hoping it does perform nicely for me.